China now a global education magnet

Updated on: Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The world goes to China to entice its young to their colleges. As in India, there too, higher education fairs, road shows and special admission campaigns drive thousands to pick brochures that give a peek into life on a campus in the West. Suddenly last year, China moved to a different level, leaving India lumbering ranks below. China joined the big league becoming one of the top six nations to host international students on its land.

South Korea continued to send the maximum number of students (27.1%) to China, but the surprise entrant, a close second was the US. When this decade opened, China was not on any student’s radar; now, most are studying humanities, followed by medicine. But fresh data put together by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that there are as many international students in China as there are in Australia or in Germany, pulling our neighbour right up on the chart.

It sits there in the company of giants like the United States, the United Kingdom and France, three nations that now capture 40% of the international student market which is growing at a feverish pace. Since 2000, the number of students leaving home in the pursuit of higher education increased by 65%, totaling about 3.3 million students globally.

Clearly, international education has turned into an export house; a fertile ground where share among nations is constantly altering - the rise of Canada and China, the drop in USA’s singular hold, the UK inching towards the number one spot and smaller Asian nations like Singapore marching in for space.

China now a global education magnet

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