Imagine a chocolate-box Jane Austen theme-park Britain, where the poor are kept safely out of sight and the gentle-folk heave their bosoms with repressed emotion. That’s precisely the image that many Chinese students have of modern Britain, according to a new report carried out by Greg Philo, head of Glasgow University’s (Scotland) Media Group, for the British Council. Cultural stereotyping isn’t the preserve of Brits and many Chinese students come to this country with their expectations framed in a 19th-century gentility.
No wonder, then, that so many students have their preconceptions shattered when they get there. Most say they feel unsafe when walking on the streets and more than half also felt they had suffered discrimination. So why, would most rather study in the United Kingdom (UK) than in a university back home?
There’s the obvious draw of a good qualification from a prestigious institution. With good, well-paid jobs increasingly hard to find in a society that now has a glut of undergraduates and postgraduates, anything that can give a student a competitive edge comes at a premium.
‘A British higher education is as much about style as content. British universities are perceived to have a far more creative learning style. Chinese education is perceived to be based on a much more rigid acceptance of the word of the professor — an approach that is considered to lack flair and intellectual rigour, says the report.
The other big advantage that UK universities have is that they aren’t perceived to be tainted with corruption.
But universities in the UK should be careful not to take their international students for granted. Many Chinese students have wised up to the fact that some institutions regard them purely as revenue. —