Preparing to jump: examining Chinese students’ experiences with study abroad agencies

• In Event: Trends of international education in China and Japan

Proposal

Over the past decade, the number of Chinese undergraduate students studying as international students in Universities in the United States has risen fivefold, from around 67,000 students in 2006/2007 to over 350,000 during the 2016/2017 academic year. International students often pay full tuition, boosting revenue for schools. This is especially true from a country that places a heavy emphasis on education like China, where parents often state that their first financial priority is a quality education for their (often) only child.
Studying abroad for many Chinese is a privilege and often quite difficult to navigate the cultural barriers that are a part of the America application process. Thus, as the demand for access to American higher education has risen over the past decade, many agencies have started in major cities in China, offering students the ability to prepare for high stakes testing (ACT, SAT, TOEFL and AP exams, among others), help with the application process and guidance into choosing a university.
However, one of the biggest issues with the study abroad industry is the ethical and moral complexity that comes with working across vastly different cultures. The United States and China have little in common when it comes to educational styles and themes, developing and writing an essay and preparing to live and study in a culture vastly different from one’s home country. Some students have no problem with understanding and adapting to these issues, while others struggle to break old habits. In a competitive, growing industry like study abroad, where end results are university acceptance letters and high test scores, it is not uncommon to drift away from a goal of educating the student, and academic dishonesty and loose academic ethics are not uncommon.
From 2009-2017, I worked at a study abroad agency, helping navigate these issues with students, their parents, American university counselors and our local Chinese owners. Drawing on 15 different interviews with students from Mainland China who studied in the United States, I hope to address what services they used, why they felt these services were necessary, what factors and influences led to choosing those services, and how the students in general worked to navigate the confusing and understudied industry of Chinese study abroad agencies.

Author

• Mark McCormick, East-West Center