Last Friday, the Beijing education committee summoned representatives from Beijing’s 10 leading public high schools to discuss study abroad students. Please read the article in The Diplomat here:
Among those invited were People’s University High School, Tsinghua University High, Peking University High, Beijing Number Four, and the Experimental School, all of which already have a sizable contingent of students in the Ivy League and alumni networks in the United States.
As the director of Peking University High’s study abroad programme, I attended on our school’s behalf. During the meeting, the education committee ordered all schools to better prepare students for studying abroad, to maintain contact with them once they’re in the United States, and to instill patriotism in them so they’ll return to help develop the motherland.
For me, the meeting marked a sudden change in government attitude towards the study abroad phenomenon. What was interesting was not what was said—it was that anything was said at all.
China recently became the largest source of foreign students in U.S. universities, according to a study by the Institute for International Education.
