China's change of heart on studying abroad shows foreign degrees are losing their lustre

South China Morning Post

16-05-2025

With her son's future on the line, Shenzhen mother Eva Deng recently made a tough call that she never would have considered a few years ago – to let the 12-year-old, who had been studying at an international school for six years, attend a public junior high school.
Even though the boy had attained English fluency, Deng ultimately abandoned plans of sending him to study in Britain or the United States, and instead set her sights on China's top universities for majors related to emerging science and technologies. Ideally, she hoped, his studies would focus on artificial intelligence.
This meant that her son would stop learning the national curriculum for England, and instead begin preparations to compete in domestic competitions for programming, maths and science – contests seen as significant for Chinese students to get into top high schools and universities in the country.
The decision by the human resource director in the southern Chinese metropolis reflects a broader shift among China's middle-class parents who used to regard an overseas education as the best option for their kids.
Driving such a conceptual transition are the intensified geopolitical risks that the world is facing today, coupled with financial concerns, diminishing job options after graduation, and an increasingly nationalistic social atmosphere, according to parents and educational specialists.
'It's not only my son – some other students in his class have been thinking of switching to public schools, as parents are starting to feel that studying at home [at a Chinese university] might be more advantageous in the future,' Deng said.
'And parents are getting more and more worried about the impact of the international situation, feeling that the relationship between countries all over the world is becoming tenser and tenser.'