The”Integration Challenge” faced by Chinese students at UK universities is particularly acute and institutions must improve their services, according to a new report from the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) released Monday, better integration of Chinese students into local life”Will benefit the campus community and the UK as a whole”.
Hepi interviewed 100 Chinese students at 20 British universities and found that even when they came to the UK, they often continued to live in a small circle of local Chinese, the Guardian reported Monday, “The school didn’t help them integrate better into local life.”. The report also found”Unique reasons” behind this. For example, many Chinese students are not good at speaking English, and many use their own Chinese social networking apps such as wechat and Little Red Book rather than WhatsApp, which is commonly used locally. One in five Chinese students said all their friends were from China, the survey found. Chinese students also complained in interviews that they felt British schools did not value Chinese students, just as a source of income.
The report says British universities need to step up their support for Chinese students, otherwise they will choose to study in other countries. The report also makes some concrete suggestions to British universities, such as introducing a”Study companion” system for Chinese students studying abroad, let them help Chinese students better adapt to the British environment, faster integration into the local social circle. British universities should also offer more targeted career guidance to Chinese students to help them find employment in the UK after graduation. The report also said that Chinese students should not only be assessed on the IELTS test results, but also on the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) for oral interviews.
Chinese students make up a quarter of all international students in the UK and pay # 2.3 bn a year in tuition fees, according to the report. Chinese students are an important source of income for the cash-strapped UK higher education sector. After peaking at 18,500 in 2022, the number of Chinese students in the UK has started to decline in the past two years, the Guardian has noted. The number of Chinese students in the UK fell to 17,400 last year and has fallen further to 17,000 this year. “The UK’s popularity among Chinese students is likely to decline over the next few years,” the report said.
D-O? Freeman, policy manager at HEPI, says the international environment is changing and British universities can not really count on the growing number of Chinese students coming to the UK. But Chinese students are vital to the long-term economic interests of many educational institutions, which means British universities must do more to attract and retain them.