Chinese students crowd into US master's classes: advantages and disadvantages

Chinese students crowd into US master's classes: advantages and disadvantages The Wall Street Journal, when the University of California, Davis School of Business launched an accounting master's program last year, its original intention was to attract nearby universities...

Chinese students crowd into US master's classes: advantages and disadvantages Wall Street Journal, when the UC Davis School of Business launched a master's degree in accounting last year, it was originally intended to attract accounting graduates from nearby universities, but what was unexpected was that two-thirds of the applicants were from China. Stevens, the school's assistant dean, said the course was designed to help students obtain an accounting license and they were shocked by the number of overseas applicants. In addition to accounting, the university's other majors, such as the master's degree program in finance, have also become very popular among Chinese students in recent years. Their goal is to gain a competitive advantage in the workplace and learn from American experience. Nowadays, traditional MBA courses have gradually lost their appeal to American students. The enthusiasm of the Chinese people undoubtedly provides business schools with a stable income, but such an uneven student composition also makes schools worry that it will affect the classroom atmosphere. Because of the rapid development of China's financial industry, Chinese companies need to hire talents with undergraduate degrees or above, and the good reputation of American higher education makes students highly attractive to multinational companies. In the 2011/2012 Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), approximately 60,000 Chinese students took part, approximately three times the number in 2007/2008. Last year, 78% of Chinese candidates’ GMAT scores were sent to schools in the United States, and 64% of Chinese candidates’ GMAT scores were sent to schools around the world. One of them is 23-year-old Ying Ding. She studied in Chinese universities and the University of California, Berkeley. Because she wants to increase her Western experience, she is currently studying in the master's class of the Department of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. 85% of her classmates are from foreign countries. The school pointed out that most of these international students are from Asia. Ding Ying is not sure whether the demographic composition of her classmates is a good thing. She said that everyone always likes to hang out with people of the same ethnic group. Among the current 12 students in the Master of Finance class at Loyola University Chicago's Quinlan School of Business, 11 are international students, eight of whom are from China. This combination of students is a challenge for teachers, students and school administrators. "When a group of students in a class have something in common that is very different from other students, the atmosphere in the class will change," said Gates, the college's dean. This fall, the college will require international students to take courses in business communications and U.S. classroom habits. To enhance employment opportunities for international students, the college will also arrange interviews with companies interested in hiring international students and pair them with American classmates to ease culture shock. But some schools worry that they will become favorites among Chinese students or students from a single country, while discouraging local students and students from other countries. The University of Notre Dame, Indiana University and the MIT Business School are currently seeking to recruit undergraduate students into their master's classes to make the master's class students more diverse. Moreover, applicants from overseas will also ask about the composition of the class. They hope that their classmates are all Americans, and they do not want to enter a class where the students around them are from their home country.