In contemporary higher education, the very definition of an “outstanding” student has become a subject of paradox. A high-achieving humanities student, for instance, might complete an entire academic year without reading a single book outside their required coursework. If academic excellence is primarily measured by grades and formal achievements, a student’s personal reading and intellectual growth outside of structured assignments can very well be nonexistent.
This phenomenon stems from a fundamental shift in the goals of modern university education. The primary metrics of success are no longer personal growth, cultivating inner character, or developing intangible qualities. Instead, they are defined by a student’s ability to complete prescribed tasks within a set timeframe and format. This focus on satisfying external, formal requirements—what is colloquially known as “checking all the right boxes”—has become the dominant ethos, both in China and internationally. Consequently, any effort that cannot be directly translated into a visible, resume-boosting achievement is a wasted endeavor that modern students are trained to meticulously avoid.
This focus on formal success has profound societal implications. Countless students with impeccable academic records, extensive extracurriculars, and meticulously curated resumes do not pursue challenging or socially valuable “cold bench” careers after graduation. Instead, they gravitate toward professions that derive their value from rent-seeking or existing social structures, such as finance, consulting, and law. For example, a high percentage of graduates from elite American universities enter these fields, not to “change the world” as their alma maters might proclaim, but to integrate themselves into the most powerful existing establishments. In essence, this system perpetuates a mechanism for the reproduction of the elite class.
This pattern is a stark contrast to China’s recent past. For the past forty years, China’s rapid development sustained an unprecedented era of high social mobility. During this time, qualities like “excellence,” “diligence,” and “merit” were directly linked to a performance-based moral code. There was a prevailing belief that a diligent person would be outstanding, an outstanding person would be successful, and a successful person would become an elite who, in turn, would contribute substantively to society.
However, as this era of high mobility gives way to a more historically common state of lower social mobility, China is inevitably moving toward a social structure that more closely resembles that of the contemporary West. In this model, an elite is deemed excellent not because of substantive performance, but because their background and resume conform to a set of cultural capital and labels that project an air of respectability. In the West, this cultural capital was historically defined by elements such as race, gender, and education. Today, due to political pressure from minority groups, some symbolic positions have been opened, but the core mechanism remains the same: accepting those who fit the established molds. This explains why social struggles in the West have increasingly become political rather than economic—substantive performance is no longer a necessary prerequisite for acceptance but rather a trait associated with subservience to the established order.
Historically, both European aristocracy and the American upper class have emphasized an “effortless” quality, a slight disdain for visible effort or diligence. This was epitomized by the 19th-century “Gentleman’s C+” at elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge. Earning an A was considered vulgar, a sign of being overly earnest and studious, traits of the utilitarian middle class. A C, however, signified a relaxed, nonchalant attitude, reflecting a preference for socializing and sports over academic rigor—the true mark of an aristocratic disposition.
China, in contrast, remains the world’s most pragmatic and performance-oriented “bourgeois” nation. In the Anglo-American subconscious, there is an implicit understanding that the excellence of the Chinese is more fundamentally tied to substantive performance, as China and its people as a whole lack the positive cultural capital that the West values. Yet, a shift is underway domestically. A preliminary set of cultural capital labels is beginning to emerge in China, gradually supplanting a purely merit-based system. This transition will not be completed overnight, as China’s ongoing rise still necessitates a reliance on merit to compete on the global stage. However, this ascent also carries the structural risks of prosperity.
While the formal institutional system may be succumbing to this trend, substantive performance in the humanities still exists in contemporary China—albeit outside of the establishment. The creators of works like The Three-Body Problem and Black Myth: Wukong were not insiders; they were entirely unmoored from the existing academic and literary institutions. The Three-Body Problem, for instance, was the first successful literary work from the PRC to achieve international recognition. It did not fit into the “Socialist Realism” of the past or the “Avant-Garde” pure literature of the present. Its strength wasn’t its literary merit but its ability to capture the spirit of an age through a vision of scientific imagination. While mainstream writers were mired in insular themes, popular science fiction was addressing the true cultural pulse of the nation. Just as the orthodox literati of the Ming and Qing dynasties tirelessly produced stale, formulaic works, the era’s most significant literary achievements were the popular novels written by those outside the elite circle.
This brings us back to the central issue of modern humanities education. An outstanding student in a Chinese literature program, in their pursuit of excellent grades and recommendations, is incentivized to apply pre-existing theories to a few works rather than read widely, worry about the future of Chinese literature, or engage in honest criticism. Modern literary research often devolves into a game of arranging and combining established concepts, detached from a close, personal engagement with the texts themselves. This approach renders academic literary study little more than a mechanism for the reproduction of cultural capital for the knowledge elite, with limited positive social value. Perhaps the most meaningful cultural contributions today will, like in the past, be created by those on the periphery, unburdened by the institutional demands of formal excellence.