New York Times -China boom - in education

From The China Boom   by Dan Levin (a Beijing-based writer who contributes frequently to The Times.)

While China’s students have long filled American graduate schools, its undergraduates now represent the fastest-growing group of international students. In 2008-9, more than 26,000 were studying in the United States, up from about 8,000 eight years earlier, according to the Institute of International Education.

The boom parallels China’s emergence as the world’s largest economy after the United States. China is home to a growing number of middle-class parents who have saved for years to get their only child into a top school, hoping for an advantage in a competitive job market made more so by a surge in college graduates. Since the 1990s, China has doubled its number of higher education institutions. More than 60 percent of high school graduates now attend a university, up from 20 percent in the 1980s. But this surge has left millions of diploma-wielding young people unable to find white-collar work in a country still heavily reliant on low-paying manufacturing.

Ding's parents pushed him to study hard — and study abroad — because they have little faith in the Chinese education system. Sipping tea in their living room one sweltering August afternoon, Mr. Ding’s mother, Meng Suyan, reflects on the Chinese classroom. 

• “In the U.S. they focus on creative-thinking skills, while in China they only focus on theory,” she says. “So what university students learn here doesn’t prepare them for the real world.”
•  “Chinese values require me to be a good listener, and Western values require me to be a good speaker.”

This year, the program’s first, 28 students spent six months at the University of International Relations in Beijing; 19 were found qualified to finish off the year at Columbia. The program preps students to apply as freshmen, with a focus on English instruction, cultural immersion and counseling, including study for the Test of English as a Foreign Language and SAT, and a tour of campuses in the Northeast. (Total cost: about $45,000, including room and board.)




Some other experiences with time-related scope, at Time-Asia

How China is Like 19th Century America

By Stephen Mihm and Jeffrey Wasserstrom

To contrast, see their first experience in Education in the USA (1870's):

Es va endegar un programa a llarg termini per portar joves graduats per un curt periode de tres-sis anys a Europa que sí va ser un èxit amb 4 editions entre 1877 i 1897<4.4> .
Sobre els alumnes que anaven a l'estranger hi hagué una gran esperança al programa que va dissenyar Yun Wing per portar joves xinesos als EEUU i que va entrar en funcionament el 1872 Chang, (2003:105-7). Wing va intentar fer seu el somni de canviar el futur de la joventut del país per l'educació, però no va poder tornar a Xina i tenir una bona remuneració <4.5>.
Aquest programa constava d'estudiar immers en el món acadèmic americà durant quinze anys, molt car per les fallides arques dels manxus. Durant quatre anys van arrivar 30 nous estudiants -la majoria de Cantón- a Conneticut. Es va aturar el 1881 per dues coses: els joves de quinze anys <4.6> es van tornar massa desarrelats pels gustos dels supervisors manxús i Washington no va permetre estudiar els joves a l’Acadèmia Militar de West Point. Malgrat això si van poder participar en les carreres professionals que aferien la nova industria xinesa dels 1880