The story appears on

Page A6

March 26, 2015

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Feature » News Feature

Students studying abroad long for home

DANIEL Li, 24, has already booked a flight ticket back to Shanghai, his hometown, for the upcoming summer vacation. The doctoral student in biology engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says he comes home whenever he has a holiday because he misses it, even after studying in the United States the past six years.

“I will definitely live in China after obtaining my doctorate,” he tells Shanghai Daily through telephone. “No matter how great the opportunity is going to be if I stay here in the States, this is not my home. I miss my family, friends and the surroundings I grew up with. I miss the taste of chicken soup that I can only find in China.”

Li is among a rising percentage of students who study abroad and then choose to return to China once they have got their degrees.

According to a report by the Ministry of Education last week, more than 15,600 Shanghai students went abroad to study last year, an increase of almost 50 percent from previous years. Nationwide, 469,800 Chinese students went abroad to study last year, up 11 percent from 2013. Of those, 364,800 returned to China.

In 1978, former leader Deng Xiaoping decided to send more Chinese students to study abroad after hearing a report from Tsinghua University on how it would benefit the country. By 1981 a policy was introduced allowing people to study abroad at their own expense, which boosted demand significantly.

According to People’s Daily, a total of 1.21 million Chinese went to study abroad from 1978 to 2007. Of those, 319,700 returned to China, compared with 364,800 last year alone.

Xu Xiaoping, an education expert, says in the past studying abroad was really only an option for elite students dispatched by a company or school, or the country. “But now everyone can do this,” he says.

Li was the top student in his high school class in Shanghai. He could have enrolled at a first-tier university in China but he chose to go to the US.

“As for biology engineering, America has the best equipment, best professors and the most interesting topics,” he says.

Although he knows he wants to be back in Shanghai, he admits to being somewhat torn about leaving the US.

“Here I have lots of research funds and I am afraid it won’t happen when I am back to Shanghai,” Li says.

Born in a well-to-do family, Li admits life in America is somehow harder than what it was in Shanghai. Every day he goes to his laboratory and then returns to his small apartment. He has little entertainment.

“Sometimes I feel lonely and have lots of pressure. I pick up the phone and then realize all my dearest friends who are on the other side of the earth are sleeping,” he says.

Chris Xu, 35, has just established a private fund company in Shanghai after returning from the United Kingdom last year. Before he was a banker in London after graduating from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

“No matter how good you are, the glass ceiling is always there,” he says.

He sees China as a booming market with numerous opportunities, and with his experience in financing he believes he has a bright future here.

Simon Wang, a law school graduate of Germany’s Heidelberg University, understands the desire to return home.

“The first thing that you have to think about when finishing studying abroad is your parents,” he says. “After all the support for all those years, it’s good to spend time with them and look after them.”

Meanwhile, students who study abroad say it is becoming more difficult to get work visas or extend the term of validity to land a job in foreign countries due to the rise in overseas students.

Sarah Chan, a postgraduate from University of Surrey, says: “In the UK, if you are a non-European citizen, you need to earn a salary of 22,000 pounds (US$32,700) annually to apply for a work visa. It also needs to be at least a supervisory-level job and there are many other requirements.”

Chan spent several months looking for a job in England and says that even when an interview goes smoothly, as soon as the subject of a work visa comes up it’s “the end of the story.”

Other Chinese students are now studying abroad as sort of an “extended vacation,” especially for those from wealthy families.

Driving a Mercedes-Benz and living in a fancy penthouse in downtown London was Queenie Ye’s life while studying abroad.

Ye, 23, went to England after doing poorly at school in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Her family spent nearly 500,000 yuan (US$81,300) to an agency that helps students find a school abroad. She finally received an offer from an art college in London.

Ye has returned with a bachelor’s degree in luxury marketing, which her family is happy to boast about.

But after four years in London, her English remains poor and she knows almost nothing about marketing. On the bright side, she has returned with heaps of luxury clothes, handbags and accessories.

According to the Ministry of Education, of last year’s more than 360,000 returning overseas students, the ministry only recognized 136,000 degrees.

Wu Xiaoran, who works for an agency specializing in helping students get enrolled at universities and colleges in London, says students like Ye aren’t really that serious about their studies.

“They usually study one of the arts instead of science,” Wu says. “That way they can hire ghost writers to finish their thesis and get the degrees.”




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend