香港《亞洲時報》1月16日文章，原題：致華裔美國高中生的一封信 “校園藍調”
（2019年美國聯邦調查局調查美國大學招生醜聞的行動——編者注）醜聞爆發時就該結束。好萊塢女演員、對衝基金經理、酒莊老板、房地產開發商和其他各種各樣的權勢人物，都偷偷摸摸把他們的學渣子女送入精英大學。這個騙局太荒謬了。這個體係早在幾十年前就已崩潰，現在該騙局已經國際化。
長期在中國居住的頗有見地的貝特朗講述了一個常見故事：他的中國富豪朋友決定把家搬到加州，主要是為了讓孩子躋身美國精英行列。貝特朗說：“為什麽不在中國實現這個目標呢？中國已付出相當大的努力並將繼續這樣做，以確保財富不會‘玩弄’教育體係。”或許相關措施並不完美。但從長遠看，哪個社會更具可持續性且發展得更好：是像美國那樣幾乎不采取措施避免“精英再現”（與“美國夢”相反）的社會，還是像中國那樣盡可能實行賢能政治的社會？
對焦慮的華裔美國高三學生來說，一個曆史性“套利”機會已出現。忘掉HYPSM（哈佛、耶魯、普林斯頓、斯坦福和麻省理工學院的縮寫——編者注）吧。它們早在20年前就已沉淪，隻是隨波逐流者還沒意識到。請記住這個縮寫TPSFZUN——清華、北大、上海交大、複旦、浙大、中科大和南京大學。瓦茨拉夫·哈維爾（捷克前總統——編者注）曾說，中國崛起如此之快，我們還沒來得及感到驚訝。這也適用於高等教育。2004年清華大學在泰晤士高等教育世界大學排名中位列第62，2024年升至第12（北大排第14），在亞洲排名第一。如今，在自然指數年度榜單中排名前10的研究型大學中，中國占據7所。
拖累中國高校排名的一個因素是國際學生不足，這正是你們的優勢。別誤會，中國名牌大學並非招收任何國際學生，你需要成績出眾。當然，這絕非隻是為從中國大學排名和更便宜學費中“套利”。選擇這條路，你將獲得真正的教育。這條路不適合膽小的人，因為你周圍會有一群高考“變種人”，他們的智力閃爍著耀眼光芒。這封信是寫給華裔美國人（和散居海外的美國人）的，目的是讓他們明白一些道理。有趣的是，成功走這條路的非華裔西方人很多是特立獨行者，他們獲得的教育遠超美國HYPSM所能提供的。（作者Han Feizi，丁玎譯）
Open letter to Chinese American high school students
https://asiatimes.com/2024/01/open-letter-to-chinese-american-high-school-students/
Chinese Americans should look beyond the Ivy League farce and consider instead getting a real university education in China
To the place I belong
– John Denver
The jig should have been up when the Varsity Blues scandal broke. Oh was it delicious. Hollywood actresses, hedge fund managers, winery owners, real estate developers and other assorted muckety-mucks sneaking their low-watt spawn into elite colleges. The fraud was so absurd you couldn’t make it up.
Rich people Photoshopping their kids playing sports, paying for medical “stupid” certifications to get “special” proctoring, hiring a Harvard grad SAT ringer able to deliver any score you want. Stanford, Yale, Cornell, Georgetown and we are not going to make USC jokes because the school has gotten a lot better in recent years.
And that Chinese girl who paid US$6.5 million to get into Stanford. Did you see her hour-long “I got into Stanford” video on YouTube? Oh the burns in the comments. If you could only read Chinese. Epic!
Of course, the joke is really on us. Because four years later, elite American universities – with additional malfeasance in the interim – continue to command the same prestige, elicit the same anxiety and demand the same obeisance.
The college counseling business is as hot as ever. Some are reportedly charging over a million dollars for white-glove service starting in the 7th grade, with a perfect record of admissions into HYPSM (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it).
And Asian Americans. Did you really think you scored a win when the Supreme Court scrapped affirmative action last year? The universities saw it coming a mile away and became test-optional well before the gavel came down. Underrepresented applicants are polishing their essays on how they’ve thrived in unsafe spaces while you are stuck with the surname Zhang.
So what can you do? You’ve already maxed out the SATs, signed up for every AP class, play the oboe, do bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like fencing. At this point, it’s just one giant crap shoot.
Will the admissions officer like your essay on teaching inner-city kids at math camp (but they really taught you)? Does Yale need another oboist? Will your history teacher write a flashy enough recommendation?
And even if you do get into HYPSM (or its sorry near peers), you will be surrounded by a sea of people who maxed out on the SATs, took every AP class, play an instrument, did bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like water polo. If it is true that you learn the most from your peers, then HYPSM will likely prove less educational than high school.
If you are lucky and go to a regular high school, at least you are exposed to regular people with regular aspirations and regular opinions – deplorable as they may be. In HYPSM, you will join the tiresome Westoid elite with their anxious entitlement and risible pretensions. It’s a nauseating mélange of sanctimony, condescension, virtue signaling, victim larping and look-at-me posturing.
The only people you might learn something from are the international students who mostly keep to themselves after discovering how loud, deranged and solipsistic their American classmates are.
You will discover that student cliques mostly keep to themselves – international students with international students, blacks with blacks, Asian Americans with Asian Americans, frat boys with frat boys, sorority girls with sorority girls (okay, frat boys and sorority girls do mix).
You will while away four years, slowly socialized into Westoid elitism with its arcane rules of self-censorship and approved aspirations, until your life path is narrowed down to finance, consulting or tech. This is made tolerable by drunken debauchery and meaningless hookups (that’s what the kids tell me anyways) that passes for a social life.
All of this is to deliver an indoctrinated end product to Wall Street and Silicon Valley which has accomplished the miracle of hijacking both progressivism and capitalism while impoverishing the rest of America. Evidently, there are progressive non-solutions to every problem which coincidentally increase FAANG share prices.
