Research on Demand for International Higher Education for Chinese High School Students

• In Event: International student pathways, roles, and outcomes

Proposal

As the top resource market sending international students to every corner of the world, China has also witnessed an exponential increase in the number of ‘returnees’ going back to China’s job market. The purpose of this research is to explore the real reasons for demands and motivations of studying overseas of high school students in recent years in Mainland China. The study focused on the following questions: What is the motivation for the prevailing preference of overseas higher education to the domestic? Besides financial factors, what are the social and cultural elements leading to the choice of international education? Thirdly，how do people choose their target countries and universities? Is there any blind or irrational demand for studying overseas?
This study reconstructs the theoretical framework over individuals’ need for studying abroad based on the combination of the Theory of Consumer Behavior, College Choice Theory and Push- Pull Theory. A mixed method integrating quantitative and qualitative is adopted, in which data is collected by a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews. Field study has been done in 27 public high schools and 1 Sino-foreign cooperative college in 15 cities in China, with a sample of over 2500 questionnaires from the students in international department. At the same time, comparative data have also been collected from a smaller number of students from the regular classes of the same schools. The statistics collected are processed and analyzed through the software of SPSS. Moreover, more than 140 interviews with students, teachers, administrative staff, parents, overseas students and counselors of study abroad agencies have been done, time of which totaling over 100 hours.
This study finds that: 1) high school students in China show strong intention in studying abroad in a quite early stage; 2) the overseas higher education satisfies the diversified needs in China’s society, and while people have become more rational in their expectations towards the financial benefits, they still keep high expectations to the consumptional benefits; 3) the high school students’ demand for studying abroad is stimulated by multiple factors including the promotion of international education, the disparity of the higher education between China and other countries, and the difference in talent selection and training mode.;4.)Marketing strategies of overseas universities also play a part. 5) Chinese nationality characters play vital roles in the shaping of the motivation of studying abroad. 6) financial factors have minor influence on whether one is motivated to learn abroad but directly decide their target places. Countries and universities with lower tuition fee and living cost are preferred; 7) quality of overseas higher education is the most important factors that the students taken into account when choosing the destination, and the social prestige of the colleges takes the second place (including evaluation in the job market, anticipated income, career prospects and the social recognition); besides, the impact of the marketing elements such as sales strategies and cooperative activities also should not be overlooked.
The study also finds that, high school students’ demand for overseas study is somehow out of blindness and irrationality. People make their decisions to study abroad without precise and sufficient information of overseas higher education, and comprehensive knowledge about the students’ interests, abilities and intelligence.

Author

• Qun Kuang, Shanghai University