China’s change of heart on studying abroad shows foreign degrees are losing their lustre
Middle-class parents in China long viewed overseas diplomas as the best path to success, so what has changed? And why are overseas students in an ‘increasingly awkward position’?
Middle-class parents in China long viewed overseas diplomas as the best path to success, so what has changed? And why are overseas students in an ‘increasingly awkward position’?
With her son’s future on the line, Shenzhen mother Eva Deng recently made a tough call that she never would have considered a few years ago – to let the 12-year-old, who had been studying at an international school for six years, attend a public junior high school.
Even though the boy had attained English fluency, Deng ultimately abandoned plans of sending him to study in Britain or the United States, and instead set her sights on China’s top universities for majors related to emerging science and technologies. Ideally, she hoped, his studies would focus on artificial intelligence.
This meant that her son would stop learning the national curriculum for England, and instead begin preparations to compete in domestic competitions for programming, maths and science – contests seen as significant for Chinese students to get into top high schools and universities in the country.
The decision by the human resource director in the southern Chinese metropolis reflects a broader shift among China’s middle-class parents who used to regard an overseas education as the best option for their kids.
Driving such a conceptual transition are the intensified geopolitical risks that the world is facing today, coupled with financial concerns, diminishing job options after graduation, and an increasingly nationalistic social atmosphere, according to parents and educational specialists.
“It’s not only my son – some other students in his class have been thinking of switching to public schools, as parents are starting to feel that studying at home [at a Chinese university] might be more advantageous in the future,” Deng said.
“And parents are getting more and more worried about the impact of the international situation, feeling that the relationship between countries all over the world is becoming tenser and tenser.”
The cost of studying abroad keeps soaring ... and it may even be unable to secure an interview opportunity after graduation
US authorities had revoked the visas of international students in at least 32 states roughly three months into US President Donald Trump’s second term, as part of a larger immigration crackdown, NBC News reported last month.
The Trump administration has also pressured Harvard University to give security authorities detailed disciplinary records on its international students as part of a wider push to force elite American colleges into ideological alignment.
Besides such risks, “the cost of studying abroad keeps soaring – spending 600,000 to 700,000 yuan a year can quickly drain a typical middle-class family’s savings, and it may even be unable to secure an interview opportunity after graduation in return,” said Fang Li, a mother from Guangzhou.
With a son studying at an international school and planning to apply to American universities, Fang is among the Chinese parents who are becoming more cautious about finances as their income outlook is clouded by a slowing Chinese economy.
For most upper-middle-class families, “it’s common that most kids won’t be able to earn back the millions of yuan their parents put in”, she said.
“Our generation believed that rising into the middle class meant our kids had to study abroad. But now, young overseas students are in an increasingly awkward position,” she said.
They are facing a future in which employment opportunities for international students in Europe and the US may plunge amid geopolitical influences, while the competitiveness and perceived value of their academic qualifications after returning home are not as good as before, she explained.
Also of concern for Chinese parents in recent years has been a rise in violence and racism towards Asians in Western countries, which worsened during the pandemic and has persisted against the backdrop of policies such as Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.
“We’ve always wanted [our son] to see different cultures and broaden his horizons, but the issues of racial discrimination and cultural clashes have become increasingly difficult to balance,” Deng said.
Unlike years ago, when an overseas diploma was often more valued by Chinese employers than one obtained from an average domestic university, there have been signs of foreign degrees losing popularity in China’s job market.
According to a recent talent-trends report, conducted by Chinese recruitment agency Liepin, more than 70 per cent of Chinese employers reported no demand for overseas talent in the first and second quarters of this year.
Meanwhile, multiple local governments, including those of Guangdong province and Beijing, have announced that overseas returnees would be barred from a special Chinese civil service recruitment programme, known as “targeted selection”, for top-tier university graduates for 2025.
Shifting social sentiment is also underpinning the declining popularity of foreign degrees. Dong Mingzhu, the chairwoman of major home appliance maker Gree Electric, who is known for her strong views about work culture, recently ignited a fierce debate by declaring that her company would avoid hiring executives educated abroad – citing concerns they could be spies – while expressing a strong preference for home-grown talent.
Her remarks, made at an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting late last month, prompted worries among many parents that Dong’s stance could reflect a growing trend among certain companies, and even authorities, where an international education may now be seen as a liability rather than an asset in career advancement.
Besides, “compared with the past generations, China’s post-2000s generation grew up in well-off conditions and has a better sense of national pride, which partly explains why they’re less obsessed with overseas study,” said Chen Zhiwen, an education researcher and member of the Chinese Society of Educational Development Strategy.
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Meanwhile, fewer graduates from China’s top universities are choosing to pursue further studies abroad, according to their reports on graduates.
Peking University said the number of undergraduates pursuing further studies abroad in 2024 dropped by roughly 21 per cent compared with 2019, before the pandemic. Tsinghua University saw a 28 per cent decline in this same figure over the same period of time. And the Beijing Institute of Technology recorded a 50 per cent drop.
The University of Science and Technology of China and Fudan University also reported decreases of 28.57 and 17.7 per cent over the same period, respectively.
Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, a Beijing-based think tank, noted that China’s current study-abroad culture remains largely degree-oriented, which makes it highly susceptible to rapid devaluation as the number of overseas students and returnees grows.
“Coupled with the substantial financial investment required, the value of such credential-driven study abroad is increasingly being questioned,” he said.
However, despite a perceived devaluation of overseas degrees and waning enthusiasm for obtaining them, the overall number of people seeking education abroad has still been increasing in recent years, according to the Chinese Service Centre for Scholarly Exchange under the Ministry of Education.
That rise is being supported by students from working-class families and those opting for Southeast Asia, centre director Wang Daquan said at an education forum in late March.
The proportion of graduates returning from Malaysia and Singapore last year surged by 70.5 per cent and nearly 35 per cent, respectively, due to their relatively high education quality and low living costs, said leading hiring firm Zhaopin.com in an overseas-returnee employment report in February.
It seems that distinguished polytechnic graduates from outstanding domestic universities will have a bright future
Many are also turning to the United Kingdom and Commonwealth jurisdictions amid intense China-US relations, according to several overseas educational consultants in Shanghai.
“A growing number of study-abroad institutions in the city are offering A-level courses, which target the UK, while scrapping advanced placement (AP) curricula, which target the US,” said Baron Wu from a major international education tutoring agency.
The number of Chinese students in the US dropped to the lowest level since 2014 during the 2022-23 academic year, at slightly below 290,000, according to the 2023 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange published by the Institute of International Education.
There was also about an 18 per cent decline in new US student visas – F-1 visas – issued to Chinese nationals in the 2023 school year compared with 2019, according to data from the Bureau of Consular Affairs.
The sharp decline in the US, the top destination for Chinese students, indicates that China’s fervour for studying in the West is fading, said Chen, the education researcher.
“Amid the containment from the US and its allies, China is forced to transfer industries to belt and road countries, which I think will drive a wave of Chinese students to study in those countries, because we need talent during this relocation process,” he said.
However, for Deng, the mother in Shenzhen, the best option for her son seems to be staying in China. To get him into a prestigious Chinese university to study artificial intelligence, she has spent tens of thousands of yuan for the boy to take programming courses this year.
“It seems that distinguished polytechnic graduates from outstanding domestic universities will have a bright future in tune with the strategic needs of the country,” Deng said.