Interview with Professor Karplus
Time:2013-10-12 09:14:37 Clicks:
——by Miss Huang Yang, Miss Chen Miao
P : Professor S: Student
S: Good morning. Professor Karplus.
P: Good morning.
S: It’s not your first time in Chinais it?
P: No, it’s not. My first time to China was about 17 years ago, in 1996. But I have only been in Jiangxi for two years, this is my forth time to teach here at JUFE.
S: What appeals you most to teach in the International School?
P: Well, I like to work with students, and help them to learn.
S: But why do you choose the International School?
P: Firstly, I don’t understand Chinese, I could only speak English, and the students in the International School could speak English very well. Why Jiangxi University of Finance and Economic but not other universities? I think the students in JUFE are well prepared, and dedicated, and interested to learn. They are fun to work with.
S: Well, thank you for saying that! And could you please tell me what the International School students are like in your mind since you’ve been teaching here for a long time?
P: They are pretty much like students most places around the world, but in China, the International School students in this university are very well prepared, most have pretty good English, most work hard, and tried to learn. So it is very good to work with them.
S: I heard you spent your birthday with your students, how did you feel?
P: Yes, last year I spent my birthday with my students so we had big cakes to celebrate my birthday! It meant special, you know, it was my birthday, nobody was supposed to know any of that, so that was a big surprise. And you know, it’s always better to celebrate my birthday with someone else rather than being alone. I shared that with all my students, which was very nice.
S: So do you like being with Chinese students?
P: I like working with all of my students in America and here in JUFE, but the Chinese students here are more fun to work with. You know, there are some challenges to work together with them, because their English is good, but still needs to be improved in many ways, the other challenge is I do not like Chinese students so focus on the test result. To me, I think they should mostly concentrate on learning the material, but for so many years, they only care about getting good grade on the tests, getting good grade on the tests… I understand that the grade is very important in the Chinese education system, but students are likely to say “Oh, tests are so important”; the other thing I would think about the students is, for the students who want to go study in another country, that when they go to the other country’s university, particularly in Europe, America and Australia, the emphasis of the education that they will get is the professor want them to learn how to think for themselves, not to give back the answer that the professor think might be right. Because for many questions, even in my Finance class, there is no “right answers”, there are many different possible answers depending on other circumstances, the students in China that I teach, they like to say “professor, what’s the right answer?”, thinking about the only right answer, but not that they need to learn how to think about the problem, because there are many different right answers depending on the assumption, and that is difficult to get them to realized that they need to think for themselves, and not just memorized the right answer given by their professor.
S: Yes, definitely. And we all could tell that you are a very responsible person, especially with your job. No offence, it was rumored that you are a very strict professor, especially in the exams.
P: It was rumored and I think you have to ask my former students! (laughing) because I think the purpose of the examinations is to test what you know about the material, therefore, it is necessary to have an arrangement, where the student do their own examinations. And then I can judge that do they know or not. And for that a certain rule is needed, about how the exam will be conducted, the students were told these rules before examinations, and then we follow the rule to the exam, and the rule is only used to tell the students that the best way for you to do good on the exam is learn the material by yourself!
S: I am a student in your Financial Management, so what do you think about teaching a major course just in several weeks? I mean, that is a little bit compacted, don’t you think so?
P: It is very short time to learn the material, to teach the course in three weeks is not that difficult for me, but I know that it is difficult for the students to absorb and learn the material in only three weeks, because normally this course will be taught in ten weeks, but I would only have five hours of class every week, and maybe the other courses that the students here take also are like that, some of them, or the students not in the international school, are also long of the courses, less hours per week, and that is the challenge for the student, to study each course very hard, and some of them is problem, some of them is benefit. The problem is when you have the course so quickly, then students don’t have the time to exam whether they understand the course or not, and then after the course, they learned it so fast, they also forget so fast sometimes. But on the other hand, during the course when the material is taught intensively, when you have the time now for the final exam which is asked, you have not have time to forget the material that you learnt during the class. When the course is ten weeks long, many times you have the final exam, and the students have already forget what they learnt in the first week, in the second week and in the third week, because that is now so long ago, so there are some good things and some bad things about the intensive course. And the challenge for the school is if you want to have teacher from England, Australia, or America, it’s very difficult for us to come for ten weeks to teach, a long time, because we have obligation to teach in our own country, so we can find three weeks to come here or sometimes four weeks to come to Nanchang but not ten weeks to come here. So we could balance things off, maybe not the perfect situation, but the best we can achieve. But what do you think as a student about these three or four weeks intensive courses?
S: Firstly, I think we are very lucky to have a professor like you, you really are trying to help us to learn something, however, to be honest, it is very hard for us while taking the course like Financial Management, we have to prepare for those unexpected tests, which motives us to work harder. This is a good thing, for me, I felt I know accounting better now.
P: Good. And as I said, with the short course, it is very important to review the work every day. If you stop for five days to do work, then you can never catch-up, and that’s partly why I gave the surprise quizzes, because it encourages students to do study some hours every day, but not like “today I don’t study because I will be more studying after that.” But then there will not be enough time to do enough study after that, to make up the study you already know.
S: Yes, you are right. And if we make a comparison between the college students in China and America, let’s say, the student who major in Accounting, what are the similarities and differences?
