Chinese Students in UK Further Education

Examining Aspirations, Motivations and Choices

Rosemary A. Reynolds

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315397245
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Chinese students in the UK have been increasing in number for many years, yet competition from other Western educators and increasing investment in China's own education system has led to concern that UK institutions may soon see a decline in their market share. Dr. Reynolds addresses this issue in Chinese Students in UK Further Education by attempting to understand students' experiences from their perspective. Beginning with an exploration of why these students choose to come and study in the UK, and why they are coming at younger ages, the book goes on to discuss topics such as risk, technology and diversity, in order to understand which factors have the greatest influence on where they choose to study and whether they choose to remain at an institution.

Drawing on data from two different education institutions, providers of GCSE A-level programmes for students aged 16–18 years, Dr. Reynolds attempts to understand what these students experience during their studies, how they manage new social relationships, and whether, upon course completion, they achieved the results they desired at the outset. Moreover, the book aims to ascertain whether the students feel, in hindsight, that the decision to risk investing in UK further education was right and what they might communicate about UK study to contacts in China and elsewhere.

The book examines what further education institutions do well and where they might improve, to help develop Chinese students' educational experiences. As such, it will be essential reading for academics, researchers and postgraduates in the fields of further education, sociology of education, international and intercultural education and mobility studies.

Part I

Setting the context for the study

Chapter 1

Chinese students and globalised education

Globalisation in all its interconnecting forms has provided, and still provides, the forces that underlie student migration from developing countries, such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC), to developed nations for education. Since World War II, our globe’s landmasses have increasingly integrated, through multifarious international agencies and agreements, economic and market integration, technological expansion and advancements bringing transformations in labour markets, movement of peoples and cultural interactions (OECD, 2016a). The principle effect of such global processes on national economies has been to promote demand for knowledge, skills and training, elevating education. Yet as knowledge and skills transferred from developed nations across borders, enabling many developing countries to build and strengthen their own economies and their home education systems, many of these nations have themselves become participants in the competitive global education market for international students. Global flows of student migrants now criss-cross the planet; no longer is traffic one way from east to west, from developing to developed countries. Many students worldwide now aspire to educational ideas and choices unimaginable to their parents and grandparents, and, significantly, students are migrating for overseas study at younger ages. It seems that as global interconnections have accelerated each decade, there has been increasing engagement with risk and reflexivity at the government level, the community and institutional levels and at the individual level (Beck, 1992). Changes and choices are implemented by each, ever more frequently, in contemporary societies, as decisions taken at one level often impact and create change at other levels.

Globalisation’s impact on China and Chinese students has been huge, with many students choosing to migrate overseas at 16 years of age for pre-university education. Here we explore how the changes made at the government level impacted educational institutions and individuals and to understand why, in contemporary society, overseas pre-university education is so attractive to many Chinese families. Starting with the economic imperative to resurrect the country and the changes and choices made by the Chinese government as the country entered a period of reform under new leader Deng Xiaoping illustrates how the need for skills and training elevated education as the essential component in China’s national economic development. China’s exigency for reflexive modernisation, its aspirations to turn the country around economically, motivated the government to make new choices and take new risks, many of which interrelated with the risks and choices of other governments. Discussion then turns to globalised education’s impact from the 1980s on Chinese families, heightening their aspirations and motivations, their choices and risks, as many more began to seek overseas university education and, increasingly, overseas high school for their sons and daughters. Demand for overseas education is increasing for younger pre-university students. Global flows of students are, therefore, discussed. Chinese students are the largest group in the top-four receiving nations of international students. This is unsurprising considering the huge landmass that comprises Mainland China. Excluding Taiwan and its SARs of Hong Kong and Macau, their enormous population amounts to 1,388,324,007 people (WPR, 2017). Hong Kong alone is densely populated with 7,405,589 (WPR, 2017). Yet with China investing heavily in the twenty-first century in its home HE system and with innovative new learning systems driven by social and technological networking, many Chinese students today have diverse educational options. Consequently, competition for Chinese students is now so great worldwide that it is imperative for receiving nations to ensure that students feel welcomed, have no visa difficulties upon entry and receive a satisfying and successful educational experience. Accordingly, much research on Chinese students’ HE experiences overseas has been conducted and debated, yet, curiously, educational researchers have neglected younger students. Considering that burgeoning competition has expedited a global drive by educational institutions to encourage younger students to attend overseas high schools, and then move onto pre-university preparation programmes, this is surprising, for little is known about these young students, whether the risk they take in exchanging countries and educational systems proves beneficial. With this in mind, some scholarly research is explored for academic perspectives on the experiences of Chinese students who study overseas. Effort has been made to explore both university and high school student experiences, but, firstly, let us reflect and consider how China’s growing advocacy of education, driven by globalising processes, motivated increasing numbers of Chinese students to aspire to undertake overseas study.

