Sea Turtle Index: Guide to International Education
As
China grows wealthier, the nation’s banks are looking to lock in more of the
expanding pool of high-end customers. One of the targeted groups is families
with enough cash on hand to consider a college education abroad for their kids.
Bank of Communications, China’s fifth largest bank by assets, is one of those
banks and it is hoping it has found a way to get to the front of the class. It
has teamed up with the Economist Intelligence Unit to create a guide for anxious
parents looking for the right university for their son or daughter, rating key
cities around the world not only for their educational standards but also on a
range of other factors – like future employment prospects — to assess
educational “bang for the buck.”
Who is a sea turtle
In Chinese culture, a “sea turtle” is
a high-flying graduate of an overseas university, who has reaped the benefits of
a top-rate global education and immersion in another culture, and is typically
coveted by employers upon return to his/her home country
Story Behind
For many families, the next generation’s education destination is the single most important investment choice they will make. Bank of Communications is dedicated to supporting its clients in making informed choices, no matter what the investment type, and this is how the idea for the Bank of Communications Sea Turtle Index was born. This unique concept was developed through objective, independent research and analysis by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
INDEX DETAILS AND METHODOLOGY
The Bank of Communications Sea Turtle Index ranks 80 cities. These were chosen first by
clustering the top 300 universities from
the QS World University Rankings into major cities, allowing for richer data
and greater regional diversity in results. EIU analysts then used OECD
statistics on the percentage of international students going to each country to
decide on the number of cities to feature per country.
The headline Bank of Communications Sea Turtle Index is
devised from 24 indicators, divided into five sub-indices (or ‘categories’) that
rank cities by potential educational returns, financial returns,
real-estate-related returns, work experience and social experience. The
indicators are assessed based on data gathered by the EIU in February and March
2013, through both primary and secondary research. The indicator scores are then
normalised and aggregated across sub-indices to enable comparison.
WEIGHTINGS
To compile the headline index, the EIU ascribed different
weightings to the sub-indices representing each of the five factors. Educational returns received the highest
weighting since this factor is likely to influence most people’s decisions
more strongly than any other. Work
experience was weighted second highest, followed by social experience
and—weighted equally—financial returns and real estate returns.
On the ‘Your index’ page, available only to clients of
Bank of Communications Private Banking Service, users are able to adjust weights
according to their own priorities and create their own, customised city
ranking.
For more details on the methodology and sources behind
the Bank of Communications Sea Turtle Index, please download the White
Paper.
|
- Educational returns: Quality and reputation of education vs value for money
- Real estate returns: Openness, potential returns and risk with regard to real estate investments
- Financial returns: Openness, growth prospects and risk with regard to financial investments
- Work experience: Work and pay prospects for overseas graduates
- Social experience: Quality of the social and cultural experience on offer
.
overall ranking
rank
|
city
|
score
| |||
The
Sea Turtle Index doesn’t say which universities are best. But it tries to assess
which cities provide the best overall environment for university-level
studies.
It
rates how welcoming a country is – Canada and Australia make it easier for
students stay on after graduation, for example. It also takes into consideration
job placement services and overall social experience – which includes cultural
vibrancy as well as local crime levels.
The
study has produced some surprising results. Montreal tops the list, followed by
London, Hong Kong and Toronto.
“Montreal
offers the best overall return on an overseas undergraduate education: A mixture
of top-quality universities, openness to foreign students and investors, and
cultural vibrancy” account for the city’s world-beating score, according to the
index’s creators.
“Hong
Kong has been taking a major step up in terms of its universities,” said Leo
Abruzzese, the global forecasting director for the EIU.
High
costs, the lack of a job-seeker visa program and higher crime rates hampered
U.S. cities. Only Boston and New York scored in the top
ten.
