Scholastic Mafan
Hello, everyone!
Recent events have inspired me to write a rant about the mafan at my school. Some of the mafan is typical of universities everywhere so I'll confine my comments to mafan which I think even University of Waterloo would avoid, if it could possibly get itself into this situation.
Here's the scoop: when I was accepted into my programme for studying Mandarin at BLCU, the admission notice which was sent to me had as its ending date '15 July 2007'. That is, all examinations would be written and grades delivered by 15 July.
Nope. I was wrong to assume that any university with so many international students would have set in stone at an early date its times for examinations, holidays, and grade reports. It seems that BLCU, with the highest number of foreign students of any university in China, is not able to guarantee that the dates on its admission notices are final. I've recently learnt that my grades won't be available until 20 July, and the date which owes to have been on my admission notice is actually 23 July 2007.
The first thing I must note here is that the school actually had not yet decided by the end of April the day on which students in my program would be able to receive their grades. University of Waterloo publishes such important dates at least a year beforehand. I don't know why BLCU couldn't decide upon a date ands stick to it. It's not as if anything new popped up.
Another thing is that they probably should also tell their students upon arrival the exact dates of the holidays for that they may prepare for seven or eight consecutive days of school during the May and October holidays, holidays which are apparently mechanically computed and could easily be brought to the attention of foreigners. No other country in the world celebrates both of those holidays (May Day is popular, 01 October is not), and no other country celebrates in the way China does. We're foreigners, not amoebae: we don't learn by osmosis.
This 'glitch' in the date on the admission notice has two consequences for me. Firstly, the flight, which was booked for me by TravelCuts on behalf of the Canadian government, now has to be changed at my expense. I actually had to change it anyway because someone at TravelCuts made a mistake. Here's a short excerpt from my side of my e-mail exchange with the travel agent last summer.
--
Below, you wrote 'Please ensure you change your return date prior to the date I picked. Be sure of your date but do not wait until the last minute because the fee is based on availabilty.'. Do you mean 'Please ensure you change your return date (from 05 July 2007) prior to the date I picked (05 July 2007).'? Sorry, I'm a bit confused. My programme actually ends on 15 July, so I'm going to have to change the date anyway, and I'd prefer to avoid the $100 surcharge for changing the return date.
--
In short, she booked my return flight for 05 July without actually consulting me about the return date. Her response was 'oh, you can change it later', and didn't address the fact that I would have to pay to change the date. (It cost $75 Cdn.) I fully intend to send to the department responsible for the scholarship the (paltry) bill for $75. At this point, I'm really desperate for cash and $75 is still $75. Whether the Canadian government wants to challenge either TravelCuts or the Chinese government for that amount of cash is not my problem.
That she made a mistake doesn't matter in this case. A bigger problem for all of those at this university in my scholarship programme is that we all must change our tickets if we wish to actually receive our grades in person. Beyond our programme, it's potentially a problem for all international students here.
The second consequence for anyone who had made arrangements to be here only until 15 July, especially for those in school residences, is that we now have to deal with the consequences of one arm of a Chinese institution changing its policies without notifying the other arms. That is, the academic arm, which changed the dates for our programme, have not informed the residences of this change. What that means for me is that I'm not able to guarantee that I'll be able to stay in my room until I have to leave and, even then, my scholarship probably won't cover the basic per-day expense covered for every other day this year. I won't learn until 30 June whether I am able to extend my stay by another six days, which is two days shy of the new end-date for the programme but six days beyond the old date. HOW IN HELL DOES THAT WORK??????? I was told my the head fuwuyuan at my building that they won't know about new students coming (dates, room availability, &c.) until 30 June. How can they not know that? Besides, how can they be admitting masses of new students before the ends of the other programmes? How can a university with this number of international students foul-up things so badly?
T.I.C.
Recent events have inspired me to write a rant about the mafan at my school. Some of the mafan is typical of universities everywhere so I'll confine my comments to mafan which I think even University of Waterloo would avoid, if it could possibly get itself into this situation.
Here's the scoop: when I was accepted into my programme for studying Mandarin at BLCU, the admission notice which was sent to me had as its ending date '15 July 2007'. That is, all examinations would be written and grades delivered by 15 July.
Nope. I was wrong to assume that any university with so many international students would have set in stone at an early date its times for examinations, holidays, and grade reports. It seems that BLCU, with the highest number of foreign students of any university in China, is not able to guarantee that the dates on its admission notices are final. I've recently learnt that my grades won't be available until 20 July, and the date which owes to have been on my admission notice is actually 23 July 2007.
The first thing I must note here is that the school actually had not yet decided by the end of April the day on which students in my program would be able to receive their grades. University of Waterloo publishes such important dates at least a year beforehand. I don't know why BLCU couldn't decide upon a date ands stick to it. It's not as if anything new popped up.
Another thing is that they probably should also tell their students upon arrival the exact dates of the holidays for that they may prepare for seven or eight consecutive days of school during the May and October holidays, holidays which are apparently mechanically computed and could easily be brought to the attention of foreigners. No other country in the world celebrates both of those holidays (May Day is popular, 01 October is not), and no other country celebrates in the way China does. We're foreigners, not amoebae: we don't learn by osmosis.
This 'glitch' in the date on the admission notice has two consequences for me. Firstly, the flight, which was booked for me by TravelCuts on behalf of the Canadian government, now has to be changed at my expense. I actually had to change it anyway because someone at TravelCuts made a mistake. Here's a short excerpt from my side of my e-mail exchange with the travel agent last summer.
--
Below, you wrote 'Please ensure you change your return date prior to the date I picked. Be sure of your date but do not wait until the last minute because the fee is based on availabilty.'. Do you mean 'Please ensure you change your return date (from 05 July 2007) prior to the date I picked (05 July 2007).'? Sorry, I'm a bit confused. My programme actually ends on 15 July, so I'm going to have to change the date anyway, and I'd prefer to avoid the $100 surcharge for changing the return date.
--
In short, she booked my return flight for 05 July without actually consulting me about the return date. Her response was 'oh, you can change it later', and didn't address the fact that I would have to pay to change the date. (It cost $75 Cdn.) I fully intend to send to the department responsible for the scholarship the (paltry) bill for $75. At this point, I'm really desperate for cash and $75 is still $75. Whether the Canadian government wants to challenge either TravelCuts or the Chinese government for that amount of cash is not my problem.
That she made a mistake doesn't matter in this case. A bigger problem for all of those at this university in my scholarship programme is that we all must change our tickets if we wish to actually receive our grades in person. Beyond our programme, it's potentially a problem for all international students here.
The second consequence for anyone who had made arrangements to be here only until 15 July, especially for those in school residences, is that we now have to deal with the consequences of one arm of a Chinese institution changing its policies without notifying the other arms. That is, the academic arm, which changed the dates for our programme, have not informed the residences of this change. What that means for me is that I'm not able to guarantee that I'll be able to stay in my room until I have to leave and, even then, my scholarship probably won't cover the basic per-day expense covered for every other day this year. I won't learn until 30 June whether I am able to extend my stay by another six days, which is two days shy of the new end-date for the programme but six days beyond the old date. HOW IN HELL DOES THAT WORK??????? I was told my the head fuwuyuan at my building that they won't know about new students coming (dates, room availability, &c.) until 30 June. How can they not know that? Besides, how can they be admitting masses of new students before the ends of the other programmes? How can a university with this number of international students foul-up things so badly?
T.I.C.
posted by Jean-Guy! at 5/30/2007 06:01:00 AM
1 comments
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