Research On Demand For International Higher Education For Chinese Higher School Students

As the top resource market sending international students to every corner of the world,China has also witnessed an exponential increase in the number of ‘returnees' going back to China's job market.When the large supply of job applicants with international education background find their average financial reward greatly reduced in the job market,successive demand for studying abroad never fades.Therefore,the underlying causes of the international education fever need to be explained.What is the motivation for the prevailing preference of overseas higher education to the domestic? Besides financial factors,what are the social and cultural elements leading to the choice of international education? Thirdly,how do people choose their target countries and universities? Is there any blind or irrational demand for studying overseas?This study considers the demand for overseas higher education as a dynamic and continuous process.It reconstructs the theoretical framework over individuals' need for studying abroad based on the combination of the Theory of Consumer Behavior,College Choice Theory and Push-Pull Theory.Also,the researcher establishes a new system of influential index factors after sorting out those found in a broad range of literature review and preliminary tests,based on which the research tool probing into the motivation and the underlying elements of people's decisions on overseas education is developed.A mixed method integrating quantitative and qualitative is adopted,in which data is collected by a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews.Field study has been done in 27 public high schools and 1 Sino-foreign cooperative college in 15 cities in China,with a sample of over 2500 questionnaires from the students in international department.At the same time,comparative data have also been collected from a smaller number of students from the regular classes of the same schools.The statistics collected are processed and analyzed through the software of SPSS.Moreover,More than 140 interviews with students,teachers,administrative staff,parents,overseas students and counselors of study abroad agencies have been done,time of which totaling over 100 hours.This study finds that: 1)high school students in China show strong intention in studying abroad in a quite early stage.The rapid development of international education in high schools not only promotes active demand for international higher education,but also stimulates passive demand;2)the overseas higher education satisfies the diversified needs in China's society,and while people have become more rational in their expections towards the investmental benefits,they still keep high expectations to the consumptional benefits;3)the high school students' demand for studying abroad is stimulated by multiple factors including the promotion of international education,the disparity of the higher education between China and other countries,and the difference in talent selection and training mode.Marketing strategies of overseas universities also play a part.For students,the intense desire for self-improvement and self-fulfillment results in the strong inner driving force.4)Chinese nationality characters plays vital roles in the shaping of the motivation of studying abroad,in which the root culture,filial piety and face culture take the first priority.5)financial factors have minor influence on whether or not one is motivated to learn abroad but directly decide their target places.Countries and universities with lower tuition fee and living cost are preferred;6)major obstacles lie in security concerns of the target place,affective bonds with the homeland and deficiency in the inter-cultural communication skills;7)quality of overseas higher education is the most important factors that the students taken into account when choosing the destination,and the social prestige of the colleges takes the second place(including evaluation in the job market,anticipated income,career prospects and the social recognition);besides,the impact of the marketing elements such as sales strategies and cooperative activities also should not be overlooked.The study also finds that,high school students' demand for overseas study is somehow out of blindness and irrationality.People make their decisions to study abroad without precise and sufficient information of overseas higher education,and comprehensive knowledge about the students' interests,abilities and intelligence.People just follow suit without a clear and organized study plan.Besides,they put too much emphasis on the ranking list of the colleges and majors.The blindness in their education choice should be ascribed to the asymmetric information and the sociocognitive bias.Students are strongly desired but often fail to get and to utilize reliable information;therefore they are left vulnerable to the impact exerted by social and cultural elements.Thus,they may underestimate the risk they take and make a wrong decision over the affairs of studying abroad.The study maintains that,the demand for overseas higher education will demonstrate a sustainable growth,and at the same time,the proportion of the students who come back to China after graduation will also become larger.With the upgrade of the consumption structure,the choice of studying abroad will gradually transfer from an investment behavior to an consumption behavior.People's attention will swift from the professional career change to the self-improvement.Hence,it is of tremendous importance to construct a rational system with the joint effort of the government,social media,school and family,to minimize the risk and optimize the experience of studying abroad.Limited by time,energy and financial constraints,the study still shows some deficiencies,such as the uneven distribution of samples and insufficient statistics from the ones who choose domestic higher education.Individual factors of samples may also have influence on the result,which can be refined in further research.