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A group of smiling Chinese university students on Aberystwyth promenade, in Wales UK. Photo: Alamy

Chinese student applications to UK universities up by 30 per cent, as Manchester plays major host

  • UK higher education is benefiting from tensions between US and China, say experts
  • Number of students from mainland China studying in UK higher education has more than doubled in the last decade

Applications from Chinese students to study at UK universities have gone up 30 per cent since last year, with numbers exceeding those from Northern Ireland for the first time, according to official statistics.

The UCAS university admissions agency revealed on Thursday it had received almost 20,000 undergraduate applications from students in China this year (19,760, up from 15,240 in 2018), compared with 18,520 from Northern Ireland. The real figure will be higher as not all Chinese applications are made via UCAS.

The number of students from mainland China studying in UK higher education has more than doubled in the last decade.

Commentators say however that recent tensions between China and the US are further benefiting British universities as Chinese students look at destinations other than America for their studies.

Welcoming the figures, the universities minister, Chris Skidmore, said: “International students bring huge cultural and economic benefits to the UK. These figures show we are making good progress in our ambition to open up world-leading higher education to anyone who has the potential to benefit from it and I’m confident that we can go even further.”

The University of Manchester has the largest population of Chinese students in Europe. Photo: Shutterstock

The UCAS figures also revealed an increase in the number of British 18-year-olds applying for places, up 1 per cent on last year to 275,520 despite a 1.9 per cent fall in the overall 18-year-old population of the UK.

EU applicants have also risen 1 per cent, to 50,650 despite the Brexit uncertainty, and UCAS reported a record number of applicants from outside the EU at 81,340, an increase of 8 per cent.

Trade war ‘turning Chinese students off the US, with many opting for UK, Canada and Australia’

China is already the biggest source of international students at British universities. In 2007-2008, there were 43,530 Chinese students in the UK, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). Ten years later the total went up to 106,530, of which 60,460 were postgraduate students and 46,070 undergraduates.

Clare Marchant, UCAS chief executive, said: “The global appeal of UK higher education has never been clearer, with record demographic-beating application rates in England and Wales, and the steep rise in international applications, especially from China.”

The University of Manchester has the largest population of Chinese students in Europe. With about 5,000 Chinese students out of a total of just over 40,000, about one in eight students are Chinese. “The university is well known in China,” said Richard Cotton, director of student recruitment and outreach at Manchester.

“It’s partly because of the football,” he said.

Then in 2015, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, visited the National Graphene Institute (NGI) at Manchester university. “We did see a significant increase in applications [from China] after that.”

Chinese students are crucial to Manchester’s ambitions to be a truly international university, says Cotton.

“You can’t project yourself as an international university unless you have large cohort of international students. They are bringing connections. In the classroom they can offer an international experience for domestic students.”

But there are challenges. Currently Chinese students are concentrated in a limited number of subject areas, such as accounting and finance, economics, business studies and electrical engineering.

As a result, they often end up studying in classes full of other Chinese students and socialising together when classes are over.

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Tao Wang is a politics PhD student at the University of Manchester. He likes the diversity of the city, but there are difficulties too.

“In the politics department, next to my desk is a Greek student, next to him is an Italian, and then a Briton, a Romanian, a French [student] and so on. Some of my best friends are from Nigeria, Mexico and Thailand. The diversity is the real beauty of Manchester that I truly love.”

“The challenge for me as a Chinese student is security,” he says.

“There are too many robberies. Rumours are that students from China are particularly targeted by robbers. This might be because of the stereotype that Chinese students are crazy rich.”

China's President Xi Jinping during a visit to Manchester in 2015. File photo: Reuters

The university says it is doing all it can to improve student safety with regular police drop-in surgeries, the development of a student neighbourhood watch-style group called “student eye” and specific campaigns focusing on international student safety.

The university is also developing research to try to find ways to encourage greater integration between Chinese and British students.

“Students from both the UK and China are interested in each other,” Wang said.

“But it looks like they don’t mix much. There is a cultural barrier.”

The emotional downside to studying in the UK for Chinese students

They also live separately. Chinese students are often in more expensive, purpose-built student flats, while British students live in shared houses.

And according to Wang, the two groups socialise in completely different ways.

Overseas students pose for a photograph on Graduation day at Birmingham University, UK. Photo: Alamy

“Chinese students like doing homework together, having a hotpot at home, singing karaoke, going shopping – for some, for luxury goods.

“British students particularly enjoy alcohol in pubs with loud music. I’ve heard complaints from my Chinese friends that they couldn’t make many local friends because they just didn’t like pubs.”

Nick Hillman is a governor at Manchester university and director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think tank.

Commenting on the latest UCAS application figures, he said: “It’s clear that the UK is benefiting from cooler relations between China and the US, and also between China and Australia. We can’t take anything for certain as demand from other countries is very sensitive to all sorts of things but we are clearly gaining advantage at the moment.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: more Chinese eye U.K. universities
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