What Majors to Choose
In Chinese study-abroad market, one very common complaint about the agencies, is that “they only help to apply for those universities that are easy to get in,” said Mr ZE Tang when he find out the schools and major his agents did for him are mainly those with high possibility of entering for Chinese students.
“In the early years, most students and agents would choose majors in business and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math),” said Coco Ren, a Beijing girl studying in Math now in Hong Kong.
“Chinese students are relatively good in these fields,” said Ren: “and these majors give Chinese students a better chance for immigration and job-searching in foreign countries.”
“Eight in ten Chinese students abroad are major in business of STEM ten years ago,” said Shan Tongxun, a classmate of Ren: “but more and more students are looking for development in other fields now, though it’s still minority”.
Shan applied for fashion design four years ago by herself, she now studying in New York for her dream major.
“Some agencies nowadays have opened the options for those less popular majors as well,” said Shan: “like majors in arts.”
World International that was founded by Ms QM Han is one of them, Han would introduce some less well-known majors and universities to students and parents occasionally.
“Some majors, like Linguistics and Recreation management, are less favoured by students,” said Han in her company’s post: “but they are dark horses in job-searching.”
Hiture, the study-abroad consulting company that was founded by Mr Shui, has a independent part in their service focus on top art majors’ development and application in global scale.
Agents vs Consultants
As more and more top students start to pay attention to some very detailed, specific application directions that are different from normal applicants, the requirement for agencies’ level became higher and higher.
“For those students that can get in top 20 universities by their own ability, they don’t need you to write personal statement for them at all,” said Mr Shui in a video he conducted to introduce the industry: “what they want is a professional helper that knows the target universities and their requirements well, a person who has insight that can dig out the student’s talent.”
Another agency's founder, Ms Han QM, also indicates the importance of individuation: “each student has his/her own way, a good future plan help him/her to notice his/her own advantages and possibilities, but not ‘one set of plan for everybody’”.
According to Mr Shui, some top universities would even refuse to receive an applicant if he/she was found to be apply through agencies. The enquiry of better service: study-abroad consultant, thus came alone.
Nowadays, China’s study-abroad industry generally classifies two different type of business: one is the modern version of traditional study-abroad agency, another, is the study-abroad consultant.
The rise of consulting model in oversea education application has to trace back to the US’s policy regarding Chinese students’ visa, which played an important factor in early stage’s oversea education. The United State, as the hottest destination for Chinese students to choose today, didn’t open its gate till 2005.
Before 2005, the business of the study-abroad agencies mainly focus on schools in Canada, Australia, the UK and other European countries.
“There are indeed some very good schools (in those countries),” said Mr Shui in a video he conducted to introduce the differences between study-abroad agencies and consultants: “but the difficulty of getting in was much less than those good ones in the US”. As a result, the application process has been industrialized into simple steps of “pay the money, and go abroad to study” by most agencies before 2005.
“In fact, if you have enough money and a relatively reasonable score, it’s not hard for you to get in those schools,” said Mr Shui: “
at that time, surely there were good students going abroad, but mostly they were ones that can’t get in good universities inside China.
Year 2005 served as a watershed in the history and development of study-abroad business, after the broad openness of US visas, more and more top students start to get admission into the top US universities: “since the day study-abroad consultant started, it was meant to serve different kind of customers,” said Mr Shui.
“Those top students, they’re fully capable of applying by themselves, just that they don’t know the industry as well as the professional consultants, and they can save great time and attention to do other important things,” said the founder of Hiture.
World International, the agency that was founded by Ms QM Han, is a consulting-based agency that devote to customise private education plan for each student. They put the word “high-end” in their introduction: “it basically means that we help students to get in the university that suit them the best,” said Ms Han: “world-ranking is very important too, mostly Chinese parents care a lot on that.”
The difference in the target market leads to the variation in the operation of the business.
According to Mr Shui, a normal circle for study-abroad agency to work is: the agency approach to foreign universities to get the dealership; then the seller, also known as the first-stage agents to customers, would help students to make a plan on which institutions he/she should apply and sign the contract; later the company’s document team would help write and refine the required writing materials; finally, the material submitting agent, who may be the same one as the second-stage agent if the company is small, would be responsible of filling in application form and other things.
However, the target universities of study-abroad consultants are those top ones who would never cooperate with any agency as they don’t have the concern of lacking students.
A normal process of a study-abroad consultant thus would be: introducing the company’s characters to the customers; after signing the contract, the consultant would help to plan which majors and universities suit this student; as for the less skillful jobs like filling in application forms and submitting materials, consultants would normally leave that to customers themselves.
“The main responsibility of a consultant is to study those highly competitive universities, the the difficulties to get in and what kind of students they are looking for,” said Mr Shui, whose company is a high-end study-abroad consulting one as well: “also, to know the customer, to figure out what type of further study they need, and in what way can they help accomplish the customer’s ultimate goal.”
Also, in the process of plan making, agencies would focus on the countries to apply, while consultants would pay more attention on the majors but not locations.
This kind of segregation only exists in highly competitive English-speaking countries, noted by Mr Shui, for other destinations like Germany, Japan and others, there’s basically no consultants but only agencies.
However, as described in some interviewees, the study-abroad services they hired usually do not have a clear definition that fits Mr Shui’s introduction, what they’ve experienced are mainly a mixture of the two models: a so-called consulting company would also help document writing, filling and submitting application materials; a company that seems is running the process of agency could also help apply for top 20 universities in the US.
