In 2018, 662,100 Chinese students chose to study abroad. If the Chinese education system is really the best in the world, why are Chinese students so eager to leave? These five things help explain.
1. Chinese students work long hours but remain among the least satisfied
PISA's bragging rights obscure some important details. First, this was not a representative sample, as the students taking this test only came from Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang—two top-tier cities and a pair of provinces in the country's eastern, more developed region. Education scholars already have criticized PISA as a valid global measure of education quality — but analysts are also skeptical about it selective participation Chinese students from wealthier schools.
Second, Chinese students, on average, study 55 hours per week — also No. 1 among PISA participating countries. That was about 20 hours more than students in Finland, the country PISA said had the highest learning performance, or reading test score points per hour of study.
But the PISA analysis also revealed that among Chinese students the least satisfied with their lives. My research suggests that this high level of dissatisfaction is, in part, driving many privileged urban youth to leave China.
2. Students are looking abroad for a more comprehensive education
Their top destination of choice, by far, is the United States. There were approximately 1.1 million international students in the United States in 2018 369,500 Chinese students and those in temporary education-related employment. Studies have documented sharp increases in the number of Chinese students arriving US secondary schools Recent years.
What motivates the vast majority of Chinese students to study in the United States? My Book focuses on this new wave of undergraduates from mainland China in US higher education and draws on 507 online surveys of students. I also conducted 108 interviews with students in both Chinese high schools and US colleges. I find that more than 90 percent of these students in the United States are privately funded, relying on their families for support.
These interviews suggest that students are motivated to study abroad because of frustration with the Chinese education system, which they argue “stifles creativity” and “results in hellish hours of study.” The ambition to get into a good college without undergoing extreme studies brings them to the United States.
Studying abroad offers freedom from China's test-oriented education system. Ironically, many of their parents succeeded in this system and obtained professional jobs and middle class status. But parents now want to offer their children alternatives — and educational opportunities that offer more complete experience unbridled by test scores than what they experienced themselves.
3. China's overseas students are ambitious and restless
This ambition to experience an alternative education system does not come without stress — a lot. Chinese schooling is fraught with stress, and the privileged few who leave to study in the United States are not immune to it. For many Chinese students applying to US colleges, the admissions process can appear to be both alien and whimsicalwhich requires completely different materials such as personal statements and letters of recommendation, along with activities that are not part of the Chinese test-based system.
Chinese students also report feeling anxious about their grades once they begin studying in the United States. Class participation can be a challenge, like the Chinese system rarely encourages or expects students to speak.
And they worry about whether an education in the U.S. is really worth it, as the deteriorating U.S.-China relationship makes them “political cannon fodder” and raises concerns related to student visas and political control of the US. US intelligence officials, for example, accused a Chinese student of trying to they recruit spies for the Chinese government.
4. Studying abroad can provide a second chance
Not all Chinese students in my study were academically strong. Interviewees sometimes painfully recalled their teachers and peers in China mocking them for being academically weak. These students saw the opportunity to study at a US college as a second chance to prove themselves.
The Chinese education system, in contrast, does not give many second chances. The college entrance exam — h Gaokao — only takes place once a year. These scores alone determine whether and where students go to college and, often, what they study.
Interestingly, Chinese students who stayed longer in the United States were less likely to report working harder than their U.S. peers—and this was true after accounting for academic, family, and institutional background. This finding resonates with the classical assimilation theory: The longer immigrants stay in the host society, the more they resemble the members of that society.
5. The number of Chinese studying in the United States has begun to increase
In the 2018-2019 school year, total enrollment of Chinese students in the United States increased by 1.7%, the slowest annual increase in the past decade. In the long run, a slowdown in Chinese students studying abroad is inevitable, given the reduction to China's college-aged population and the cooling of the Chinese economy, among others.
In the short term, hostility to US-China relations could reduce the attractiveness of a US education. Britain, in fact, recorded a 30 percent increase to Chinese applicants in 2019, challenging US global dominance in higher education.
In 2020, hundreds of thousands of Chinese students will again vote with their feet and money and look to study abroad, fueled by a strong ambition to combine the best parts of Chinese and Western education and improve their future. Institutions around the world welcomed them with open arms. Although President Trump remarked at a press conference in October that “We want all the people who want to come from China”, how long will the United States remain the top destination for Chinese students? Time will tell.
Yingyi Ma is an associate professor of sociology and senior research fellow at the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He is the author of “Ambitious and Restless: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education(Columbia University Press, 2020).
