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Geoffrey Maslen

Mainland students are the world's most mobile with more going abroad to obtain university degrees than those from any other country, a new study has found.
Nearly 320,000 mainland students went overseas for higher education studies in 2005 and the number is predicted to more than double to 645,000 within 20 years.
A report of the study says that although students from India come second in terms of global mobility, they lag well behind the huge crowd from the mainland with less than 130,000 studying abroad in 2005.
By 2025, when India is expected to overtake China as the most populous nation on earth, only 302,000 Indian students are likely to be going outside the country to enrol at university.
The report of the study, carried out by researchers at Australia's main student recruiting agency IDP Education, says lack of university places in their home countries is the main factor causing students to go abroad.
But other elements include opportunities for skilled migration, perceptions of improved employment and career prospects for foreign graduates and beliefs about better quality education.
'With a clear positive relationship between education attainment and future wage earnings, tertiary education is also perceived as desirable,' the report states.
However, it notes that  students from Hong Kong tend to remain at home.
Only 34,000 Hong Kong students were enrolled in foreign universities in 2005 and, although the numbers will rise to a projected 41,000 in 2015, they will fall back to 39,500 by 2025.
This will push Hong Kong down from 14th in 2005, out of the 40 top countries whose students study overseas, to 22nd in 2025.
The IDP report, Global Student Mobility, relies on United Nations, Unesco and Australian statistics in estimating the likely increases in the number of students who leave their countries to study abroad.
While the mainland and India far exceed any other nation, South Korea is in third place with 127,000 expected to be studying outside that nation by 2025.
More than 106,000 students from Morocco will also leave home that year, placing the country a surprising fourth with Turkey at 104,000 in fifth place.
'The start of the 21st century marked a dramatic rise in the global number of mobile students,' the IDP report says. 'In 2004, at least 2.5 million tertiary students studied outside their home countries compared with 1.75 million just five years earlier - a 43 per cent increase.'
A recent OECD report notes that the market in international students continues to grow but at a significantly higher rate outside the European Union.  It says  the US continues to attract nearly twice as many international students as its nearest rival, Britain, which has a 12 per cent share.
Third most popular is Germany with 10 per cent, followed by France (9 per cent), Australia (6 per cent) and Japan (5 per cent).
The report also highlights the four-fold increase worldwide in global mobility over the last three decades, with a notable acceleration in the past 10 years.
'This mirrors the growing globalisation of economies and societies,' it says.
Within the OECD, France, Germany, Britain and the United States take in more than half of all foreign students globally.
Although most foreign students return to their home countries after graduating and sometimes working overseas, this does not appear to be the case for  students from the mainland.
The IDP report says that at more than 9 per cent, unemployment is relatively high in China and relatively low in the main destination markets, so many Chinese students choose to remain abroad after finishing their studies.
'One estimate suggests that as many as 74 per cent of the Chinese students who studied abroad between 1978 and 2006 have not returned - with 200,000 of these changing their citizenship or gaining permanent residency,' the report says.
Go west
Mainland leads with over 320,000 students studying abroad in 2005
The amount of mainland students who choose to stay in foreign countries after university is estimated at: 74%



Mainland students travel most for degrees