If you don't speak English, it doesn't mean you cannot be a PhD student or even a well-known prof. Your language skills are especially of no importance if you are in a technical field like Computer Science or even Accounting. I had a friend - a guy from China who was majoring in Accounting. He was a friendly and fun person. But after more than ten years in the United States he could barely put a coherent sentence together. Yet he was teaching 1-2 courses every semester. I once read one of his student evaluations and it went something like this: "Great guy. Knows Accounting. Does NOT speak English!". What the heck, I even met well-known profs who I could barely understand. What counts in academia the most is doing research. Everything else is secondary (of course, I'm talking about research schools here).
Monday 30 March 2009
If you don't speak English....
If you don't speak English, it doesn't mean you cannot be a PhD student or even a well-known prof. Your language skills are especially of no importance if you are in a technical field like Computer Science or even Accounting. I had a friend - a guy from China who was majoring in Accounting. He was a friendly and fun person. But after more than ten years in the United States he could barely put a coherent sentence together. Yet he was teaching 1-2 courses every semester. I once read one of his student evaluations and it went something like this: "Great guy. Knows Accounting. Does NOT speak English!". What the heck, I even met well-known profs who I could barely understand. What counts in academia the most is doing research. Everything else is secondary (of course, I'm talking about research schools here).
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