The visible hand behind study-abroad waves: cram schools, organizational framing and the international mobility of Chinese students

• In Event: Student mobility

Proposal

International student mobility is an essential component of higher education internationalization (Knight 2004; Li and Bray 2007). Much ink has been spilt on how and why students choose to study abroad. Early studies often adopt a push/pull model. Borrowing from migration studies, the push/pull model focuses on macro-level characteristics, such as the academic superiority and economic structure of host countries and the political predicament of home countries (e.g., McMahon 1992; Altbach 1998). Recent studies, however, pay closer attention to micro-level student characteristics, such as students’ motivations and their decision-making processes (e.g., Li and Bray 2007; Bodycott 2009). Some scholars also notice the necessity to synthesize macro- and micro-level perspectives (e.g., Park 2009; Kondakci 2011).

The drastic historical change in Chinese students’ international mobility provides an ideal case. From the founding of communist China in 1949 to the late 1970s, Chinese students did not participate in overseas higher education except for attending Soviet colleges for a short period in the 1950s. All this changed after Deng Xiaoping’s reform began. The study-abroad waves, also known as “study-abroad fever” (Qian 1996, 40; Zhao 2001), took off in the early 1980s. In four decades, China has developed into the world’s largest source of international students. In 2016, there were 300 thousand Chinese students studying in other countries, making up 31% of the world’s total international students (Institute of International Education 2016). When researching Chinese students’ studying-abroad waves of the last four decades, scholars have emphasized macro-level factors, micro-level factors, their synthesis and interactions (e.g., Fang and Wang 2014; Cheng et al. 2017).

Despite their increased comprehensiveness, extant literature on study-abroad activities of China and elsewhere depicts students’ motivation and intentions as spontaneous and intrinsic, rather than social constructs that can be shaped or created by external forces, such as organizations. Furthermore, although some studies start to notice the interactions between macro- and micro-level factors, these and other extant literature still treat students’ motivations and push/pull factors as independent. In other words, they neglect to consider that students’ motivations can be a function of how students understand push/pull factors. The role of organizations in shaping students’ understanding of push/pull factors is also not yet explored.

This paper adds an organizational dimension to the studies of international student mobility. I focus on China’s cram schools that help students prepare studying-abroad-oriented tests, such as TOEFL, GRE, IELTS and SAT . Cram schools are the backbones of China’s education and training industry, the world’s largest for-profit education industry that annually trains nearly one-tenth of China’s huge population and generates a total revenue of over 180 billion USD (Deloitte 2015). I draw on interview, archival and observation data on four leading cram schools. My focus is on their organizational framing that provides meaning to the study-abroad and test-preparation processes. I argue that cram schools not only coach students on test-preparation and provide information regarding “how to study abroad”, but they also adopt organizational framing to instill in students “why to study abroad”.

Leading cram schools have played an integral role in promoting certain organizational framing to be the dominant of a given niche market in a given era. During the 1990s when the TOEFL/GRE niche market was rapidly expanding, a Beijing-based cram school called Supernova rose to be a national market leader, promoting its organizational framing—framing study-abroad with self-help and nationalist discourse—to be the dominant approach of this niche. Self-help discourse frames studying abroad and preparing TOEFL/GRE as going beyond one’s limit and making one life complete. Framed this way, these processes constitute ends of students’ lives rather than mere means for attaining other goals. Nationalist discourse depicts overseas study as a detour to build a stronger China after learning from the West. After 2000, however, new organizational framing picked up momentum in the new niche markets of IELTS and SAT. Targeting urban middle-class consumers, cram schools in these new niche markets increasingly framed studying abroad as a springboard for immigration, a channel for becoming global elites and an opportunity for status improvement for the entire family.

China’s study-abroad waves are indeed shaped by the invisible hand of demand and supply, but organizations also act as visible hand in pushing the waves ever-higher. Organizations and their framing are indispensible for turning hesitant students into avid participants of transnational higher education. I discuss the research and policy implications of this paper at the end.

Author

• Le Lin, University of Hawaii