No matter what business model they are in, one thing in common for the whole industry is the lack of manpower and people with strong ability.
Staff Mobility
Study-abroad agency service, as a newly born business raised in the recent ten years, is experiencing strong competitiveness from both inside and outside the industry.
The key position in the business, agents and consultants, are highly unstable in one company.
As reported in Chongqing of China, the income of a good consultant in a big company is much lower than the payment he/she would receive if he/she take customers privately outside the company.
“A consultant may even take jobs from different agencies,” said Ms Wong, a staff of a study-abroad agency in Chongqing: “you can’t stop them from doing so,
good consultants are the live posters in the business
Also, good consultants are very likely to leave the big companies and start their own business. Mr Shui was one of them. After spending couple of years in big agencies doing agent and training work, he started Hiture after that to “refuse all kinds of lies and tricks, give the industry a clean and healthy atmosphere”.
It’s really hard to absorb some talented people into this business, said Mr Shui: “become a consultant or agent basically means the graduates have to give up most of what he/she has leant in the university and start over”.
Usually it would take at least one year and more than 15 cases to train a qualified consultant.
New Challenges
Moreover, the foreign consultants and agents have become a “killer” in the industry. Some agent would invite many foreign graduates or teachers that came from Ivy League or some other top universities to be part of their team.
Dear Mentor, for instance, is a “person-to-person” platform that regularly offers online sharings and lectures regarding topics that are attractive to many graduating students.
They took good use of the social media platforms like WeChat public account to promote their business.
In their latest lecture, Dear Mentor invited a student that’s studying in NYU for public relation, this young girl also got offers from five other top universities with scholarship when she was applying. To get in the group that would have the live lecture’s link, one has to repost the advertisement of the lecture to his/her own feeds and gain at least five “likes”. This method made them well-known in the social network of universities students in a short time.
Except for this, Dear Mentor is also very good at maintaining its customer’s adhesiveness. They’d post useful materials for English learning or tests preparation occasionally. For example “the whole package of Harry Potter’s movies and books in both Chinese and English”, or “70+ outstanding reference letter model” etc.
Base on their successful promotion on social media, they have their own team of consultant that focus on postgraduate and PhD applications, covering “over 50 different majors in more than 200 universities internationally,” said in their introduction.
Except for all the factors listed above, a study-abroad agency also faces pressure from traditional high schools. In recent years, more and more high schools in China had started “Going-abroad classes” that contribute to help those students that want to go oversea for future education.
Ms Shan Tongxun was one of the students in “Going-abroad class” in the No.4 High School of Beijing four years ago.
“Students in this class have to sign the agreement with school promising that you won’t take China’s University Entrance Examination,” said Shan: “then you can focus on foreign institutions’ application. The school would also introduce a lot of resources to you.”
Compared to a study-abroad agency, the “Going-abroad class” is cheaper, said Shan: “also, with the whole class experiencing the same thing as you are, we help each other to overcome the troubles along the process, it was not necessary to hire an agent.”
Ending Words
As the number of Chinese young people seeking the chance of studying abroad grew over the years, the business related to that also grew from simple English and test training (from 1880s to 1990s), to visa preparation (early 2000s), to the comprehensive application package preparation and application guidance (2005 till today).
Thanks to more and more social attention and the much developed regulations and laws, in the information age after the 2010s, students and parents get to enjoy the benefit of both the internet and a bigger scale’s agency market.
“The commonness of internet has deduct the information asymmetry that was set between applicants and their target institutions for decades, agencies’ service has thus became more and more transparent in order to match the customer's knowledge. The broad use of internet has also provided the study-abroad agencies with brand new methods of upgrading their service into a more detail, more constant one,” as analysed by Ernst & Young in a 2014’s report.
The group of young people that seeking for oversea education changed as well. “Especially after the financial crisis in 2008, more and more of the Chinese applicants are top ones in their country that aim on top universities in the world, instead of rich ones who only wants to ‘overgold’ himself/herself with some foreign education background,” said Mr Shui.
“Five years ago people still thought that only bad students, who can’t survive the cruel University Entrance Examination in China would be sent abroad,” said Ms Zhang, a parent in Yunnan province of China: “now we’ve seen a lot of good kids going out as well. Seems that other countries’ education do provide the children with a broader view with greater possibilities.”
A teacher in Yunnan’s best high school agreed: “it’s the polarization of two extreme kinds of students,” said Ms YS Zhang: “half of the students that going abroad are bad students that can’t earn a good result in China’s university entrance pressure, half of them are top students that looking for better development in the top colleges of the world.”
"One thing is common is that they’re all have a rich family"
Corresponding to the changes in the market and customers, the model of study-abroad agencies shifted gradually. Now the service has became a lot more personal and individual:
“It’s more about each student’s specific situation now. If you’re applying for a oversea PhD degree, agencies and consultants would help you to promote your academic performance; if you are applying for master’s degree and looking for jobs after that, they will help you with internship and relative background building,” said Mr Shui.
Another agency's founder, Ms Han QM, also indicates the importance of individuation: “each student has his/her own way, a good future plan help him/her to notice his/her own advantages and possibilities. It’s not ‘one set of plan, one choice of future for everybody’ anymore”.