ÌÇÐÄVlog

When the pandemic left Chinese students unable to take up offers to study abroad, many in the West worried that we were coming to the end of an era for international education. But I was not convinced. As a frontline test preparation teacher, I wrote an article in ÌÇÐÄVlog headlined ¡°Covid-19 will not dent Chinese demand for international education¡±.

But now I am not so sure.

June and July used to be the beginning of the busiest time of the year, leading up to the IELTS and TOEFL exam season from September to December, as students submit their applications to study abroad. However, in stark contrast to previous years, my education company has this summer received only one enquiry about IELTS preparation.

Nor is this an isolated case. Competitors from other training centres and university admission agencies are also complaining of having very few enquiries compared with the same period last year.

After recently returning from an overseas studies and immigration exhibition in Shanghai, Alfred Huang, an immigration agent in Shenzhen, commented that since the beginning of spring 2025, China¡¯s appetite for outbound study has fallen away. ¡°Shanghai usually ranks among the top [cities] in the country in terms of the demand for going abroad,¡± he said on the social media platform WeChat. ¡°This time, however, the exhibition venue was quiet and there were not many people on the streets either.¡±

Indeed, the demand for overseas study in Shanghai used to be very impressive. A senior person at the Shenzhen branch of the study abroad company New Oriental Vision Overseas once disclosed to me that his office¡¯s previous annual revenue of 70 million RMB (?7.4 million) was only the ninth largest among all the company¡¯s offices across China. The Shanghai office was the top earner, bringing in up to about 200 million RMB ¨C nearly three times more than that of Shenzhen despite both being first-tier cities.

I don¡¯t know what the current revenues are, but they must be much lower.

But why? There are many explanations. Analysts have cited geopolitical tensions, visa crackdowns in the main host countries and the strengthening of domestic Chinese universities. But I suspect that this is not the full explanation.

Chinese families¡¯ desire for overseas education usually falls into three categories. The first group want to leverage their wealth to emigrate and enjoy a better life, so they are looking for overseas schools for their children. The second are disappointed by their 18-year-olds¡¯ gaokao scores, which have locked them out of the best Chinese universities, so they are seeking alternative undergraduate options abroad. The third (and largest) group are motivated by personal development to explore graduate studies overseas.

All three groups rely on having strong, long-term incomes to pay the high international fees. A lot of that wealth derives from China¡¯s decades-long real estate boom, which once accounted for at least of the country¡¯s economic output. However, the in that market, combined with the lingering effects of Covid-19, have put a drag on China¡¯s economy and severely eaten into the cash flows of middle-class families. Indeed, it has projected some of them all the way back into poverty over just a few short years.

Among the three categories of families mentioned above, those seeking graduate study for their offspring are proving to be the most resilient. One reason is that master¡¯s programmes require only one or two years to finish. The other is that overseas options may not be much more expensive than domestic ones, especially at first-tier universities, many of which have increased their fee levels close to those of international universities. Some programmes at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, for example, ?per year (?31,600), which is only a little less than getting a similar degree say in the UK.

However, Chinese students¡¯ international destination preferences have shifted from the US or the UK to regions closer to China, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Macao. The main reason is that most graduate degrees in these systems require only one year to complete, making them relatively cheap, while the educational quality and campus life they offer are still significantly better than on the mainland.

Nevertheless, given that the middle class has already lost vast amounts of wealth and that, according to global investment firm ¡¯s predictions, the economic slowdown will endure for several more years yet, it does seem that the era when large numbers of Chinese students sought overseas education is coming to an end. Instead, I foresee that we will go back to the situation of 25 years ago, when only a small number of elites were able to study abroad and reap the personal and professional benefits of doing so.

But that may not be all bad. China is currently facing the phenomenon of diploma devaluation?owing to the excessive pursuit of higher education, which has led to a decline in its quality. If the current market adjustment prompts universities at home and abroad to lower their prices and improve their quality in order to revive demand for their services, future Chinese students will benefit.

Sabrina Y. Wang is founder of Aslan Education Planning in Shenzhen. She received help writing this article from Yuliang Li, an engineering undergraduate at Southern University of Science and Technology.