I have far more sympathy for them than in the Greek situation. Their country is not democratic, so it's inevitable (for better or for worse) that when a bureaucracy gives them trouble, they're going to be pissed.
From the perspective of the Chinese government, I would view this as a net positive; some steam is let off, and eventually they can send higher-level officials in to rectify the problem and get some good press.
Students have been on strike since between 5,000 and 10,000 of them began ransacking the campus on Thursday night, with several hundred police brought in to quell the unrest, according to witnesses and participants. Photos posted on the Internet from Zhengzhou University in Henan province showed an on-campus bank branch, dormitories and cars had been vandalized, while chairs had been torched and bicycles strewn across the grounds. The students, from the university's Shengda Economics, Trade and Management College, said they were protesting because they had been misled into believing they would get diplomas bearing the name of Zhengzhou University. However they were later told they would only get diplomas from the less prestigious college affiliate.
Okay, I'm all for student activism, but is this reason enough to stage a massive rampage? Especially in a country like CHINA, which doesn't have the rosiest history of student-state relations? One student interviewed said that the University had been treating them badly for years, so perhaps this was the final straw? If I spent four years at Harvard and found my degree to say Boston University, I know I'd be pissed as hell, but "rampage" really wouldn't enter my mind. NYT gives us a bit of back story:
Once a magic ticket into the government or business elite, college has become an expensive gamble for millions of cash-short families who find that even the most prestigious degrees cannot guarantee success in a market economy. The number of college graduates has multiplied fivefold in the last seven years, to an estimated 4.1 million this year. But at least 60 percent of that number are having trouble finding jobs, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.
Apparently, students were enticed to fork over their (and their parents') hard-earned dough to go to this subpar college, Shengda, that's linked to a more prestigious school, Zhengzhou, with the promise that the degree would not mention the Shengda at all, just Zhengzhou. Looks like they either want a diploma that says Zhengzhou or their money back. Most of the students that went to Shengda went there because their grades did not get them into Zhengzhou itself -- Shengda said "hey, if you pay us five times their tuition, we'll make sure you get a Zhengzhou diploma!" Problem is, a new law passed in 2003 required schools to list their own names on diplomas -- the students graduating this year entered into the school before that was passed. We'll end with a sobering statistic:
By the government's tally, China's economy, though growing by about 10 percent a year, will add about 1.6 million positions for people with college degrees this year. The country produced 4.1 million new college graduates.
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From the perspective of the Chinese government, I would view this as a net positive; some steam is let off, and eventually they can send higher-level officials in to rectify the problem and get some good press.