In 1995, the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing had 41 international students. In 2004, UIBE had around 1,000 international students and in one year this rose to 1,500 in 2005. The university now has 2,900 international students and rising.
China is booming as an international education destination, and UIBE’s director of international student accommodation, Zheng Shu Qi, is a well placed observer. His employer is now ranked 3rd for international students throughout China. He attributes China’s rise in appeal to a mature education system, very few entry requirements in Mandarin and teachers fluent in English. Of course, China’s role as a global superpower is another incentive to students.
And China also has a great scholarship policy for foreign students. In 2009, China’s Ministry of Education offered Chinese Government Scholarships to 174 countries: 18,245 foreign students were admitted, making up 8% of the total number of international students, which numbered 238,184 (source: Ministry of Education).
And Zheng interestingly lists other methods of attracting students that are employed such as free taster sessions and short term summer camps for foreigners currently in China as also helping to boost uptake.
I spoke with various international students over here to find out what prompted them to consider studying in China. Tonje Kjellevold, 22, is from Norway and studies at Oslo University, but she is studying Chinese which entails a mandatory six months stay at Peking University.
There are of course more unique ways to choose a university. Luuk Hoefsloot, a 21 year old Dutchman who originally came to China as a teacher, now finds himself a student of Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU). “In a bar in Ho Chi Minh city, I ended up talking to a bunch of people who just finished studying in Beijing for a year, at different universities. They all recommended BLCU as offering the best price to quality ratio. Another plus was that it was still possible to apply, while a few other universities had already closed their application process,” he explains.
“I chose China because I want to learn the language, and I believe it’s so much easier to learn a language when you’re surrounded by it”
Gitte Hovgaard is a Danish girl motivated by a desire to learn Mandarin and discover an unknown part of the world for her. She intends to study Mandarin at Yunnan University in Kunming. “I chose China because I want to learn the language, and I believe it’s so much easier to learn a language when you’re surrounded by it,” she says. “But I chose Yunnan because I’ve heard it’s very beautiful, and because of the many ethnic groups, it just sounds interesting and different from where I am now or how I could study in Denmark.”
For Kjellevold, a point of difference about studying in China is the set-up of its educational system so that all study – and even attendance – can count towards a final grade. She explains, ‘In Norway, our exams are 100% of our grade. In China, the grade is not only the exams, but also how you perform in class, how often you come to class and how well you do in the weekly tests, so you need to be on top of your work all the time.”
Cities outside of Beijing may benefit from seeming “undiscovered”, but this also means less of an infrastructure for international students. It took Beijing’s UIBE 16 years to go from 41 international students to 2,900; compare this with Yunnan University which currently has 800 international students on its campus. And in Beijing’s 70 universities and institutions, there are 25 universities offering courses for international students, compared with just 4 of 17 in Kunming, China’s 16th biggest city. Similarly, China’s fifth biggest city, Shenzhen has seven major universities, only one of which offers courses for international students.
This of course means significant room for growth, which China is reported to be keen on. Some institutions are noticeably stepping up their efforts: Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) – which is the only university in this vast country which has as its main aim the teaching of Chinese to foreigners – has set up branch schools in Korea, Singapore and Thailand, and launched joint undergraduate and postgraduate programs with universities in Japan, Korea, Thailand, the UK and the USA in recent years.
And one of the real stories of the last decade has been the rise of collaborative programmes and campuses launched in China, attracting international students as well as Chinese students to study a Western-style syllabus in China. More than 1200 Sino-foreign joint institutions and programmes had been established by 2010. Sino-foreign joint programmes are also known as ‘split-campus programmes’ usually in the form of 2+2 or 1+3 years study. Thirty Sino-foreign joint institutions had passed the evaluation by the Chinese ministry of education by July 2010, according to Changjun Yue of Peking University, who presented a seminar on this topic to Unesco’s Education Research Network in Asia-Pacific.
Thirty Sino-foreign joint institutions had passed the evaluation by the Chinese ministry of education by July 2010
University of Nottingham Ningbo (UNN) is the first independent Sino-foreign University in China with approval from the Chinese Ministry of Education. It is run by The University of Nottingham UK with cooperation from Zhejiang Wanli Education Group- University. It welcomes more than 160 international students from different countries.
Co-owned campuses in China are growing while at policy level in many countries worldwide, efforts to promote Mandarin study is taking seed. In 2008, a GCSE in Chinese was offered for young students in the UK and this trend continues throughout the world. Sweden’s Progress Party recently stated its intention to teach Mandarin at primary school levels. Admittedly, Jan Bjoerklund, the head of the party stated that this change may take 15 years but the more telling statement was that “Chinese will be much more important from an economic point of view than French or Spanish”.
And it is just over a year since the United States started the ‘100,000 strong initiative’ whereby America sought to improve on the statistic that 10 times more Chinese study in the USA than the other way around. With a push from the likes of the USA to send students to China (even getting will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas involved at an upcoming concert to promote Americans studying in China), an upward trajectory for China’s foreign student intake seems assured.
They regularly invite overseas experts to UIBE to get opinions on how to improve and develop their international infrastructure
Du Pei Yuan, Head of International Recruitment at UIBE, states that they regularly invite overseas experts to UIBE to get opinions on how to improve and develop their international infrastructure. They also work with schools and education agencies around the world to promote their programmes overseas. “China is becoming more and more internationalised in regard to economics, language and culture and this only brings more and more students to China,” he says. “UIBE is trying to learn the key developmental points of international and Chinese universities alike whilst organising good classes for international students to meet their needs.”
