Learning to attract foreign students

China seeking lessons to be one of the top destinations for education

ALTHOUGH the number of foreign students studying on the Chinese mainland has increased steadily in the past eight years, it still falls far behind the number of Chinese students going abroad, a report said.

According to the Annual Report on the Development of Chinese Students Studying Abroad 2013, there were 1.14 million Chinese studying overseas last year. That compares with only 328,000 foreign students in China.

Published on Tuesday by the Centre for China and Globalisation, the report cites a study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) done earlier this year showing that China lags behind 10 developed economies in terms of the number of international students.

The OECD said that China attracted only 1.8% of international university students in 2011.

The United States, the top destination for international students, attracted 17.5%.

Only three universities on the mainland were ranked among the top 200 world-class universities, according to a worldwide university ranking in 2011-12 released by the Times Higher Education.

The report said Chinese universities are less competitive than many of their counterparts in developed economies in terms of faculty, curriculum and student management.

Liu Hong, a professor specialised in talent policies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said the government should provide more subsidies to universities so they can recruit more global talent to improve teaching quality.

Li Siyan, marketing director of Laureate International Universities’ China region, an international higher educational organisation, said: “A lot of foreign students are interested in studying in China to learn not only the Chinese language but also the business culture, as China is an increasingly important economy.”

However, some abandoned the plan after they found that the Chinese educational system is not flexible enough to allow them to choose what and where to study, he said.

But Elena Klorer, a graduate student at the Institute of Sinology in the University of Freiburg of Germany, said China provides abundant opportunities for foreign students to study in China.

She is now in Beijing doing research for her master’s thesis.

The book also suggests China reform its government scholarship program, which banned recipients from taking part-time jobs or living off campus. — China Daily