On January 7, 2024, Kai Tak Education released the "2023 Inventory and 2024 Outlook of China's Study Abroad Market", which sorted out the overview of China's study abroad market in 2023, as well as the major events that may have an impact on Chinese students in various mainstream study destinations, and made an outlook and forecast for the development and changes of China's study abroad market in 2024.
According to incomplete statistics from the Institute of International Education (IIE), the most popular destinations for Chinese students to study in higher education in 2023 are the United States (289,500), the United Kingdom (158,300), Australia (140,100), Canada (100,100), Japan (85,800), Germany (40,100), France (27,500), Italy (15,900), and New Zealand (10,600). At present, China is still the largest source of international students from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Italy and other countries.
According to the 2023 Open Doors Report, the number of undergraduate and graduate students from Chinese mainland studying in the United States in the 2022/23 academic year was 100,300 and 126,000, respectively. According to data from the Canadian Immigration Department, a total of 100,000 Chinese mainland students studied in Canada in 2022.
According to HESA, the number of undergraduate and postgraduate students from Chinese mainland studying in the UK in the 2021/22 academic year was 62,900 and 88,800 respectively. In addition, according to the survey data of British students at Kai Tak, 31.8% of students hope to study for a second master's degree in the UK in the future, mainly because the second master's degree can obtain higher quality academic qualifications, improve the background of the university, and thus increase the competitiveness of employment. According to data from the Australian Department of Education, nearly half of Chinese mainland students in 2022 are taught master's degrees, more than 40% are bachelor's and honours degrees, and 4% are doctoral degrees.
According to the statistics on the number of non-local students of the Committee on Self-financing Post-secondary Education in Hong Kong, China, the enrolment of non-local students in 2022/23 was: Associate Degree (1,200), Bachelor's Degree (17,700), Taught Master's (31,000) and Research Master's and PhD (13,300). According to the visa statistics of students from the Hong Kong Immigration Department, the number of mainland students enrolled in Hong Kong in 2021 has reached 37,100, an increase of 19.16% compared with 2020. According to data from the Education and Youth Development Bureau of Macau, China, in 2022/23, 18,000 mainland students studying in Macao's higher education institutions were undergraduates and 15,000 master's and doctoral students, an increase of 21.7% over the previous academic year.
According to the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO), as of May 2022, there were 103,900 Chinese mainland students studying Xi in Japan, including 85,800 at the tertiary level and 18,100 at language schools. According to the report "Metropolis of Science 2023", a total of 39,100 Chinese students studied Xi in Germany in the winter semester of 2022/23. According to the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, a total of 27,500 Chinese students studied Xi in France in the 2021/22 academic year.
Science and engineering are popular for studying in the United States, Canada, Japan and Germany, and business studies in the United Kingdom, Australia and France are the first
According to the customer service data of Kai Tak Study Abroad, the top three most popular majors for undergraduate study abroad are economics (9.6%), computer science (8.7%) and pan-business majors (6.9%), computer science (10.46%), finance (9.78%) and education (6.25%) for master's degree applications, and computer science (11.59%), biological science (6.26%) and economics (6.19%) for doctoral study abroad applications. According to official statistics, overseas Chinese students are mainly studying STEM majors, business, humanities and social sciences, which is closely related to China's scientific and technological innovation and industrial upgrading in high-end manufacturing, new energy, artificial intelligence and other industries.
According to the 2023 Open Doors Report, the top three majors for Chinese mainland students in the United States in the 2022/23 academic year are "mathematics and computer science majors (23.2%)", "engineering (16.8%)", and "business and management (13.4%)", and STEM majors are still the mainstream.
According to HESA, the five most popular majors for full-time undergraduate students in the 2021/22 academic year are Business and Management, Medicine-related, Social Sciences, Creative Arts and Design, and Engineering and Technology, while the top five popular majors for full-time postgraduate students are Business and Management, Social Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Computing, and Education and Teaching.
According to the Australian Department of Education, four out of ten Chinese mainland students in 2022 studied "Management and Business", followed by "Society and Culture", "Information Technology", "Engineering and Related Technologies", "Creative Arts" and "Natural and Physical Sciences".
According to statistics from the University Granting Committee of Hong Kong, China, in the 2022/23 academic year, the eight non-local students in Hong Kong are concentrated in science (27%), business and management (27%), engineering and technology (20%), social sciences (16%), and arts and humanities (7%). According to the German Metropolis of Science 2023 report, the top three majors studied by international students are engineering (43.1%), law, economics and social sciences (24.4%), and mathematics and natural sciences (11.7%).