The quality of education at institutions
in the city is important, but Canada’s welcoming immigration policies, offering
good opportunities for employment after graduation, also make it an appealing
destination,” the index’s creators said. “Its comparative openness to foreign
investors and its cultural diversity also boost its attractiveness as a
destination for international undergraduates.”London’s educational returns and cultural diversity helped it reach second place, whilst Hong Kong’s openness to investment and high real estate returns ranked it in third.
Montreal’s southern neighbour Toronto followed closely in fourth place, attesting the success of Canada’s fragmented educational system where the ten provinces are held responsible for the quality of education, thus fuelling competition within the public sector. “There’s a very intense battle to maintain quality and for each province to have a good education system,” “To find an equivalent concentration and quality of universities, you have to look at other cities which are much, much more expensive”. Other findings emphasise the importance of an “open environment” cushioning foreign students with welcoming immigration policies and a wealth of employment opportunities upon graduation.
Overall trends spoke to richer Asian cities scoring highly and the continent as a whole offering more “bang for the educational buck,” beating cities such as Boston, which houses elite institutions: Harvard and MIT.
Returning
students
Plight
of the sea turtles
Students
coming back home helped build modern China. So why are they now faring so poorly
in the labour market?
Jul
6th 2013 | SHANGHAI |From the print
edition: Economist
“I
LEFT in 1980 with only three dollars in my pocket,” recalls Li Sanqi. He was one
of the first allowed to study overseas after the dark days of the Cultural
Revolution. Like most in that elite group, he excelled, rising to a coveted
position at the University of Texas, while launching several technology firms.
Now he is a senior executive at Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, enticed back
by the chance to help build a world-class multinational.
Mr
Li seems the perfect example of a sea turtle, or hai gui (in Mandarin,
the phrase “return across the sea” sounds similar to that animal’s name), long
applauded in China for bringing back advanced skills. In the past such folk
reliably reaped handsome premiums in the local job market, but no longer. Sea turtles are not universally praised,
the wage differential is shrinking and some are even unable to find jobs.
Wags say they should now be called hai dai, or seaweed. This is a
startling turn, given their past contributions.
Sea
turtles are helping to link China’s economy to the world. They founded leading
technology firms such as Baidu. Many are senior managers in the local divisions
of multinational firms. They are helping to connect China to commercial,
political and popular culture abroad.
Why
then is their importance declining? Several studies show that sea turtles on
average must now wait longer to find a less senior post at a smaller salary
premium over local hires. The weakening job market for all graduates is one
reason. Another is that, as China’s domestic market has taken off, industries
such as e-commerce have evolved in ways unfamiliar to those who spent years
abroad. Gary Rieschel of Qiming Ventures, a venture-capital firm, says that
investors who a decade ago would have funded only those returning from Silicon
Valley are now backing entrepreneurs from local universities, who are more
familiar with local consumption patterns, computer-gaming habits and social
media such as Weibo and Weixin.
As
China has boomed, its managers have started to shed their inferiority complex. A
senior executive at Tencent, a Chinese social-media giant, says he still poaches
sea turtles from foreign firms, but finds they have difficulty managing local
engineers. Even foreign firms in China are getting pickier about whom they hire.
Yannig Gourmelon of Roland Berger, a German management consultancy, believes the
broader profit squeeze at multinational firms that killed off gilded expatriate
packages has also sharply reduced the salary premium offered to sea
turtles.
C
grade turtles
There
is another explanation: many of the latest wave are of lower quality. In the
past, only the very best were allowed to go out and so competition for
government scholarships was fierce. But as incomes have risen, many families of
mediocre Chinese students have spent a
fortune on degrees from universities of dubious quality that do little to
enhance their job prospects. Worse yet, partly because of the downturn in Western
economies, many have come back without work
experience.
Even
as hordes of less employable expatriates return, the brightest remain abroad. A
study funded by America’s National Science Foundation found that 92% of Chinese
with American PhDs still lived in that country five years after graduation. For
Indians, the figure was 81%, for South Koreans 41% and for Mexicans
32%.
Comments
Post a Comment