Snubbed [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

The number of Chinese students going abroad for higher education continues to grow at a rapid rate. As the government continues to widen students' access to its higher education sector, Chinese graduates have quadrupled in six years. And last year, the number of Chinese students and scholars attending foreign universities or research institutes rose 20 percent to 284,700.

But many Chinese students emerge from higher education with limited understanding and experience of wider society. Independent and critical thinking is unfamiliar territory for a majority of Chinese students, hindering their ability to gain a thorough understanding of China's economic, social and political challenges.

The onus is on China's own education system to prepare the next generation of Chinese students for life after learning, but universities in Western societies must also play their part in meeting the needs of Chinese overseas students who face intense competition for employment once they return home.

At present, these needs are largely ignored. Universities in the West must pay more attention to providing the Chinese students they recruit with opportunities to play active roles in an unfamiliar society and gain valuable work experience. This cannot be achieved unless the links between the universities and community are enhanced so that students have more opportunities for voluntary work, for internships and for employment during the period of their academic study abroad.

An emphasis on work experience and internship opportunities has become a prominent issue for Chinese students in some major higher education destination countries. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the new government policy to introduce an international immigration cap will lead to the abolition of the Post-Study Work (PSW) visa, which permitted international graduates from British universities to remain in the UK for a year after graduation.

In the past, a PSW visa-holder was entitled to seek work experience in the UK before returning to his or her home country. There was also a further visa category such as the Tier 1 General Skilled or Work Permit which allowed students to remain in the UK for a longer length of time.

Chinese students are increasingly valuing opportunities for work experience and the new policy, set to come into force in April next year, will reduce the country's appeal to Chinese students by offering fewer opportunities to develop work experience in UK companies and in society after their graduation.

Today, higher education is no longer limited to a small proportion of people in society. Many countries, including China, have ensured better access to university education for young people from remote rural areas and poor families.

Wider access to higher education translates into greater knowledge transfer and skill development for the public good. The development and internationalization of higher education has entered a new era, in which more attention is paid to the quality of higher education and its contribution to the welfare of society in general.

This raises the question of the idea or purpose of a university and its contribution to the public good. There are conflicting answers to this question. However, for us, a university education should not be seen simply as private investment goods with a market return, or even knowledge transfer and skills acquisition.

Instead, it should also be seen as contributing to cultural and social cohesion, to community values and to national and international stability. The potential of such contributions can be seen to have local, national and global dimensions because different types of universities are rooted in different historical, social, political and cultural environments.

However, despite such differences, a question remains for international higher education: how to enhance the educational experience of students and, in so doing, contribute not only to their potential employability but also their potential contribution as citizens?

This modern idea of a university is of international significance. As far as Chinese students are concerned, it cannot be achieved unless there are significant improvements in social volunteering, work experience, internships and other service education opportunities offered to them either in China or abroad.

This requires cooperation between universities and other stakeholders, such as transnational corporations, global supply chain companies, local small and medium-sized enterprises, civil society and NGOs, as well as local and national governments.

Alongside the efforts made by the universities themselves, equally important is government encouragement and policy inducements to stimulate measures leading to collaborations or partnerships between universities and society.

Bin Wu is a senior research fellow at the China Policy Institute, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies of the University of Nottingham in the UK, and W. John Morgan is a senior fellow of the China Policy Institute, UNESCO chair of Political Economy and Education, School of Education of the same university, and chairman of the UK National Commission for UNESCO.

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