Chinese students abroad getting younger

Edited and translated by People's Daily Online

More and more Chinese parents are sending their children to foreign senior high schools or universities. A couple even wants to send their three-year-old son to a foreign kindergarten. The total number of Chinese people studying abroad from 2011 may reach 350,000, creating a market worth at least 60 billion yuan. Studying abroad has become increasingly popular among Chinese students.

Three-year international education program costs each student more than 200,000 yuan

In recent years, it has become common practice for high schools, including prestigious schools, to open expensive international classes. The tuition for Nanjing Foreign Language School's three-year Cambridge GCE Advanced Level Program alone reaches 200,000 yuan.

The high tuition and expenditure standards cannot stop the enthusiasm of studying abroad. According to reports, about 10 percent of the students of the grade three of the Affiliated High School of the Peking University have chosen to study in overseas universities, about 100 students of the Beijing No.4 High School have applied for overseas universities, and the last international class of the Nanjing Jinling High School recruited 75 new students.

Expecting to widen their horizons and obtain better development opportunities

Why do they choose to study abroad? A questionnaire survey on 43 students of the international department of the Affiliated High School of the Peking University shows 76.7 percent of the students believe that "the educational level of foreign countries is higher" and 81.4 percent of them believe that "studying abroad could widen their horizons and give them better development opportunities."

The survey also shows that 32.6 percent of the students "do not have confidence in China's higher education" and 11.6 percent of them think that "their school records are normal in China and therefore they try to apply for renowned foreign universities to make a change."

In Shenzhen, many families want to send their children to study abroad because they want to emigrate. Zhu, a senior manager of a company living in the Nanshan District, said that the education is a kind of investment, and many people around him are trying to emigrate in this way.

Concern: low-age students have risks studying abroad

Of this upsurge of studying abroad, a significant new change is that the ages of the students are lower. The reporter learned that the annual growth rate of the students going aboard to study from high schools of Shenzhen was more than 20 percent the past two years. In 2011, the rate was probably as high as 40 percent.

Jiang Xueqin said that sending a child to study abroad is a thing without risks, especially for a low-age student. If a child is at a sensitive and unstable age, the child will need a lot of supervisions and cares. In addition, the culture and studying environment of foreign countries are also different from that of China.

Students and their parents should also be careful while choosing an international class. Hou Di, a student of grade two of a high school, once studied in an international class of a school. "The class cooperates with Canadian universities. As long as you pay money, you can enter it. As long as the money is enough, they will send you abroad. However, after that, you will find out things are actually not ideal."