Anthony Kuhn on how China's universities are turning away fromt the old model where

the government paid all students' tuition and assigned them majors and jobs. It decided how many majors in each field would be needed based on official projections of personnel needs. The state enforced a strict monopoly over education. Its task was to produce graduates who were "both red and expert" -- both steadfast Marxists to carry on the Communist cause and engineers to staff the state's military and industrial sectors.

The system

largely ignored China's millenniums-old humanist traditions, which...focused on teaching morality. It produced intellectuals who were highly trained but poorly versed in culture and spiritually adrift. It bred technocrats who considered the mechanics and feasibility of massive state engineering projects but not their ethics or environmental costs.

Now it's supposed to be a more American-style system where students take core curriculum courses in the sciences and arts, but are allowed to choose their major. Some departments are resisting. Anyway, this is all very nice, but China still woefully underfunds primary and secondary education. Is that also the "American-style system"?