Overseas education seen as less stressful
Print Edition
Chinese students form the largest overseas group at US universities and their numbers are rising as families spend a fortune in their quest for an American education to pry open the door to career and social success.
For some parents, overseas education is also seen as a way to avoid China’s fiercely competitive national college entrance exam known as the “gaokao,” which is taken by millions of teenagers who see it as a make-or-break way to get ahead.
“We don’t know if it’s right or wrong,” said Zhao, a mother from Beijing, who wanted to be identified only by her surname. “We just feel it’s better to get an education in the United States than in China.”
The stress to get into university in China is severe but tighter job prospects for hordes of graduates are also causing anxiety as the world’s second-largest economy slows.
Nearly 7 million Chinese graduated from university this year — a new record and a jump of 190,000 from last year. This has stepped up employment pressure, education authorities say.
To pursue his dream of going to a US university, Li Shiyuan, 17, quit high school in May.
His parents had given him three options — stay in his home province of Shandong, where the college entrance exams are very competitive, move to Tianjin, which has one of China’s highest acceptance rates for key universities, or study abroad. He began in Beijing, by attending three courses to train for tests required by US universities, including the SAT and the TOEFL English-language test.
This month, he sat for the SAT exam for the second time in Hong Kong in an effort to better his previous scores.
“It’s much better than in high school, where teachers put too much pressure on us,” Li said.
His training for the exams has cost 100,000 yuan (US$16,400), almost five times the annual disposable income of the average Chinese city-dweller.
“As long as the family can afford it, I would like my child to go abroad for university to learn some real stuff,” said his father Li Xuezong, who accompanied his son to Hong Kong.
Nearly 200,000 Chinese students were at US universities in the 2011/12 academic year, almost double the number from India, the second-largest group of overseas students, the US-based Institute of International Education says.
While most Chinese study at graduate level, the 2011/12 academic year saw a surge of nearly a third in undergraduates from China, to about 75,000, institute data shows.
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