Chinese students at top-ranking universities are less creative than those at less prestigious institutions, a new study has found, with the authors blaming China’s exam-dominated education culture and intense university workload. The research sheds further light on the long-running debate over whether Chinese graduates lack creativity and critical-thinking skills or if it is simply a comforting Western stereotype about a rising rival economic power. To measure creativity, two researchers from Kyungpook National University, in South Korea, tested 400 business school students across 16 universities in both China and Korea with a widely used creativity survey, which, for example, asks participants to link different words and to answer a series of questions about their attitudes, such as whether they “aim for stability.”

September 30, 2016 ・ From Times Higher Education