UCD CSC Scholarship Scheme 2012

Dear Colleague,

Following the renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding between the China Scholarship Council (CSC) and UCD on Monday the 31st October 2011 by UCD President Dr Hugh Brady and Director-General of CSC Ms. Liu Jinghui, I would like announce the launch of the UCD CSC Scholarship Scheme 2012.

In 2007, UCD and CSC, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of China, established a unique scholarship scheme to assist Chinese students to pursue graduate research, in UCD. The scheme allows Chinese students to apply for a research visit to UCD for a period of 6 - 24 months as part of their doctoral education or a 4 year, funded, full time UCD PhD degree programme in UCD.

The scheme aims to attract some of the very best students from China to UCD and to promote UCD within China as an attractive destination for graduate research programmes.

Securing a UCD CSC Scholarship is a two stage process. Step 1: The student applies to UCD and upon approval is given an offer to carry out their doctoral programme under the supervision of a UCD supervisor. Step 2: The student uses the UCD offer letter to apply to the CSC in China. Only when the student has been approved in both jurisdictions is the scholarship awarded.

The successful students under the UCD-CSC scheme will have their tuition fees paid by UCD and the CSC will cover the students living expenses and airfares.
Guidelines for the applicants can be found at http://www.ucd.ie/graduatestudies/coursefinder/researchprogrammes/chinascholarshipscheme/

The scheme works best if the potential CSC students can link up with appropriate potential UCD Supervisors who are willing to support the application in the first instance, and supervise the student if the application is successful.

If you are approached to be a supervisor by a potential PhD student from China we would ask that you advise them of the following:

• Applications to this scholarship programme must be made via the online application system www.ucd.ie/apply. The Application type is Scholarship Application-China
• The deadline for the submission of applications is the 27th January 2012.
• Only those applications approved by the UCD Assessment Committee for CSC Scholarships in February 2012 are eligible to progress to the second stage and be considered by the CSC for funding.
• English Language Requirements are :
• For the internet based TOEFL (iTB), a minimum score of 100 is required.
• For the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) an average score of 6.5 over all components is required
• Applications that are late or incomplete will automatically be disqualified.

Best wishes,

Professor Julie Berndsen

Dean of Graduate Studies

Results on Health Inequalities from Chinese Aging Study

Health Outcomes and Socio-Economic Status among the Elderly in China: Evidence from the CHARLS Pilot

Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics

Author Info

Strauss, John (strauss@usc.edu) (University of Southern California)
Lei, Xiaoyan (xylei@ccer.pku.edu.cn) (Peking University)
Park, Albert (albert.park@economics.ox.ac.uk) (University of Oxford)
Shen, Yan (yshen@ccer.pku.edu.cn) (Peking University)
Smith, James P. (smith@rand.org) (RAND)
Yang, Zhe (Peking University)
Zhao, Yaohui (yhzhao@ccer.pku.edu.cn) (Peking University)
Additional information is available for the following registered author(s):

• James P. Smith

Abstract

We are concerned in this paper with measuring health outcomes among the elderly in Zhejiang and Gansu provinces, China, and examining the relationships between different dimensions of health status and measures of socio-economic status (SES). We use the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) pilot data to document health conditions among the elderly in Gansu and Zhejiang provinces, where the survey was fielded. We use a very rich set of health indicators that include both self-reported measures and biomarkers. We also examine correlations between these health outcomes and two important indicators of socioeconomic status (SES): education and log of per capita expenditure (log pce), our preferred measure of household resources. While there exists a very large literature that examines the relationships between SES and health measures, little has been done on Chinese data to see whether correlations reported in many other countries are replicated in China, particularly so for the aged. In general education tends to be positively correlated with better health outcomes, as it is in other countries. However, unmeasured community influences turn out to be highly important, much more so than one usually finds in other countries. While it is not yet clear which aspects of communities matter and why they matter, we set up an agenda for future research on this topic. We also find a large degree of under-diagnosis of hypertension, a major health problems that afflicts the aged. This implies that the current health system is not well prepared to address the rapid aging of the Chinese population, at least not in Gansu and Zhejiang.

Classroom Peer Effects and Academic Achievement: Evidence from a Chinese Middle School

SCID Working Paper 366; 07/1/08

Author(s): Katherine Carman, Lei Zhang

This paper estimates peer effects on student achievement using a panel data set obtained from a middle school in China. Two unique features of the organization of Chinese middle schools (Grades 7 to 9) and the panel data allow us to identify peer effects at classroom level; in particular, we are able to overcome difficulties that have hindered the separation of peer effects from omitted individual factors due to self-selection and from common teacher effects. First, students are assigned to a class at entry of middle school (Grade 7) and stay with their classmates together for all subjects and for all grades in middle school. In other words, any self-selection into a class occurs before the interaction with classmates. Thus, individual fixed effects can capture all omitted student and family characteristics relevant for selection. Second, each teacher of Math, English, and Chinese teaches two classes and stay with the same two classes from Grade 7 to Grade 9. This panel nature allows us to use teacher by test fixed effects to capture the time-varying common teacher effect. We estimate peer effects for Math, English, Chinese, and overall test scores separately. In a linear-in-means model controlling for both individual and teacher-by-test fixed effects, peers are found to have a positive and significant effect on math and overall test scores and a positive but insignificant effect on Chinese test scores, but no effect on English test scores. Additionally, students at the middle of the ability distribution tend to benefit from better peers, whereas students at both ends do not.

Let's Look to China

The Wall Street Journal Education section is reporting that unemployed university graduates are ballooning to critical levels in China, just as the country suffers its worst economic slump in two decades. Up to one-third of last year's 5.6 million university graduates are still looking for work, and this year will see another 6.1 million hit the labour market. Ireland is suffering from a similar predicament (albeit on a different scale) so it will be worth following how China navigates through this.

What is the going rate for flipping burgers?

In the current edition of Princeton Weekly, there is an article about Professor Orley Ashenfelter, from the Department of Economics and Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University. When faced with the question as to whether China’s and India’s growing economies will soon rival that of the United States, Ashenfelter poses the question: "What is the going rate for flipping burgers?"

He is conducting a study of McDonald’s employees’ wages in many countries to illustrate the relative strength of their economies, and early results indicate that developing nations still have a long climb. While the average hourly “McWage” is around $6 in the United States and other western nations, the same job in China, India and other developing countries pays less than 50 cents.