Moving to find a new job is not that unusual for most of us, after all it’s what puts bread on the table.
The Chinese, however, are investing in their future a bit earlier in their lives by choosing to move a continent away in pursuit of better education. And with the Chinese investing big time in education, it is America that is raking in the big bucks.
According to reports “400,000 Chinese students studied abroad last year, nearly half of them in the US”. Perhaps, more interesting than the number of students coming to the US shores is the amount of money they represent, which the US Commerce Department says is a staggering $22.7 billion in 2011 alone. This figure takes into consideration all of the students’ expenditures while in US soil including “tuition, books and fees as well as related expenses like transportation and health insurance.”
With so much money made from Chinese students opting to study in the US, it is no wonder that almost 100 US academic institutions sent over representatives to Beijing last March in an effort to woo more students to enrol with them.
What might be surprising for those who are not in the know, is that US private high schools also made their presence felt at the China International Education Exhibition Tours. The truth though is that their participation is pretty much expected since sending high school age kids to US private boarding schools is a rapidly growing trend in China. In fact, from just 65 Chinese high school students in 2005, the number is not up to almost 7,000! And with such a boom in numbers, you can bet that no boarding school can afford to overlook such a ripe market.
Despite the economic advantages that the influx of Chinese students bring with them, concerns over various issues such as lesser diversity in international schools and poor English language skills are making educators do a double take. However, this problems are all addressable, with stricter application guidelines and processes being the primary remedy. This perhaps includes additional assessment of English language skills on top of standardized results to ensure that the documents submitted are authentic.
At the end of the day, you can be sure that profitability will trump all other reservations educators may have. They’ll just need to find better ways attract more foreign students from other countries if diversity is the issue as well as be the institution of choice for China’s cream of the crop if it’s competence under question.
Source: China Daily
“Gia is an English language and exam prep tutor from Thailand. She works mainly with students in Bangkok who are seeking to improve their English while studying for the GED exam (เรียน GED) and pass the IELTS exams (เรียน IELTS)”
Originally posted on June 29, 2013 @ 8:36 am