Experts encourage UK universities to make more efforts to interact with Chinese students via online platforms. Provided to China Daily

Online answers

Many British universities opt to pour money in exhibiting their universities at expensive fairs in China's major cities, but Ernie Diaz, director of the online marketing agency Web Presence In China, says there is more value online.

"The Internet has made connecting with prospective Chinese students eminently possible and it's a great irony that so few of these schools effectively use this approach," he says. "For less than the price of a fair tour to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, a university could have a permanent, proactive, easily found web presence in China."

Diaz notes the popularity of online bulletin boards in China and points toward websites such as Taisha where hundreds of thousands of Chinese students discuss study abroad options. UK universities, thus far, have made little effort to interact with these students, he says.

"Any study abroad candidate in China is actively online waiting for some direct communication with a university. The web presence is enormously important because the one thing that sells in China is word of mouth. If a school had a Mandarin speaker or a Chinese alumnus who could answer questions on popular message boards, students would be so knocked out the universities are taking time to connect with them, they would soon be telling their friends," Diaz says.

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Rather than engage online with China, many universities choose the easier option of outsourcing recruitment to agencies, though controversy erupted last year when a Times Higher Education report showed that British universities spend almost 60 million pounds ($91 million; 71 million euros) a year on agency fees. Although universities defended their right to pay agencies, arguing that it was the most efficient way to recruit students in some countries, critics argued that the money might be better spent improving the quality of education for those already attending.

Both students and institutions have reasons to be concerned about the prevalence of the agency system. For students, they worry they will not receive impartial advice since most agencies operate on a commission basis. The fear is that many agencies may recommend universities based on their own interests rather than in the interest of the student.

For universities, the concern is that agencies are providing too much assistance to students in the application process and that mediocre students can buy their way into top universities with the help of an agent.

Tumilty says SOAS works with several agencies in China.

"Agencies do play a role in our recruitment activity, but we are not dependent on them for a significant number of our students. We choose to work with a small number of agents in China so we can work more closely with them to ensure they understand what we look for in a student," he says.

Bristol University also uses recruiting agents, but Axel-Berg says the college manages them first-hand through an office in Beijing and does not alter its entrance requirements for overseas students. The university also manages an active Sina Weibo blog that provides current information to prospective students and encourages Chinese alumni to speak honestly with applicants. She says the university tends to avoid major education fairs in favor of smaller presentations and receptions organized independently across China.

"Our strategic plan for China will include the use of weibo and possibly QQ (a popular instant messaging software) if we find it feasible to do so. In fact, we already have a weibo account that has been reactivated after a period of dormancy," Tumilty says.

Good experiences

Of course, the best way to improve a university's reputation in China is to ensure that the Chinese students who do attend have a positive experience. At the University of Sheffield, approximately 50 percent of the overseas student body is from China. The university is currently taking steps to offer them better support.

"I was working during (China's economic reforms in the late 1970s) and the first major wave of Chinese students coming over to the UK," says professor Rebecca Hughes, pro-vice-chancellor at the university. "At that point nobody predicted the exponential growth in Chinese student numbers that has happened, and that it would cause such a sustained change in the British higher education sector."