According to China Daily on Oct. 24, “the European Union leads the United States as a destination for Chinese students“. The number of Chinese students studying in EU universities given by Jan Figel, the European Commissioner for Education, Training and Youth, was a record high of 120,000 in 2006. And, “the European Union is planning a “blue card” to lure highly skilled migrants by offering financial and housing benefits, and cutting red tape”.

According to news report, the 2007 ranking of the world’s best universities by the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiaotong University was recently released, with Harvard on the top. This ranking is known in some places as “the Shanghai Ranking”, and it is mainly based on six categories of criteria including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel and other academic prizes or having their research work published in domestic or the world’s top academic journals.

By this ranking, among the top ten on the list, eight are American universities including Stanford, MIT, and Princeton. The Cambridge and Oxford in Britain secured the fourth and tenth places. Out of the top 100 best universities, 54 are located in the United States, 31 are in Europe, and nine in the Asia and Pacific region. Tsinghua University and Peking University, the most renowned two universities in the Chinese mainland, ranked 167 and 228 respectively, lagging behind the 161st Taiwan University.

A recent survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong shows that the United States is still at the top position when Chinese students choose their destinations for study abroad. France ranks the second in the report, overtaking the U.K. who has been in the second position for many years.

According to the report, the survey was conducted between March and April, 2007 in 7 cities among 13,000 students who are going to graduate in July this year. It appears that part of the purpose of the survey is to find out how students in the mainland would view Hong Kong as one of their destinations for study outside the Chinese mainland. The result is that Hong Kong is actually in the 10th position. More detailed ranking is as follows:

1. the United States 17.7%
2. France 12.4%
3. the U.K. 11.2%
4. Canada 8.6%
5. Australia 8.0%
6. Singapore 6.7%
7. Japan 6.7%
8. South Korea 6.3%
9. Germany 5.8%
10. Hong Kong S.A.R. 3.8%

In respect to subject areas, the survey reveals that Economics and Management goes to the top, taking 24.4% in the survey, while Social Sciences taking 10.1% and Computer Science and Software Engineering taking 9.9%.

Given the fact that in the following 5 years, there are going to be about 10 million students looking for a seat in higher education each year, more and more graduates from secondary education would be forced to explore other options, since the capacity of higher education provision is limited and only half of the applicants can have the opportunity. The significance of the survey is that it provides with us some indications with regard to geographic preferences when people making their choices of study abroad.