While a foreign degree no longer promises a higher economic return in China, the enthusiasm for sending children abroad is the result of the failures of domestic education, said Xiong Bingqi, head of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, writing on
Beijing Youth Daily.
Official statistics show that by last year China had 4.58 million citizens who have been educated abroad and 3.22 million of them had returned to the country after finishing their degree course.
But this doesn’t necessarily suggest that China is becoming more attractive to overseas-educated youth, Xiong said. Among those who have returned, only a very small part are the elite, he said, citing a human resource official as complaining that in science and engineering as many as 87 percent of top-notch Chinese students have chosen to stay abroad after finishing their degree.
The number of overseas returnees is growing because in general more are going abroad and thus it has become increasingly competitive for most of them to find a job in a foreign country, Xiong said.
Unlike the past, studying abroad is no longer the privilege enjoyed by the best of Chinese students and the identity as an “overseas returnee” has lost its edge in the job market, Xiong said.
Even so, the trend of pursuing a foreign degree is still growing with last year’s number up by over 36 percent as compared to that of 2012. While the will and reason to go remain just as strong among elite students, there is also a growing demand among ordinary urban parents for a better educational experience for their children regardless of economic returns, Xiong said.
What’s primarily driving more students to pursue education abroad is the country’s lack of quality education, Xiong noted while calling for reform.
Meanwhile, he predicts that as being an overseas returnee is no longer a privilege, those ready to study abroad are likely to be cautious in choosing countries and schools.
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