Staying away from the crowds: an analysis of factors influencing Chinese college graduates' decision to study in the Nordic countries

• In Event: Spotlight on International Students: Perspectives from East Asia

Proposal

The number of international students in the Nordic countries has experienced significant growth over the past decades, aligning with the global trend of increased international exchange and cooperation in higher education (Rumbley et al., 2012).The Nordic countries have generally adopted favorable policies to promote international student mobility. Finland has set an ambitious target to triple the number of international students by 2030, while also aiming to retain 75 percent of them. Norway considers attracting international students as a crucial strategy for local internationalization, and Sweden emphasizes the enhancement of international research cooperation by attracting talent from abroad. Chinese students have shown a growing interest in pursuing education in the Nordic countries, with Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway being the main destinations. Eurostat data from 2020 reveals that China is the leading source of international students at the tertiary level in Sweden and Norway, and the third largest in Finland, accounting for 8.4 percent, 6.8 percent, and 7.3 percent of the international student body, respectively (Eurostat, 2020). Despite the emerging trend of student mobility in the China-Nordic region, there is a paucity of existing research on this topic. The Chinese student population studying in the Nordic region deserves more attention and investigation. This study endeavors to elucidate the decision-making process through which Chinese students undertake comparisons and ultimately select the Nordic countries as their preferred destination within the international education market. Furthermore, it seeks to complement existing frameworks that explore the decision-making criteria of international students when choosing their study destination.
Notably, this study focuses on Chinese college graduates who study abroad for graduate programs in Nordic countries, as they constitute the primary cohort of Chinese students traveling to the Nordic countries. The recruitment of interviewees was conducted through acquaintances' recommendations and by posting information about the study in the Nordic Chinese international students group chat. Over 60 students expressed their willingness to participate in the interviews, and 24 of them were selected for semi-structured interviews(Brinkmann, 2018), lasting between 45 to 90 minutes. The data collected from the interviews underwent thematic network analysis(Attride-Stirling, 2001), and this paper proposes a three-stage analytical framework of "Entry-Process-Exit" by organizing the extracted themes according to the chronological order of the study abroad process. Chinese students' final decision to study abroad was influenced by their perceptions of these three stages and their evaluation of their economic and academic capital accumulation. Prior to considering studying abroad, many students faced academic or professional challenges in China, which encouraged them to seek opportunities abroad. However, the Nordic countries were not the initial preference for the majority of respondents. Theories such as imaginative geography(Beech, 2014) were barely reflected here. They only considered Northern Europe as a potential option and went through a long process of narrowing down and eliminating unsuitable options one by one.As a first step, they first ruled out popular study countries such as the UK, US, Australia and Canada, where the cost of studying is high. Two distinct groups emerged in this process. The first group actively sought a unique and rare study abroad experience, distancing themselves from the crowds of Chinese students by avoiding mainstream destinations. For these students from middle-class families, it is not only the "how" but also the "where" that matters in the struggle for social prestige and self-positioning. The second group, with concerns about their working-class background and undergraduate qualifications, opted for continental European countries like Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Asian countries such as Japan and Korea to avoid the fierce competition and high costs of studying abroad. In the second step of their decision-making process, when comparing Nordic countries with other options like Germany, France, and the Netherlands, students did not immediately favor the Nordic region. However, they eventually chose the Nordic countries due to the numerous advantages they offer. Unlike non-English-speaking countries, the Nordic countries don't require students to learn the local language, reducing the time and financial burden of language preparation. Moreover, the Nordic region's two-year master's programs allowed international students more time to adjust and adapt. Despite not having top global rankings, Nordic universities provided cutting-edge and practical English language programs, offering valuable cultural capital to students who had abandoned more popular study abroad destinations. Furthermore, Nordic countries' high welfare standards, gender equality, and comfortable lifestyle were appealing to Chinese students, especially those who had experienced intense work cultures and gender discrimination in their home country. Although immigration prospects were not a primary motivation for students choosing the Nordics at the moment, studying abroad in the region could potentially be the initial step in a longer-term plan for immigration, allowing them to recreate an environment for themselves and integrate into Northern European society in the future.

Authors

• JIALU WANG, Graduate School of Education, Peking University

• Fengyi Lin, Peking University

• wenqin shen, Graduate School of Education, Peking University