Chinese students stay local as favour falls with study abroad
By the time Jane Tian had completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees at Shandong University in Jinan, China, she was ready for a change. “I was bored with the teaching style in mainland China,” she says. Tian, who wanted to specialize in sociology, thought that gaining “an international perspective” would give her an edge in finding a job in China.
In late 2019, Tian applied to 15 PhD programmes from around the world, with the United Kingdom as her preferred location. Places she left off her shortlist included the United States, she says, due in large part to China’s “quite tense relationship” with the country.
Tian ended up choosing Lingnan University in Hong Kong, which offered her a PhD programme with a competitive scholarship and access to leading supervisors in her field. She also liked the fact that Hong Kong shared certain similarities with mainland China, yet provided an opportunity for more diverse types of learning. “The mixture of Chinese and Western cultures in Hong Kong, which has shown itself to be an inclusive and vibrant community, is what most attracted me to study there,” she says …