MILLIONS of Chinese have dreamed of attending Harvard University. “Harvard Girl”, a how-to manual published in 2000 by the parents of one successful applicant, was a national bestseller. Georgia Institute of Technology, a prestigious university in Atlanta, has enjoyed less name-recognition. Yet this is fast changing: the number of Chinese applicants to Georgia Tech has surged, from 33 in 2007 to 2,309 last year. Some applicants are from the best schools in China, and all are ready to pay around $44,000 (for yearly fees and housing costs)—the equivalent of nearly ten times the average annual disposable income of urban households.
The ambitions of Chinese students are shifting: no longer are they attracted just by the glittering names. Pursuit of education abroad is becoming an end in itself. Universities far less renowned than Georgia Tech are reaping the benefits. More than 800,000 Chinese went abroad to study at all levels in 2012 and 2013. In those two years they made up more than a quarter of the 3m who had done so since China began opening to the outside world in 1978. At the end of 2013 nearly 1.1m Chinese were studying abroad, according to the...Continue reading
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