The 2013 China International Education Exhibition Tour in March attracted more than 50 universities from the United Kingdom. Provided to China Daily

 

Education experts want UK universities to do more to attract Chinese students to the country

Chinese students are becoming an increasingly important source of revenue for Britain's financially squeezed universities, but experts say there is more the education institutions can do to market and recruit in China.

China sends more students to British universities than any other country, with more than 78,000 studying in the UK in 2012, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency. If year-on-year growth continues, that number will likely top 100,000 by 2014.

But despite sending more than twice the number from India, the next highest source of students, there is a sense among education experts that British universities are not doing enough to interact with Chinese students exploring the possibility of studying in the UK.

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The 2013 China International Education Exhibition Tour in March attracted more than 50 UK universities, yet their recruitment programs such as language training courses and UK tour activities are not specifically tailored for the Chinese students but for international students as a whole, experts say.

"British universities tend to have UK-centric marketing departments. There is a tendency to treat the rest of the world as if it's one place," says Paul Hoskins, who works in the higher education sector and is chairman of Precedent, a digital communications agency. "They don't have the knowledge of the Chinese market and as a result most of their marketing tends to be quite crude."

Claire Axel-Berg, head of the international office at the University of Bristol, admitted that in recent years, the college's marketing and recruitment budgets have actually shifted away from China. She says prospective Chinese students are resourceful enough to discern for themselves the best way to go about applying for overseas education.

"The money we spend in China is absolutely no more than the money we spend in countries that yield a fraction of the number of students," Axel-Berg says. "The marketing is what you need when you are dealing with a population who don't really understand what they are looking for. China fully understands what it's looking for. So really all we do in China is raise awareness to get people to look at us. We don't have to feed any specific messages."

Experts say UK institutions can do a host of things differently to attract more Chinese students, from micro-managing recruitment agencies, creating a bigger presence on social networking sites and online message boards in China, to expanding their websites with more cultural information about the UK. Hoskins suggests universities make more of an effort to connect with the demands of prospective Chinese students, such as offering a more rounded cultural experience.

"Chinese students want to study abroad to gain a broader worldview. If some of the marketing departments understood this, they might, for instance, develop more cultural activities for overseas students," Hoskins says.

The School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, for example, is relatively recent in its focus on China as a key recruitment market. David Tumilty, international officer at the school's student recruitment office, says the office ensures that it establishes the basics first.

"This means maintaining the various relationships we already have and developing new ones in tier-one cities before eventually considering other parts of China," Tumilty says. "China has been good at working with, and identifying, English-speaking countries other than the UK or the US as viable study destinations, but the UK will remain attractive due to the number of its academically excellent universities, particularly in London, which boasts a strong number of world-class institutions."