Education as driver of China’s economic imperative

Chinese students have studied overseas, in small numbers, for over a century, but to appreciate how numbers increased from the 1960s, surged more in the 1980s and proliferated in the twenty-first century requires a brief synopsis of the background of the Chinese economy to understand how education evolved as a critical component of economic development. Quite simply, China had been a strong civilisation for thousands of years followed by two centuries ravaged by war and instability, leading to the last dynasty, the Qing (Manchu’s), collapsing with massive debts in 1911 ( Jacques, 2012). Following this crisis, other massive upheavals impacted China’s stability and economy: the May Fourth Uprising after the First World War’s Treaty of Versailles, attempts to reunite the country in 1928 under Chiang Kai Shek’s Nationalist Party, Japanese invasions in 1931 and in 1937, civil war between the Communists (formed in 1921) and the Kuomintang and, finally, the formation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 formed under Chairman Mao Zedong, leader of the Great Leap Forward of 1958–1960 and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1969), both periods of extreme hardship ( Jacques, 2012). After such immense sufferance, it was paramount upon the death of Mao in 1976 that the new leadership headed by Deng Xiaoping should establish new solid economic foundations, a new direction and a strong turnaround to advance the country, but new ideas and innovations require deep reflexive decision making and risk taking.

To explore the risks and choices taken at the government level from Deng Xiaoping’s reform period, let us, just for a moment, reflect on the 1960s. The Chinese government chose to despatch students and scholars to socialist countries to acquire knowledge, particularly in science, technology and management, to help construct a stronger Chinese economy. Russia was the obvious destination choice, as the USA, having refused to recognise the PRC, embargoed goods to the Mainland and acknowledged Taiwan as the legitimate Chinese government. Yet this changed in 1972 when the capitalist US government decided to approach its communist adversary. This strongly reflexive choice led to President Nixon visiting China, and, with overtures made on both sides, relations between the two ideologically opposed nations softened at a time when the United States and Russia remained entrapped in a bitter Cold War. This reflexive choice, this famous, historical, successful approach to China, gradually boosted Chinese overseas student numbers in developed English-speaking societies; a developing country like China increasingly needed knowledge and skills to promote industrialisation in its vast country.

Chinese student numbers were boosted even further when governments in developed nations, the United States and the United Kingdom, for example, initiated further risks to make their economies more competitive on the global stage. Neo-liberalism and de-regulation policies were adopted in the early 1980s – a time when expansion and advances in technology were rapidly surging. Combined, these elements accelerated contemporary globalisation. By taking a huge risk, by departing from the status quo of the old long-held structures of Keynesian economics, the United Kingdom’s Thatcher and The United States’ Reagan governments took decisions that wrought considerable change, not least to education (Reynolds, 2014). Indeed, education became the critical component of the successive labour government with Prime Minister Tony Blair, prioritising education, particularly HE, when launching the government’s 1999 manifesto (Blair, 23.05.01). With widening participation policies of equity and inclusion being implemented, educational institutions of necessity became more entrepreneurial, with heads and staff in universities and pre-university institutions engaging in reflexive thinking as changes and choices needed to be invoked due to globalisation’s fast-paced affects. Marketing for Chinese students accelerated in Anglophone countries, as this increased institutional income, enriched culture and boosted local economies; these needs dovetailed with China’s needs.

