Lead: Chinese students who study abroad used to be among the most sough-after workers in China. Now, they are increasingly facing barriers to employment. Negative stereotypes and the rising quality of domestic education have Chinese employers turning their backs on the once-venerated "sea turtles.' In many ways, their story encapsulates the cultural conflicts internal to China as the nation continues its rapid pace of globalisation.
As recently as a few years ago, Chinese students who traveled abroad in pursuit of higher education were known as 'sea turtles'. This was seen as high praise - the turtle is revered as a symbol of luck in Chinese culture -- and these students were viewed as among the most fortunate of their generation. Today, these students are known by the much less flattering sobriquet of 'seaweed'.
When they were sea turtles, Chinese students who studied in the West were virtually guaranteed to have the best job prospects upon their return to China. Today, "seaweed" students have no such guarantees. Degrees from Western universities have decreased significantly in value in the past few years. Coming home from the West with freshly-inked parchment no longer offers the same employment prospects. Indeed, many such students now face significant barriers to finding work in China.
Tony studied at the University of Birmingham in England, returned to China two years ago with a degree and has struggled to find gainful employment since his return. He relates that when he left China six years ago, Chinese businesses generally viewed a diploma from the West favourably. Chinese companies at the time preferred to hire those who had studied abroad. Not only was the quality of the education perceived as superior, but graduates of Western schools generally had better command of English or other foreign languages, giving them an advantage over students at Chinese universities.
The expectation, Tony says, was that the degree was by itself a strong qualification, and most who returned from the West with degrees were virtually guaranteed a high-paying job on their return to China. His experience tells another story, however, one that has left him disappointed...
The first is that the value of a Western degree has diminished in the eyes of Chinese managers in the wake of substantial negative publicity in the Chinese media. Stories have circulated widely in the domestic media, citing stories of wealthy students purchasing degrees rather than earning them, about how Western schools take unqualified Chinese students simply to make money, and about students who use agencies to qualify them for a good university. The Nottingham scandal, where an agency falsified grades and reference letters to have students admitted to universities for which they were unqualified, is among the incidents that have left a big impression on Chinese managers.
While these scandals diminished the perception of Western education among Chinese managers, China's own universities were improving the quality of their educational offerings. In particular, an emphasis on language studies has effectively removed one of the most significant competitive advantages that who with a Western degree had -- language. Foreign language qualifications, especially English, are considered almost mandatory for high-level jobs in some Chinese companies, and a Western degree was a guarantee of language competency. Strong improvements in the language programs at Chinese universities now mean that students who have studied in China will also have strong foreign language skills. Without this competitive advantage, students who have studied abroad are forced to compete on the basis of the quality of their degrees. Given the high level of publicity surrounding the scandals, that has proven to be increasingly difficult.
"I talked with one employer who told me directly that he wasn't going to hire a student with a Western diploma," Tony relates, explaining how the new negative stereotypes affect him. "He had bad experiences in the past working with students who had studied in the West. He said that their performance was poor and that their salary demands were excessive. When that is how Chinese managers think, how…