TOEFL and IELTS GRE scores have improved, and the error tolerance rate has decreased after the TOEFL GRE reform
According to the official TOEFL test report, the average TOEFL score of Chinese mainland students in 2022 increased by 3 points compared with 2021 to 90 points, 24 points in reading and 23 points in listening, and 21 points in speaking, an increase of 1 point from the previous year, and the average score of writing reached nearly 22 points in line with 2021. From July 26, 2023, the duration of the TOEFL test will be shortened from 3 hours to 2 hours, the number of questions will be reduced, the test question type will also be changed, and the writing section will be changed from independent writing to academic discussion writing. The overall writing style of academic discussion writing is close to the formal speaking language in an academic environment, and Kai Tak Kaopei suggests that this ability can be effectively improved by simulating participation in English class discussions.
According to the official data report of IELTS in 2022, Chinese mainland candidates ranked 29th in the IELTS academic test, up 4 places from 2021, with an average total score of 6.1 points, an increase of 0.13 points from 2021. In 2022, the average reading score was 6.4, an increase of 0.13 points compared with 2021, the average listening score was 6.1, an increase of 0.06 points compared to 2021, the average writing score was 5.8, an increase of 0.04 points compared to 2021, and the average speaking score was 5.6 points, an increase of 0.05 points compared to 2021. It is recommended that students should consider the answer points that can be combined when preparing oral topic materials, accumulate more than 20,000 words of reading on related topics in writing, and conduct more than 10,000 words of writing output training.
According to the official GRE candidate data report, the number of GRE test takers from Chinese mainland who took the test in 2022-2023 is 57,800, with an average score of 166.2 in mathematics, 153.8 in Chinese, and 3.4 in writing.
The new version of the GRE test will be officially launched in September 2023, and the total test duration will be shortened from less than 4 hours to less than 2 hours, and the 10-minute break and all unscored additional test questions will be eliminated. The reduction in the number of questions and the shortening of the test time is good news for candidates, but it will also lead to a decrease in the error tolerance rate and an increase in the score of each question. Therefore, students can no longer have the mentality of choosing to give up when encountering certain types of difficult questions, and need to pay attention to the improvement of vocabulary and analytical skills when preparing for the exam.
Outlook for 2024: changes in ranking rules, demand for studying abroad at both ends, and growth in the cost of studying abroad
At present, the four university rankings commonly referred to by parents of Chinese students are QS World University Rankings, US News World University Rankings, Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and Ranking of World Universities. In 2023, in addition to the rankings, the other three rankings have adjusted their rules. Among them, the rules of the QS World University Rankings and the US News World University Rankings have been significantly adjusted, which have had varying degrees of impact on the university rankings. Nine Australian universities are in the top 100 of the QS rankings. In the US News rankings, the rankings of American universities have changed significantly, such as the University of Washington and Rutgers University, which are public institutions, have jumped 15 places to the top 40, Vanderbilt University, a private institution, has dropped five places to 18, and Dartmouth College has dropped from 12 to 18. In the process of selecting talents in domestic enterprises and institutions, these university rankings are still regarded as an important reference factor, and students who graduated from the top 100 universities are more competitive.
At the same time, Kai Tak Education found that the demand for studying abroad has increased significantly at both the young and advanced ends. On the one hand, undergraduate study abroad has picked up, and the demand for direct application has grown rapidly. In the UK, for example, as of 16 October 2023, a total of 4,340 students from Chinese mainland and 1,410 students from Hong Kong, 90 and 40 Macau have submitted 24FallUCAS applications, a more than three-fold increase compared to 2019.
On the other hand, according to the customer service data of Kai Tak Study Abroad in the past three years, the number of doctoral admissions in 2023 has increased by 28.4% compared with 2021. According to the 2021 doctoral student statistics released by the U.S. Doctoral Degree Survey, China is the largest source of doctoral students in the United States, with students from China (59,430) accounting for nearly one-third of the 181446 doctoral degrees granted to student visa holders from 2011 to 2021. According to the Global demand for UK postgraduate research degrees, China is also the largest source of international doctoral students in the UK, with the number of Chinese doctoral students in the 2020/21 academic year increasing by 20.5% compared with the previous academic year to nearly 3,800.
Compared with the cost in 2019, it is not difficult to find that in 2023, in addition to the increase in tuition fees, the living expenses of international students in various countries will be adjusted to varying degrees, and the cost of living is also a necessary expense that students need to bear. After the two-way increase in tuition and living expenses, the total annual cost of studying abroad has exceeded 500,000 yuan. As a result, the new term "cost-effective study abroad" has been mentioned repeatedly in the past two years, and institutions in Asian countries and regions, such as Hong Kong, Macau, China, and some tuition-free countries in Europe such as Germany and France, have attracted more attention than before.
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