Job Discussion Forums

[Stuka]

Universities in major countries have come to depend on Chinese students for their increasingly important international student enrolments – and are to some extent dependent on these students to balance budgets and, in certain cases, to fill empty seats.

Significant numbers of post-docs, necessary to staff research laboratories and sometimes to engage in teaching, also come from China.

For a range of reasons, China’s global higher education role is about to change significantly – with implications for the rest of the world.

One-third of the 1.1 million international students in the United States are from China – similar proportions are found in such major receiving countries as Australia (38%) and the United Kingdom (41% of non-European Union students). This has created an unsustainable situation of overdependence.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190403104242366

[Simon in Suzhou]

This is kind of a silly article- at least in the context of the scary title it gives. Coming crisis! ummm. I don't think so. Western Universities want Chinese money. There are more than enough Chinese students with means who will want to study abroad.

The first reason given that Chinese students might stop coming abroad: More opportunities to study in China because the govt is spending billions upgrading the top 100 Chinese unis. I got news for you, that doesn't mean there are tens of thousands of more seats available in these classrooms. It just means they are making them nicer and better. Most of the students who can't get in there now will not be able to get in there in 10 years. And most importantly, this writer doesn't seem to understand that it is precisely the rich kids who can't get into the top universities who are going abroad to study so mom and dad can save face and brag to their friends about their kid abroad (rather than in an embarrassing lower tier uni). Every teacher in China who has worked in an IELTS program knows this is the case.

The Confucius Institute issues have no impact on a massive majority of the students studying abroad. Almost all of the other "issues" here are guesses at what could happen because of cultural issues down the road. There's no imminent crisis. As long as there are $$$ available, this system will continue on for quite some time.

[RiverMystic]

The fact is the trend will reverse one day, sooner or later. Probably sooner. Universities in the US in particular are way overpriced and many of the courses are now subsumed with bizarre ideological neo-Marxism. Many futurists are predicting a dire time for universities within a decade, with some prediction that up to 50% will fold. Online training will likely become much better, and universities may not be able to compete with private providers.

[Sleepwalker]

'bizarre ideological neo-Marxism'- please explain

[RiverMystic]

Many liberal arts schools, and arts, humanities and social science subjects and departments are being taken over by postmodernist / neo-Marxist ideology. In the worst cases schools are becoming something akin to Maoist, with zealots on staff and in the student body reigning terror on everyone else. You’d have to be asleep at the wheel not to know about this. e.g. Yale is investing millions into diversity tribunals and counseling for all kinds of imagined “trauma.”

This is massively expensive, and one of the reasons fees are absurdly high. These diversity burocrats are paid absurd amounts of money.