Education Industry in China Essay

In Chinese education industry, China is playing a role of follower when comparing with most of the western countries. Although the increasing speed is very fast, there is still a long distance. Studying abroad is the most popular way for Chinese to have a higher education. However, large sums of families are not able to afford such high tuition fee and living cost for their children being abroad. As a result of it, online courses and distance education tend to be developed as a substitute product. Some of the universities have already opened distance education towards public. Besides that, there are more and more videos of open classes which are given by famous professors who had been posted online. The internet provides people a wider channel which is more convenient and covers a huge amount of education resources. To be educated through internet is becoming a mainstream of education industry in the future. The pie chart above shows that 10.22% of newly-added application is education related. It is only 6% behind game segment in the second place. The online education segment grew more than 20.7% only in one year in 2007 from 14.5 billion CNY to RMB17.5 billion CNY. China had about 12.2 million people using online education 5 years ago. (Global, 2010) The total number of computer and portable devices users are more than 550 million at the end of 2012. It has surpassed the entire population of US. Information technology has become a invisible engine of education industry both in private sectors and public educations. Social A Blue Book of global talent (South China Global Talent Insititute, 2013) was released in last September. It reported that there were accumulated 2.2 million students who are studied abroad in last 25 years. The amount of oversea students reached a record high which is more than 400 thousands in 2012. China becomes the biggest oversea students exporting country. 90% of those students pay at their own expenses instead of government funded. The Blue Book indicates that since 21st century more than 60% of oversea students are studying or studied in America and Europe. Italy, the Netherland, Korean, Spain are new hot spots which attracting Chinese students. Through the economic growth, to be educated abroad is no longer rare. The increasing mid-class families are willing to afford expensive cost on education for the next generation. Based upon the background of globalization, internalization is one of the most important issues for ambitious Chinese entrepreneurs. As a result of it, the society has a demand on people who have international study background gradually. English has become one of the most recruitment criteria for most of the big companies and state owned corporations. For some branch of multinational companies, English has replaced mandarin as a working language. Graduates of regular higher education since 2000 (in ten thousands) (Yongchun, 2013) There are 6.9 million graduates in 2013. (Yongchun, 2013) It is the record highest year since the establishment of the nation. Additionally, the economy growth is slowing down since the 2008 global crisis. The job vacancies are limit and the demand for graduate is decreasing. The employment situation is extremely grim. As a consequence, the depreciation of bachelor diploma becomes an inevitable truth. Some of students choose to continuing study master program or studying abroad.