Why Do Chinese Students Choose To Study For First Degrees In UK Essay

Why Do Chinese Students Choose To Study For First Degrees In UK Universities - Essay Example Why Do Chinese Students Choose To Study For First Degrees In UK Universities? UK degrees are perceived to have greater career value than those offered in Chinese universities (Agelasto, 2001). Research question Why do Chinese students choose to study for first degrees in UK universities? Background This research study will basically involve the global expansion of Chinese students studying at UK universities. There has been declaration of policies in the UK for the expansion of both the absolute numbers of foreign students and their share of this huge Chinese market. Mainland China has been the largest component of this growth in the UK. Currently, they are by far the largest national group of overseas students in the UK, with numbers increasing by a factor of almost twenty over the ten years from 1994/5 to 2004/5. This study will focus on Chinese undergraduates, for whom the growth in numbers has been particularly marked – from 245 to 20,820 in that ten-year period (Denscombe, 2010). These Chinese students comprise of a major input generally to the UK economy and particularly to the financial health of universities. Strategies for the expansion of the market share will benefit from a vivid understanding of the kind of demand and the customers in the market. There have been no detailed studies assessing the relevance of various factors believed to influence students’ decisions to study abroad. ... foreign students, this study will also contextualize and develop our understanding of the processes which are involved in individuals’ decision-making (Agelasto, 2001). Other information The Chinese students’ decisions to study in the UK however, should be understood based on the relevant conditions in the home country, which will include the various university options available there. This study therefore will also briefly include Chinese students who have opted to study at their local universities, so as to have a whole picture of the involved decision-making process and its theorization. Two broad theoretical positions have been used to account for developments in patterns of educational enrolment and the choices that lie behind them: human capital theory and positional competition theory. The former argues that expansion of demand for education reflects increases in the skill levels demanded by the economy, with increasing components of technical and scientific know ledge that require longer periods of more advanced education and training, precisely the situation in contemporary China, and the basis of the policy of ‘massification’ of higher education. Rates of return on educational investment can be calculated and it is these that motivate social and individual decisions to invest in education (Hechanova-Alampay et al., 2002). Positional competition theory on the other hand, argues that the expansion of educational demand at increasingly higher levels of the system, as currently experienced in China, is the outcome of competition to increase one’s educational standing relative to others. The labor market and education relationship is not one of providing necessary technical skills, but one which is mediated by the use of credentials as a screening device