Walter Hutchens’ Blog

The U.S. is making efforts to keep large numbers of Chinese and other foreign students coming to the U.S. for graduate education, according to a report from Anthony Kune in Beijing that aired today on the radio show Morning Edition, a popular program in the U.S. produced by National Public Radio (NPR).

NPR’s website captions it thusly:

U.S. Eases Visa Process to Encourage Chinese Students

Morning Edition, November 23, 2006 · For decades, foreign countries have sent their brightest young students to the U.S. for an education. But visa restrictions following the Sept. 11 attacks caused those numbers to decline, beginning in 2003. The U.S. government and American universities are working to bring foreign students back, and the efforts appear to be working.

The segment is mainly about Chinese and other foreign students coming to the U.S., but Kune also mentions that “Maryland University,” Fordham University and other institutions have opened more than 150 educational programs in China.

Peggy Bloomenthal, executive vice president of the non-profit Institute for International Education, opines in the segment that establishing programs in China makes sense because there are vast numbers of Chinese students who won’t come to the U.S. but who “are interested in U.S-style education.”

That’s true, but Kune segues into Bloomenthal’s comments by noting that the cost of going to the US for education is prohibitive for most Chinese and “in response” US institutions are establishing programs in China. It’s true that the cost of going to the U.S. is an obstacle for many Chinese students, but costs actually remain a huge problem when US institutions operate in China.

For instance, our executive MBA costs about US$ 40,000 in China. That’s less than half what we charge in the U.S., and certainly there are many Chinese who can now afford it. However, it remains an eye-popping sum in China. In general, it’s very tough to collect tuition dollars in a low-wage country like China to support educational programs whose costs are substantially affected by US faculty salaries. It is, as I have opined on my website devoted to this topic, precisely the reverse of the typical Asian export model. China has been very successful using low cost labor to produce products for sale in high-wage countries, but how viable will it be to reverse this model and “sell” in China educational products produced with high-cost foreign labor?

There are a couple of obvious alternatives to flying in expensive faculty and trying to bear those costs through RMB tuition payments. One is to seek third-party subsidies. Foundations or governments may wish to support the expansion of foreign educational programs in China. There was certainly a rich tradition of this prior to the establishment of the People’s Republic.

Another alternative is to hire highly-qualified local faculty. There are many hai gui or “returnees,” scholars who have obtained advanced degrees abroad then returned to China. Hiring them may be a more viable approach in terms of costs, and such faculty will be well-positioned to make course content more relevant to Chinese students. However, this approach also carries some risks. Already students getting foreign degrees through programs in China miss out on the full experience of living abroad for that program. They get less chance for immersion in an English-speaking environment and foreign cultural world. If the environment outside and inside of the classroom is “localized,” one wonders how much value the “foreign” credential confers. When foreign programs localize their faculties, there may be some risk that the educational product delivered in China will not be “US-style education” (or European-style, or whatever).

I realize that many Chinese students coming to the U.S. fail to take maximum advantage of living abroad (clinging, outside of class, to Chinese-speaking circles), and I further realize that many professors teaching in US-based programs are in fact Chinese. Thus in some cases the distinction between a U.S. degree obtained in the U.S. and a U.S. degree obtained in China may be slight. But in general, I think one challenge for foreign educational programs in China will be to balance foreign market costs with local Chinese economic realities while maintaining programs that, beyond using a foreign institution’s name, provide an educational experience that is meaningfully distinctive from local, probably less expensive alternatives.

My site Chinese Education Law now has discussion fora (I set them up a couple of days ago), so if anyone is interested in these matters, feel free to post comments there. The NPR audio is available here.