A university town and attraction/re-attraction of international students: an investigation into Dushu Lake higher education town in Suzhou, China

ABSTRACT

While the attraction of international students makes a direct impact on the host city and the education institutions, retention (or reattraction) of them after their graduation can generate wider, indirect impacts on the local labor market. The link from international study to the labor market means the role of a gateway played out by the host city that offers university education and various urban attributes. This paper presents the relationship between international tertiary students, and the key factors for their attraction and re-attraction in the context of China. The case of the Dushu Lake Higher Education Town in Suzhou is investigated for how international students have interacted with the local built environment and whether this affects their plans to remain locally for work. This research found that the place based offer was generally less significant than the quality of academic institutions and economic prospects in attracting and re-attracting international students.

KEYWORDS:

• International students
• University towns
• Dushu Lake higher education town

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Emeritus Professor Kevin O’Connor who gave insightful comments. I would like to give thanks to anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. I would like to express my appreciation to Mr. Yuyi Zhao for his research assistance. He supported to carry out survey questionnaires. Any remaining error is the responsibility of the authors. This research was supported by the Australia-China (CASS) Joint Action Program 2016, Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For further detail, see Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools website, http://www.crs.jsj.edu.cn/

2 Student City of the UK, http://studentcities.uk/index.html.

3 As all identified international students were invited to the survey questionnaire, the response rate was about 8% for this research.

4 SKEMA and GIST are used as official names of these universities without spelling out.

5 Internal data from Suzhou Dushu Lake Science and Education Innovation District Administrative Committee.

6 Developed countries were identified whether the origin country was one of the OECD countries.

7 The duration of stay might be associated with the perception of the specified urban attributes and/or prospect on China’s job market as an endogenous factor. However, this variable was included in the model to avoid an omitted variable bias as it can measure the former connection to China which can be an important factor in planning for future career paths.

8 Female students’ career plans might be developed in conjunction with their long-term planning, not just where to study, but also where to work after study although this is not confirmed by the analysis.