Emergency Report to the Kean University Senate on the State of the Wenzhou campus From one of the members of the ad hoc committee elected to represent the members of the Wenzhou-Kean faculty to the Senate, John Prince

Allow me to summarize the background to this crisis. China’s employment law is quite different from U.S. employment law. There is no “employment at will” in China. Rather, after a probationary period, an employee is granted a contract for a term of years (usually two or three years) and cannot be fired except for good cause, and what counts as good cause is defined in the law rather specifically. Accordingly, the probationary period is extremely important to employers. That is the only period where an employee may be discharged easily. Therefore, it is a nearly universal practice here to have probationary “internships” during the spring for university seniors, where they begin their work. At the end of three months or so, they are regular, protected employees. These internships are deeply embedded in the employment culture. If students are not free to take them during their spring semester of their senior year, they are for all intents and purposes unemployable (in a country where getting a job is already very hard). That is why our students typically take 42 to 46 credit hours each year (18 in each long semester, 3 or 6 more in both winter and summer semesters)—so they can finish all their required courses in time to take internships the spring of their summer year.1 Now—to our campus. Our students are given “four year plans” that not only list the courses they must take (as do the course guides for the American students), but also list when those courses should be taken (e.g., first semester, second year, or the like). Though they are not bound by those guides, the courses actually scheduled follow the four year plans. Thus, for example, although in the past FIN 3311 was scheduled for the summer immediately after the FIN 3310 course which was offered in the spring, this year, there is no FIN 3311 in the summer, and that is because the current “four year plan” states FIN 3311 is to be taken in the fall of the junior year. When I enquired about why there was no FIN 3311 on the summer schedule, which the sophomores currently taking FIN 3310 want to take in the summer as the current juniors were allowed to do, the answer was that, “Students and their advisors need to follow the four-year plans that were distributed, not what students are ‘begging for.’ There is no provision in that plan for FIN 3311 in the summer.” The obvious question this statement raised was why there was no such provision, as it certainly slowed down our students’ progression to completion of their degrees. The answer was given in the same email response, and it was a devastating answer. That email continued: 1

Though Kean Union students only need 120 hours to graduate, our students take more hours because of their additional ESL requirements.

“We do, however, have a mandate from the Provost’s Office to ensure that students remain fulltime for the duration of their course of study.” That is, even during the spring of their senior year, our students must take at least twelve (12) credit hours even if they are finished with their degree requirements. In other words, the Provost has mandated that our students are not allowed to find employment in China. This will destroy the viability of our campus. I have ascertained that the administration here on the Wenzhou campus has made repeated attempts to have the Provost change this policy, to no avail. No rationale has been supplied for this policy. It certainly conflicts with the policies applicable to Kean Union students, who are allowed to complete all their courses by January (see Undergraduate Catalog at p. 24) and who are allowed to take less than full time loads their last semester as well (as confirmed by conversations with Union students currently on this campus as exchange students). Thus, the policy articulated in the language quoted above not only is very harmful to the students and potentially devastating to this campus’s ability to survive, but it appears to discriminate against our Chinese students. An added problem is that none of this information has been conveyed to those who are most affected by this policy—the students themselves. They are being kept in the dark. This policy must be remedied before WKU students’ path to internships and thus employment upon graduation is irrevocably damaged. Registration here begins soon for summer and fall semesters.