The Road
On the move
Student mobility in China and why it matters:
A panel discussion from QS China Summit 2024.
By Afifah Darke
“There’s a lot of misinformation or misunderstanding of what it's like to be in China… It's very hard to explain to people without them coming to see [physically].”
Student mobility is a critical factor in fostering global understanding, cultural exchange and innovation. With China's higher education landscape expanding and gaining global recognition, exploring the transformative power of student mobility becomes even more imperative. During the QS China Summit 2024 in April, a panel of experts delve into the multifaceted benefits of student mobility, highlighting its role in enhancing institutional partnerships, and shaping a more interconnected society.
Immersive engagement comes up often as a topic during the discussion, and as a key factor needed to encourage a globally connected community within the higher ed sector. Joanna Waley-Cohen, Provost of New York University (NYU) Shanghai says it's not enough for students to “just go somewhere and take a course somewhere else”. She emphasises: “You need to go for a reasonable period of time, hopefully at least a semester and preferably a year; you need to immerse yourself in the local culture to try to learn its language.
“All too often we see students, and this is as true for outgoing students from China as incoming students from other countries to China, that they spend time with their own kind of fellow country people, and they don't make the effort [to immerse themselves in the local culture].”
China has shown efforts in creating partnerships with countries like the US to create such experiences, Waley-Cohen mentions. In February this year, China launched an initiative inviting 50,000 American students on exchange and study programmes throughout a duration of five years, aiming for a deeper relationship and understanding of each other cultures. “There’s a lot of misinformation or misunderstanding of what it's like to be in China… It's very hard to explain to people without them coming to see [physically].”
Agreeing with Waley-Cohen’s sentiments, Joshua Gabriel, Senior Programme Lead for Culture and Education, British Council China points out how China’s universities have progressed well in forming partnerships encouraging student mobility, especially given the post-pandemic era. He points out, however, that it is just as important for other countries to reciprocate. “There's 400 million Chinese people studying English. The question is how many people are studying Chinese?” In countries like Rwanda, United Arab Emirates and Nepal, learning Mandarin has gained prominence as business partnerships between the countries develop and strengthen. “It's really important that people do come to China [to] experience the culture, to form the next generation of people who will do business and communicate better than this generation,” Gabriel says. In 2013, the British Council launched Generation UK to help young UK nationals “increase their employability, enhance their long-term job prospects, and develop a global mind-set through study and work experience opportunities in China”, according to its website. Since the launch, more than 67,000 young people from the UK have participated in study, internship and teaching programmes across China, through both British Council programmes and wider initiatives.
However, navigating the application process in China can be challenging for prospective inbound students as they navigate the seemingly complex visa and immigration procedures. The information provided by universities in China can seem “quite scattered” and not as in-sync compared to the more traditional study destinations like the UK or US, according to Jeremy Nguyen-Phuong, CEO and Co-Founder of Udentity, an education technology platform which supports schools with digital and international recruitment. On the flipside of the coin, when university partners outside of China look to recruit and engage with Chinese students, it is integral to understand the cultural differences between countries. Nguyen-Phuong uses Vietnam as an example. “In China, you will often speak to the parents when it comes to engaging with them about their child's higher education journey,” he says, but in Vietnam, the universities will directly interact with the students, because oftentimes the parents may not have had any exposure to studying overseas. This exemplifies just one of the many crucial cultural considerations that universities must acknowledge when formulating their recruitment strategies for China.
At the end of the discussion, when asked about virtual mobility by an audience member, Dr Ni Ai, Deputy Director of the Office of Global Engagement at Zhejiang University, affirms that there were benefits to such learning methods. “The undeniable benefit with virtual mobility now is [that it’s] cheap. You don't need to go travel 1,000 miles to another completely different unknown county, to learn something.” Nguyen-Phuong also believes the virtual component of administrative processes has aided the university search process for prospective students. “Oftentimes, a lot of admissions officers prefer the old method of visiting in China.… But when it comes to one person visiting three cities in China, there are so many provinces and cities,” he points out.
While the panellists agree, Gabriel says that from his conversations with students, it was clear that the in-person experience of any educational journey is vastly different from the online experience. Online education has a place in a certain market, he suggests, pointing out to programmes like micro-credential courses. “But I don't think it can replace in-person education for those reasons that you can't experience the culture and the experience in the same way as if you actually travelled to a country.”