New Doubts on Critical Thinking at China's Universities

Research by Prashant Loyalka, a faculty member at Stanford University, is pointing to a key weakness -- in critical thinking -- of students at China's universities, The New York Times reported. The research is still preliminary and won't be published until next year. But initial findings suggest that Chinese students arrive at universities with much better critical thinking skills than their counterparts in the United States and Russia. The critical thinking skills of Chinese students stall once they reach higher education, however, while American and Russian students see significant gains in college. Critical thinking skills measured include the ability to identify assumptions and to test a hypothesis.