Overseas student struggles
After girl’s suicide experts, young people explain of challenges of studying abroad
Liu Weiwei, a 20- year- old Chinese student at the University of California, Santa Barbara ( UCSB), was found dead in her dorm room on February 12, UCSB newspaper the Daily Nexus reported on February 14.
Local police said Liu’s death appeared to be a suicide and the case is still under investigation.
Liu came from South China’s Guangdong Province. She was a sophomore student majoring in German, according to the Daily Nexus.
Liu’s mother Chen Guiping told the newspaper that before Liu passed away, she called her grandparents and wished them a happy Lantern Festival, which fell on February 11.
Chen said she had just visited Liu a week before and they celebrated the Spring Festival holidays together. “We were very happy. I don’t understand why this happened,” Chen noted.
Liu’s father, Liu Chaohui, who says he has always held the traditional Chinese belief that “a daughter is the reincarnation of their father’s lover in his last life,” said that he was the saddest person in the world this Valentine’s Day as he had lost his beloved daughter, Daily Nexus reported.
Liu’s death came about one month after Zhang Hai, a 24- year- old Chi- nese student, jumped from the top of his dorm building at the Rotterdam Business School, the Netherlands, on January 16, 2016.
The Global Times previously learned from local police that Zhang had been depressed since the school delayed his graduation. The Dutch education ministry and the school are still investigating the case.
Taboo help
China’s Ministry of Education launched training programs in 34 cities between May and June 2016 for students who were going to study abroad. Over 38,000 young people participated in the programs and received training about how to be safe and adjust to life in a foreign country, the ministry said on its website.
The ministry started the program in 2009 and says it has trained 200,000 people.
Many Chinese students suffer from difficulties and face failures when they go abroad, Zhang Weiyong, a Beijing- based expert in overseas education, told the Global Times on Monday.
Zhang explained that students are encouraged to speak up and debate in classes in the West and their performance in these activities accounts for a significant part of their results, a big change for Chinese students who are used to courses in which a single final exam counts for the vast majority of their overall mark.
“They also do not know how to get along with and ask for help from teachers and classmates when they have psychological problems, not to mention attending counseling, which is usually viewed as a sign of ‘ getting mentally sick’ in China,” Zhang said.
“Furthermore,” Zhang added that “in pursuit of a place at elite schools, some Chinese students – by cheating, donating cash or other measures – enter schools whose requirements they cannot really meet, putting them under pressure from the start.”
Pittsburgh- based overseas education institute WholeRen Education revealed in a report in May 2015 that as many as 80.6 percent of the 1,657 Chinese students who were dismissed from US colleges in 2013, 2014 and 2015 were expelled for academic dishonesty or low academic scores – 51.3 percent of them achieved a GPA below 2.0.
Younger demographic
There were 1.26 million Chinese students studying overseas in 2015, account- ing for 25 percent of the world’s international students, the People’s Daily reported in December 2016.
While that number grows, the average age of Chinese overseas students is dropping.
The number of Chinese high school students studying in the US continues to grow at a double- digit rate and accounted for 52 percent of Chinese students in the US in 2015. Meanwhile, the proportion of graduate students decreased to 42 percent of the total in that year, down from 80 percent in 2005, Xinhua reported.
“To live abroad at a young age means more challenges, for example, in dealing with others and taking care of themselves, as most Chinese children depend totally on their parents before university,” Zhang said.
“However, it depends on their personal character and adaptive abilities,” Zhang noted, stressing that as the number of Chinese overseas students increases, foreign schools and teachers are looking to adapt to their new students.
Qiao Li, a 24- year- old Chinese student who studied in London in 2015, told the Global Times on Monday that she felt sad sometimes when “white students hung out together” and didn’t invite Chinese students.
“But, eventually, I learned that there is no need to ‘ try to’ blend in. Just take it easy and friendship will follow after comfortable chatting,” Qiao said.