Studying Abroad

A PKU alumni reunion will be held in south bay this Saturday, with hundreds of people getting together, having barbecue and electing the new committee for the next two year. Since the founding the P.R.C, or maybe even earlier, Peking University and its rivalry Tsinghua University, have been sending their top students abroad, mostly the US, who has a reputation for offering generous scholarship. After graduation, many students chose to stay, and moved to coasts with abundant job opportunities. Tens of thousands of alumni settled down in San Francisco, New York and DC for during the past decades.

Most alumni in the bay area have science or engineering background, and moved to the silicon valley during its early days. They hold well-paid positions in large IT companies and live in houses with four bedrooms and swimming pools, - the lifestyle almost unaffordable in China. The rest of them major in finance or accounting, benefiting from the booming IT economy in the neighborhood. Beyond these, I can't recall any one with other majors. It's quite clear what kind of Chinese students can making a living in the US- technicians or data processors.

Job markets in turn affect students' choice of majors. For most Chinese students whose parents living on less than $5,000 per year, it's very tempting to get a job here. It's also easier to get a fellowship in science departments. This explains the high ratio of Chinese students in physics, biology and computer science, but not in history, psychology and public policy. Of course not every graduate can get a job in the US, most of them still go back. Thus there is a feedback effect. Students come to the US to learn science and finance, and then feeding back their home country with foreign tech skills and financial ideas (not so well in the US case.)

I'm sure high-tech and financial people are badly needed in an emerging economy like China. But it's frustrating to see returnee's majors are highly limited to these fields. Current hot spots - political reform, election, democracy and rule of law, though still a taboo in mainstream medias, do need experts to work on them. Overseas graduates who are exposed to new political regimes and culture are definitely an asset to domestic development. But in lack of incentives and financial supports, few students study in this field, and even fewer pursue jobs on public affairs, let alone the amount of final returnees.

Intentionally or not, Chinese government does not seem to encourage students to study democracy abroad. The biggest public sector - the central and local governments now only recruit people with working experiences, but oversea degrees are not respected. Once you're in the government, you probably have no motivation to study abroad, because the best graduate degree for promotion is the one from the party school of CCP. International organizations and NGOs, the main employers of policy students in most OECD countries, are in a moribund state in China. The combined result is that students are dissuaded from working on policy degrees abroad, unless your parents can guarantee your participation in political affairs in the future. But watch out, even if your parents are senior-level officials in central government, things may still happen, and you may get cut off from all sorts of political activities, wasting all your education in the end.

Studying abroad is not easy. It is ambivalent to choose majors for the state's sake or your own sake. Rational people, as economists always assume, will go for the later. This is not the Pareto Optimal for the society, but in lack of incentive mechanism, hardly any change can be expected.