Education, Migration and Family Relations Between China and the UK by Mengwei Tu

Author:Mengwei Tu [Tu, Mengwei]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787548657
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2020-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Table 5: Parental involvement in the study-abroad decision.

Parental Involvement in the Decision to Study Abroad

Non-One-Childa

One-Child

Initiated by parents

0

10

Ambiguous decision process

0

 6

Initiated by child and supported by both parents

2

 9

Initiated by child but opposed by at least one parent

3

 2

aOne non-one-child’s migration was entirely planned by the older sibling, thus it is not included in the table.

As is shown in Table 5, the majority of parents fully supported their child(ren)’s going abroad (in most cases study abroad). Acting as the financial resource provider for their child(ren)’s overseas study6 was the most direct and common way for parents to support their child. There was a sense of taken-for-grantedness among child and parent respondents that parents should pay for the child’s overseas education.7 Parents who were the migration initiators tended to have a higher income and a higher level of education. Nevertheless, parents who were relatively less well-off also funded their child’s study abroad in response to the child’s initiative.

In the case of the least well-off one-child family where the parents were both factory workers, Bolin’s mother recalled the day when her daughter said that she wanted to study for a Master’s degree abroad:

My first response was, how much money? We didn’t have much savings. So how much was our flat worth?… I borrowed bit by bit from relatives…I just thought, if she wants to study, then I must support her education … my daughter always knew I’d support her study no matter what.

The possibility of a student loan from banks or other institutions was absent from this cohort’s decision-making. This was partly to do with the lack of an established student loan system in China and the lack of student loan experience among Chinese families. Moreover, the emphasis on education in the traditional Confucian culture has been to place the family as the prime supporter for its members’ education (Bodycott, 2009, Fong, 2004, Mazzarol & Soutar, 2002).

The willingness of parents to invest in their children’s education was not exclusive to Chinese parents. Students from other East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea, funded by their parents, also make up a significant part of international students in Western universities. Although education has been perceived as important for an individual’s socioeconomic mobility in most countries, the Confucian Asian societies place a particular emphasis on the value of education for the family. Thus, gaining entrance to a high-status university is not only the individual’s achievement, but it is also a success for the family and the failure to obtain such value would bring shame to the family. Therefore, the ‘practical and economic value of education, in conjunction with the value placed on family success, has traditionally provided a strong motivation for families to invest heavily in the education of their children’ (Choi & Nieminen, 2013). Following this argument parents are expected to support their children’s education as much as they can in order to meet the culturally assigned obligations.

Such cultural factors are likely to contribute to the taken-for-grantedness of the parental financial role found in the study abroad decision among the respondents.

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