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During the outbreak of COVID-19, many universities and schools have responded as quickly as possible and shifted the courses from off-line to online. However, with the explosion of online teaching and learning, there came growing questions and challenges for educational leaders, scholars, and educators. The current crisis has stimulated discussions about online education before, during, and after the Coronavirus. One of these critical questions is "where online education shall move in the post-epidemic era." Recently, the Research Center for Online Education of China's Ministry of Education has launched an International Interview Project to invite scholars, educational leaders, and academic researchers to have dialogues concerning the significant issues about technology and education in this historically unparalleled divide. Furthermore, this dialogic space expects to include different voices about online education under this crisis, discuss the opportunities and challenges for technology and education, and prompt further collaborations for education innovation globally. Despite the busy schedules of scholars and educational leaders, at the end of many thorough, open, and substantive conversations, the organizers and participants agreed that the current crisis presents an opportunity that would add significant value to our understanding of online education in the post-epidemic era. Participants also raised a range of issues that confront educational leaders, administrators, researchers, faculty, instructors, and students across the globe during the discussions. This article highlights participants' predictions, participants' concerns, problems identified, rising issues identified, and the recurring issue of changing understanding of learning, teaching, and schooling in the digital world.

With the increasing attention to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), hands-on Curriculum Practical Training (CPT) has been expanding rapidly worldwide as a requirement of the undergraduate engineering education. In China, a typical CPT for undergraduate engineering students requires several weeks of hands-on training in the industry. So far the evidence on the effect of CPT is inconclusive for education researchers and policy makers. Employing a dataset collected from China in 2013, this study endeavors to identify the effect of CPT on engineering students' career development in China. This research uses two outcome variables to gauge work place outcomes: "earnings" and "productivity." With the Propensity Score Matching approach, this study shows several results: (1) most engineers benefit from their CPT and value this hands-on training experience; (2) without matching, CPT has a statistically significant positive contribution to future earnings. However, the significant effect vanishes after matching; (3) CPT was a significant positive determinant of productivity with and without matching; and (4) the effect of CPT was heterogeneous depending on personal characteristics.

This paper presents the results of a formative evaluation of a young faculty development scholarship program conducted in teachers colleges in impoverished areas of China. In the paper we describe the implementation of the program, the utilization of scholarship by recipients, recipients' satisfaction, and outcome data. Based on these data we discuss the successes and barriers of the program thus far. Several data collection methods were used in the evaluation: a longitudinal random survey of recipients, group interviews with their students, directors and colleagues, in-person interviews with individual recipient, interviews with representatives of provider agencies, and the data base in provider agency. The findings reported in this paper are primarily from the recipients' survey. Key findings from the group interviews and representatives' interviews are also included. As a whole, the findings suggest success in terms of recipients' knowledge and use of advanced training, and high levels of satisfaction with individual development and the organization level. Continuing challenges to the faculty training and development program include long-standing barrier to recipients' involvement (e.g. low levels of networking) and sustainability at the college-level to retain the services and social activism of program recipients. (Contains 1 footnote and 5 charts.)

This study examines the gender gaps in mathematics and physics in Chinese middle schools. The data is from the Education Bureau management database which includes all middle school students who took high school entrance exam in a district of Beijing from 2006-2013. The ordinary least square model and quantile regression model are applied. This study consistently shows that the gender gap is unfavorable toward female students in mathematics and physics while favorable toward female students in Chinese and English. Gender gaps favoring males in math and physics become more noticeable among the students who receive the top tier scores in math and physics testing. However, females' students' advantage in Chinese and English decreases along the distribution from the bottom to the top percentiles. There are significant intersections between rural residency and gender. Rural students (regardless of gender) perform less well than urban students in all subjects and rural female student show the worst testing scores compared with the other subgroups in mathematics and physics.

It is well-known that engineering is a key profession for both economic and social development. This is as true for China as it is for other countries which are in the process of development. However, what are the economic incentives for young people to enter the profession today? Currently, there are many studies of the rate of return to educational investment, but recent empirical studies of the rate of return to educational investment for engineers are uncommon. This is true generally, but especially for contemporary China. This is because it is difficult to obtain high-quality and representative sample data about engineers. This paper uses the data of the Chinese Family Panel Studies, 2010, and applies a Mincerian income function to estimate the rate of return to education for engineers who work in the private sector in urban China. The empirical results show that the rate of return for engineers is 12.3%, which is an impressive figure. It is in accordance with the current supply and demand of the Chinese labour market which requires many engineers to carry out construction and maintenance projects given China’s continuing industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation. However, the empirical results also show that compared with the rate of return to education for professional and technical personnel who are employed in business economics and finance, the rate of return for engineers is significantly lower. This may explain why in China today the attraction of engineering education for talented young people is declining, with more and more students choosing business economics and finance as their first choices of major and career, rather than engineering as in the past.