Chinese education development: Low quality, social Darwinism drive study-abroad fever

By Qiang Zha, associate professor in the faculty of education at York University in Canada.

Extracts from University World News release

With respect to Chinese higher education, two phenomena have been widely discussed recently.

One is that the age of Chinese students who choose to study abroad is becoming younger.

Most Chinese students went abroad to study in graduate programmes in the 1980s, then in undergraduate programmes from the late 1990s, but now a rising proportion of study-abroad students are in high schools.

It is estimated that high-school students now account for half or even more of Chinese students who choose to study abroad. Understandably, these high-school students make this choice so that their access and transition to Western universities will be easier and smoother.

The other notable phenomenon is the growing call to improve and assure the quality of higher education in China, evident in the emphasis laid in such milestone policy documents as the National Outline for Medium and Long Term Educational Reform and Development (2010-2020)

Check:

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20121002114150786

Povl Tiedemann

October 2012