The new Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, risked new pathways after 1978 as China speedily industrialised. With technology increasingly connecting various peoples across time and space, globalisation’s processes were already expanding and changing the world: new international agencies and agreements enhanced world trade; labour-market changes occurred as transnational corporations moved jobs and factories across borders to developing nations such as China: much work was outsourced to lower-paid workers, and the development of knowledge economies in advanced societies occurred (Reynolds, 2014). Industrialising China had abundant human capital, cheap labour to manufacture low-cost parts, thus enabling Chinese commodities to flood world markets, but China’s growth needed many more skills and trained workforces. Education, of necessity then, became the vital element driving China’s economic recovery. Insightfully, Deng Xiaoping made a conscious decision to expand student overseas numbers, encouraging the study of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in a deliberate bid to boost national economic development. Education became one of his Four Modernization strategies and consequently, student numbers studying in developed nations increased further during and after the 1980s, with many encouraged by acquiring government scholarships issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education (MoE), or fee assistance offered to civil servants for adolescents up to 19 years of age (Reynolds, 2014). Yet it was, arguably, the inauguration of the Word Trade Organisation and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in 1995 taking education out of the domestic sphere and making it a global commodity that really escalated international student numbers and particularly Chinese students wanting credentials to gain good jobs in the growing home economy. At this time, the Chinese government also began investing in its own HE system with its MoE launching Project 211 as the way forward for the twenty-first century and aiming to strengthen over 100 education institutions (Brown et al., 2011). From the start of the new millennium, overseas students in advanced nations with established education systems really proliferated. According to statistics from Peking University, in 2008, there were 179,800 Chinese students studying overseas of which 6.3 per cent (11,400) were state funded, 3.8 per cent (6,800) were funded by employers and a massive 89.9 per cent (161,600) were self-funded; by 2010, a total of 284,700 students went overseas (Changjun, 2013:24). That many Chinese families were prepared to risk investing their finances in education abroad in such expanding numbers reveals the depth of parents’ concern for their children’s futures. Changjun (2013:24) argues that students who do not make their top-tier local institution choose overseas study rather than risk being reduced to a second-tier Chinese body. Yet some families clearly do not want to wait for that stage, deciding to finance earlier and send adolescents overseas at age 16 years or even younger, opting out of the Chinese high school examinations altogether.

Interestingly, Peking University statistics show that from 1978–2010, out of a total of 1,905,400 Chinese students who studied overseas, only 632,200 returned (Changjun, 2013:24). Nonetheless, with expanding graduate numbers in China providing knowledge and skills, by 2001, other economic risks executed by Deng Xiaoping had fired up the economy at a rapid pace. In opening Socialist China’s markets to external trade, opening five special economic zones (SEZs) and 14 cities along the south-east coast, Deng Xiaoping encouraged inflow of foreign capital and market mechanisms by enveloping trade liberalisation with membership in the World Trade Organisation, which China had joined in 2001 (Poncet and Zhu, 2003). While these decisions might have appeared high risk, in essence, the risk of failure was low, but such choices do exemplify reflexive planning. In choosing to open trade and SEZs, the premier was able to take advantage of China’s sheer size to test ideas for rejuvenation in a gradual manner in a few areas before implementing on a wider scale (Poncet and Zhu, 2003). Yet while risks taken might have admirably enhanced the economy successfully, behind educational advancement, a further risk constantly lurks. Students choosing to study overseas feel privileged as they make social contacts, gain cultural capital plus linguistic capital by improving their English. For many other Chinese in rural parts of China, they are considerably poorer than those from the south-east and east coasts, and tend to be less in touch with modern technology. Basically, the latest technology and overseas education is not a choice on their life-maps and division and inequality can build resentment when graduates return and take the best jobs, especially in ever increasing numbers.

What we have seen, then, is how as technology interconnects the world and advances globalisation, governments become increasingly reflexive about new pathways: new innovative ways to advance their economies. Deng Xiaoping’s leadership, and, arguably, Thatcher’s, exemplifies the theory of reflexive modernity with risk and wealth society, whereby governments, business organisations, institutions, reflexively reorganise in periods of constant change to create wealth (Beck, 1992). In doing so, they often invoke risk and then attempt to counter the risks by innovatively creating new systems and new knowledge, often creating more risks and leading to more reflexive decision making. The late German sociologist Ulrich Beck (1944–2015) argued that for societies to properly evolve, modernisation must become reflexive, which requires changing relationships – that is, in the field of education, interaction between social structures, such as government policies, educational institutions and social agent: the student (Beck, 1992). High-consequence risks result from increasing globalising processes and from rapid social as well as technological changes, often meaning that consequences of risk cannot be calculated. Governments, institutions and Chinese students and their families have to decide, when trying to colonise the future they desire, whether to take risks and be prepared to keep changing direction to achieve success.

Chinese families: aspirations, motivations and choices

Before China’s opening-up to the world, families had few life choices, particularly educationally. Confucianism, as articulated in the Dao (The Way) or the Analects (Confucian discourses written sixth-to-fifth centuries BC) had long been the ruling ideology of imperial dynasties and education was the preserve of the elite; the rulers, bureaucrats and gentlemen (Green and Janmaat, 2011). With Confucian culture specifying family relationships as the essence of social stability, traditional Chinese families were hierarchical and patriarchal, with children socialised and educated within the home and inculcated with notions of harmonious relationships, filial piety and gendered roles in society (Stockman, 2004). Yet young people in the early twentieth-century were already wanting change. They gradually began breaking away from parental control, making their own decisions and choices about their education, careers and social relationships, perhaps partly incited by new social organisations such as fe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Setting the context for the study
• Part II Narrating students’ stories
• Part III Interpretations
• Conclusion
• Index