P: It’s hard to compare in general, good students are very good students, average students are average students, the Accounting that is taught in America is similar to the Accounting taught here that for the International Financial Accounting Standard and GAAP standard, you know you maybe also have the courses in Chinese accounting, in America we have no courses in Chinese accounting taught in university, (laughing) I mean not yet, maybe someday we will, but not yet. The students who are majoring as undergraduate, which is what you are, are generally part of a larger university, so they will also be taking not only accounting classes, so they will be taking physics, chemistry, mathematics, history, political science, psychology, so they will have other classes, so when you major in an America university, in a subject, so in the America university at the end of the four years, you normally take about 40 different courses, about 10 different classes every year. And of those usually only 10 to 15 are in the subject that you major in, so up to the 40 courses, only 10 to 15 for Accounting major will be accounting, that is 20 to 25 will be other courses, like history, political science, and so on. So the students when they graduate both have knowledge of their subject major like Accounting, but also have been taught in general education, and I think here, International Accounting major stays almost only Accounting. That’s one different, and the second different is in Accounting major, you all know, accounting class, which exactly you must take, and you all take exactly the same classes. The Accounting major in America, there are 20 different accounting classes, you choose the 15 or 10 you wish to take, maybe you are more interested in cost accounting, so you take more cost accounting classes and less financial classes, and somebody else might be more interested in auditing, so they take more classes in auditing and less classes in cost accounting, so all of the classes are in America, you choose to take the classes that are related to accounting that are interesting to you, and you chose when to take them. In your case, you have 51 students always together in a class all the time, in America, I might take financial accounting my second year, but you can take your financial accounting in your third year, so we might have some classes together, and some classes differently, because you can choose your own classes and when you take them, the university only said, we offer financial accounting in this time, and the students sign up or they don’t sign up. There is no “class” like you 51 students always together, there are only each individual to their own classes form the list offered by the university. And that means you develop friendship across the whole university.
S: Yes, that’s really different. And I hear that you have been to more than 20 countries, and learnt many different languages, could you please tell me what’s the secret that make you keep the hard-working attitude?
P: I just like to learn new things, I like to meet new people, I like to have new experiences. Last summer I had a very new experience for me, because I went on a travel across the Spain. I spent 35 days walking across Spain with my wife. 800 kilometers, we met people alone the way, and talk to people we met, so it’s like walking from Nanchang to Shanghai in one month. It was a very special experience to participate.
S: Speaking of special experience, you know there is a tendency that more and more students would like to study in another country for further education; do you have any suggestions for them?
P: For going abroad they should work very hard here, and get very good grade. The competition for Chinese students to go to good foreign university is very intensive, because the students from JUFE will compete with those from Beijing University, Qinghua University and many other universities. I mean the standard of English will be high, the schools in other countries look admission profit, means they don’t judge the students with a single test, the schools in America look very much on what else do you do, what did you do in summer job, did you do volunteer job, were you in club and which club did you participate in, what kind of other things did you do in high school? The America schools are more interested in the students who do things that are not just locking themselves in their room and study all the time. That will get you a good grade, but it is not necessary for you to get into a good university, because lots of students have good grade. The most important part of the application is often about the essay you write, about the things that tells about you. And what you are interested in and what you will learn in their university will help you to achieve your goal. And when they see something special about you in the essay, then they will more implied to take you because they think you are a more interesting person than others, though your grade is not as good as others. We want interesting people not the kind of people who study all the time. So you need to have reasonable good grade, and something special about you.
S: Yes, but as to the students who are already studying overseas, do you have any advice for them?
P: For me when they study overseas, the most important thing is spend your time interrupting with Non -Chinese in the university which you are going to. If you are studying in England, then spend your time and efforts to make some British friends. With some effort and some interpersonal relationship we will say, they will accept you and see you as a friend. You could always earn more about this country and the different culture while you hang out with them. And of course your English will get a lot better! If you just meet with the Chinese students, then you will not get the whole benefit of studying abroad.
S: Yes, that’s right. And part of the reason that more students want to study abroad is they think they will get better education in other countries, like America, England… in order to foster more talented students, what should our International School pay special attention to? Is there anything we need to do better?
P: I think there are couples of things we need to pay attention to. One is professors like me, who is teaching in JUFE should think well what I should do differently to make it easier for students to learn. Should I do something special so they will be better at learning? Of course I cannot learn for my students. I really care that my student learning something. Secondly, for the student also, when the students get the job, and they will be asked to do some work by their new employer, if I have not taught them how to prepare, they will not know what to do, and now they will suffer, they will get poor job performance. I want them to learn it, because then it will be beneficial to them when they get job with their work, and they can use that knowledge at their job in the rest of their life, in their work life and their personal life.
S: Speaking of jobs, we all know that it is not that easy to get a job now, especially for the graduate students, because we do not have enough work experience. So what abilities should we possess before we graduate?
P: Well, mostly you should have the knowledge of accounting, financing, the thing that have been taught in the classes. But then there are interpersonal skills of how to deal with people, how to communicate with people, that’s very important. When you go to interview, the interview will be largely judged from the ability to communicate, not mostly what you learned from the university. Secondly, in a difficult job market, net working, contacting, doing other things like volunteering, things that you are dedicated to. If you haven’t got a job yet, remember, always keep yourself busy. You can help people if you want, you can teach children in the poor village if you like, and those will show your working ethic which is admired by most employers, because you are not staying in your room and to sleep or watching TV, you are still doing whatever you can do even those are not directly related to your job you want take.
S: Thank you for your advice. As you know, October 26th is the 90th anniversary of our university JUFE, could you please say something to the faculty members and students here?
P: Wow, firstly, I want say congratulations, to all of the teachers and students on successfully growing the university for the last 90 years. I’m sure 90 years ago, it must start with a very small university, but now it is a large, important university, in Jiangxi province, and have good reputation from all over the China, and also reputation around the world! So I think all of the people who are dedicated to the development of the Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics should be congratulated. And I also want to say continually work hard to make improvement every year, in the quality of education, in the collection of student and the faculty, so the university will continually grow its important reputation in the future. Thank you, xie xie!
S: Thank you very much.