Chinese Undergraduate Students' College Choices of Canada and the U.S.A. as a Strategy for Social Mobility

Download or read book Chinese Undergraduate Students' College Choices of Canada and the U.S.A. as a Strategy for Social Mobility written by Anke Li and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students from Mainland China are the largest international group in both United States and Canada, and their numbers have grown substantially. The influx of Chinese students has contributed to American and Canadian higher education institutions academically, financially, and culturally. However, due to rapid changes of social, cultural and political contexts in both home and host countries, new patterns of student mobility arise. Especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, higher education institutions in US and Canada need to understand international students' needs and prepare better to attract and serve international students. My dissertation employed interviews to explore in-depth perspectives from students within the tradition of qualitative research. I conducted in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 55 Chinese undergraduate students, 21 of them at Cheer University in the US and 34 of them at Tree University in Canada. My study shows that Chinese students' college choices were mainly influenced by push factors - by Gaokao and by the type of secondary education that developed in China under Gaokao. In addition, studying abroad was not only about knowledge or degree. It was also about with experiences, such as broadened views and skills. In this sense, middle-class families invested not only in knowledge and degrees, but also in the experiences of living abroad. Parents and their children strongly believed that the entire process is to their advantage in the future when they are compared to people who did not study abroad. Recommendations are made for both universities and future young Chinese people who want to study abroad.