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Reflecting on the times...
Mar. 22nd, 2025 03:27 amI remember a sociology professor saying somewhat bluntly, "If everybody in America had a Harvard education, then there would not be enough jobs to keep up with the demand of highly-educated individuals."
I feel as though this is a strong reflection of where we are now as a society, but slightly neglects the economic woes in America, Russia, and China.
To draw an analogy, in China, for nearly two full millenniums, the most sought-after education was a degree / certification / stamp known as the KeJu (assuming you were male). This certification stated that you were educated in the Confucian classics. At the height of the Ming Dynasty, there was a massive surplus of literate people studying for the KeJu. It is estimated that up to 30% of Nanjing's male population was literate. That is a high number, given that back in those times you didn't have a surplus of paper and printing that anyone could access. My Chinese history professor cited a statistic that she somehow came across in her research, and somehow the math came out to 500 properly educated people were available for 1 job posting by the Ming royal court in both the capital and the provinces under Ming dynasty control.
If we compare this to pre-colonial Vietnam, which did use the Chinese writing system for messaging between nation states, the literacy rate was estimated to be 10-20% for the urban population.
I feel as though this is a strong reflection of where we are now as a society, but slightly neglects the economic woes in America, Russia, and China.
To draw an analogy, in China, for nearly two full millenniums, the most sought-after education was a degree / certification / stamp known as the KeJu (assuming you were male). This certification stated that you were educated in the Confucian classics. At the height of the Ming Dynasty, there was a massive surplus of literate people studying for the KeJu. It is estimated that up to 30% of Nanjing's male population was literate. That is a high number, given that back in those times you didn't have a surplus of paper and printing that anyone could access. My Chinese history professor cited a statistic that she somehow came across in her research, and somehow the math came out to 500 properly educated people were available for 1 job posting by the Ming royal court in both the capital and the provinces under Ming dynasty control.
If we compare this to pre-colonial Vietnam, which did use the Chinese writing system for messaging between nation states, the literacy rate was estimated to be 10-20% for the urban population.
