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EVERY FEW WEEKS, a bus carrying well-dressed Chinese students draws into Kildare Village.
The luxury outlet centre offers a hefty discount to members of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, the global organisation for overseas Chinese students – as well as a free return bus service from Dublin.
The society has grown to include 17 third-level branches with over 6,000 registered members since launching in Ireland back in 2004.
Partly funded by the Chinese embassy, it holds regular social and networking events for the new wave of Chinese students now studying here.
Source of revenue
The CSSA’s growth is just one strand in the story of how Irish higher education has internationalised in recent years.
Higher Education Authority statistics show a gradual rise in the number of Chinese students in full-time third-level education here – from 1,596 in the 2012-13 academic year and 1,706 in 2013-14 to 1,745 in 2014-15.
Most are from the country’s rapidly expanding middle class and can afford to pay full tuition, making them an important source of revenue for cash-strapped Irish universities.
With rising youth unemployment in China, ambitious students understand the advantage of holding a degree from a European or US university once they enter the country’s crowded graduate job market.
The big appeal of Irish institutions, however, is their relatively low admission requirements.
Students whose grades fall short of Ivy League or Oxbridge requirements can study here before applying to higher-ranked institutions that are more likely to recognise Irish qualifications than Chinese.
Recruitment strategies
For Trinity College Dublin, which hopes to at least double its Chinese student numbers by the 2018-19 academic year, recruitment strategies include partnerships with Chinese universities and selected education agents, visits to key schools and presentations at education fairs.
Social media has also been used to attract potential students on popular Chinese platforms such as Youku and Weibo, where the university shares campus news and Chinese-language videos about Dublin.
UCD, too, has its own Youku profile, as well as a Weibo page followed by over 61,000 users.
Of all Irish universities, it has been the most aggressive in recruiting Chinese students, who now make up about 10% of its non-EU student population.
Its new Chinese campus, UCD Yantai – which is due to open in the Shandong Province in 2016 – will cater to up to 10,000 students.
The university also announced plans to launch a new global centre in Beijing last year, while over 500 students are now enrolled at the Beijing-Dublin International College, an institution it established in 2012 with the support of the Beijing University of Technology.
Forging links with China
However, the relationship between Chinese authorities and Irish universities seeking to attract international students has not been without controversy.
UCD’s Confucius Institute, which is overseen by Chinese government body Hanban, is part of a global network of cultural organisations that have been accused of operating as a propaganda arm of the Chinese state.
In America, several have been closed by universities concerned about the infringement of academic freedoms.
But despite some unease about its opening, UCD’s own institute will be housed in its own dedicated campus building from next year, thanks in part to Irish government funding.
As for the increasing number of Chinese students who come to Ireland, the majority will return home after their studies.
The Chinese government scholarships that support most Chinese postgraduates studying here stipulate that sponsored students must return to work in China for at least two years after college.
Others stay on, often finding work with the growing number of Irish-based companies looking east for new opportunities.
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Sure why not if it is keepimg the facilities afloat. As it is many irish graduates have to go abroad to seek work in their field as there is nothing here for them.
Get off the woe is me bandwagon, things are good here. Maybe literally not in your field, but the grass is quite green here.
Things might be better for some people than they were a few years ago but for many, students and non-students, the “recovery” is still just a nice sound bite. Over 1 in 3 students still plan to go abroad once they leave college, every day more and more individuals and entire families are made homeless, college accommodation has reached such a crisis that many students literally cannot find a place to live in places like Maynooth, Galway, Cork and I’m sure other cities/towns. It’s not jumping on the woe is me bandwagon just because you don’t blindly swallow the rhetoric that everything is grand again.
There is an international competition to attract these students and the resource they bring and we need to stay competitive. I exchanged business cards with my UK equivalent from the nearest ranked University internationally in my specialty at an international meeting last year. The reverse of his business card was written in Cantonese, the reverse of mine complied with national policy and was written in Irish. After all, it’s crucial for my international contacts to know that I’m Ollamh Comhlach i Seaneolaiocht Leighis.
My ucd business card is in English on one side and blank the other. That’s normal- there is no requirement otherwise.
Just wait, coming to a college near you soon! https://www.tcd.ie/Communications/local/identity-guidelines/
And it’s new policy in UCD that they should be bilingual http://www.ucd.ie/visualidentity/ucd_brand_guidelines.pdf
Insert “Great Bunch of Lads” Comment
This is good for the universities and for the Irish economy . Chinese students from my experience tend to work hard be very intelligent polite and are easy to get along with. The same is true for the graduates I’ve worked with. There are many areas in industry that Irish universities are not filling . Irish students need to be encouraged into more science and tech subjects from school. We need highly qualified graduates from other countries and we should try to attract some of these Chinese graduates back to work here once their two years is up back in China.
it was obvious its a buy in, i’d say saudi arabia are sending € thousands into them as well.
As the numbers of Chinese students continue to grow, challenges in international student recruitment will continue to also arise. Firstly, destinations like the USA and even the UK will no longer be the only target country – as this article shows, Ireland and other countries are also aggressively courting the Chinese student market. This means that each university, particularly “non-famous” ones, is now competing against more and more market saturation. Secondly, universities who wish to recruit international students may make the mistake of thinking that Chinese students are an “easy” market due to their numbers. But universities who rely on one demographic sometimes find that staff members, professors, academic advisors, and other campus colleagues are unprepared for the influx of one single population, all with distinct cultural differences and needs. Internationalization is not just the recruitment of international students – it’s also making sure the home campus is prepared to receive the students.
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