Selling Ivy League Dream to Chinese “Elite” Families: The Multifaceted Role of Study-abroad Educational Consultants

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 10. Immigration and International Education

Abstract

This paper is part of an ethnographic research project on affluent Chinese families sending children to U.S. for private high schools. In this paper discuss the role the educational consultants or study-abroad intermediaries play in the process of American high school application for upper-middle-class Chinese families. First I show the macro role of this industry in constructing the elite narrative of a transnational school choice, then I detail the meso-level boundary-work educational consultants do to differentiate themselves from study-abroad intermediaries, to establish legitimacy of their work. Following that, I analyze the day-to-day work of educational consultants by demonstrating the services they provided and its pricing, and argue that they are the knowledge providers to fill the gap between the Chinese and American high school education. At the same time they commodificate this knowledge and the whole experience of high school application. Moreover, I explore the challenges within the educational consulting industry, i.e. the oversupply of Chinese students that drives the expansion of the school choice, and the emotion work required to sustain clients. By capturing multifaceted role of study-abroad educational consultants, I lay out the institutional context of transnational school choice for affluent Chinese families, and how educational consultants facilitate the process and maneuver among American schools and Chinese families.

Author

• Siqi Tu, City University of New York-The Graduate Center