Rule of Men vs. Rule of Law
Tonight I spent an evening studying PolyU’s Student Handbook. Over 140 pages, divided into sections: school introduction, information access, registration, tuition, assessment, awards and accreditation, rules and regulations, facilities and services, student organizations, and notes for overseas students. Nothing is too trivial to cover. I couldn’t help but feel emotional.
Compare this with Tongji’s student handbook — I’m not even sure if there’s an electronic version. From what I remember, Tongji’s handbook is just a compilation of various regulations. Not systematic, not comprehensive, scattered and fragmented. When something specific comes up and it’s not in the handbook, you have to ask people — and that’s when the various departments start playing hot potato.
For example, the issue of students not paying tuition. In PolyU’s handbook, it’s very clear: if you don’t pay by the deadline, all course selections, exams, etc., instantly become void and null (I wonder if the person who wrote this handbook was a programmer). What about Tongji? There’s no provision in the handbook. Nobody can say for sure what happens if you don’t pay. Tuition collection is the finance department’s business, course selection is the academic affairs office’s business, and student work to collect tuition is the student affairs office’s business. These departments barely communicate. When something goes wrong, they point fingers at each other. Sometimes the buck gets passed to the school, asking them to pressure students or plug the tuition hole. Passing the buck is the best-case scenario. More often, you ask several people and get several different answers, leaving you unsure who to trust.
Looking at PolyU’s administrative structure, it’s very lean with very few administrators. Of course, bloated administration is a common problem across China, not just in schools. I think rather than hiring so many people to do so-called “management,” and plugging holes with people when problems arise, it’d be better to hire people to create and maintain systems. Once the system is clear, everything runs by the book. You wouldn’t need so many people.
China seems more “accustomed” to rule by men. Everything requires asking for leadership’s instructions, their review, their approval, their directives. Leaders enjoy the feeling of having people buzzing around them. If the system were perfect and everyone just followed the rules, with no tolerance for violations, then leaders would be very lonely — nothing to do, their status diminished. From this perspective, maybe leaders don’t want to be replaced by a system.
Another area that lags behind is informatization. There are too many examples. Dormitories: here they almost have no dorm managers. There are turnstiles at the entrance, surveillance in the hallways, smart card locks on the doors that take student cards. What would you need a dorm manager for? The system replaces them. Then there’s the website: Tongji’s Chinese version and English version are two entirely separate websites. Here, any news or webpage, just click English, Traditional Chinese, or Simplified Chinese, and it maps directly. Of course, for China, asking the people who manage Tongji’s website to produce English content is somewhat unrealistic — but why can they do it here?
I’ve only been here three days, and I can already see the gap is enormous. Maybe I’m complaining too early.
Appendix: PolyU’s Student Handbook:
http://www.polyu.edu.hk/as/web/index.php?page=7448