Derek Li has just turned 17. He studies at one of the top local schools in Guangzhou and will start his penultimate year of senior school this August. It’s July, and that can only mean one thing: summer vacation. While most of Derek’s friends will spend the next four weeks slogging away at holiday homework, Derek is about to embark on an adventure.
In a few days, he’ll hop on a plane bound for the United States, where he’ll sit through English language classes and drink in American culture with a home-stay experience in Boston. He’ll head to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and New York, and visit the campuses of some of the biggest and most prestigious names in American tertiary education. Derek, a shy, thoughtful student, is confident his summer experience will give him an extra edge in the fierce competition among Chinese students to get into a top college. The price tag for this ‘experience?’ Undisclosed. His folks aren’t telling, as it’s just not kosher to brag, is it?
As China undergoes a drastic transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-oriented one, the education sector in particular has benefited tremendously. The surge in students traveling abroad – especially to the US and Europe – for the summer is the latest manifestation of China’s booming overseas education business. Until lately, the vast number of Chinese education agencies that brokered students’ entry to colleges and private high schools concentrated on preparing them at home in China. They drilled well-off fee payers in all forms of dialogue and social graces; in the intricacies of the various admissions processes, aiming to give them an upper hand.
But as wealth increases, so are the ambitions of parents and their offspring. Now, it’s all about sending the kids off for a few weeks to ‘yingdi’ – camp programs for children. With total costs in excess of RMB40,000, and sometimes reaching RMB100,000, it’s a badge of prestige for Chinese mothers and fathers. More than that, it’s also a brilliant way for overseas schools and universities to partner up with local educational and training institutions to make money during those otherwise quiet summer months.
One such institution is New York-based Ivy Summer School, which specializes in summer camps in the US for Chinese students – and more recently, the other way around. Chairwoman Jojo Zou says they offers almost 30 different types of programs in America, depending on budget and the student’s academic preferences and interests. From concentrated activities like volleyball, hockey, horse-riding, swimming lessons from an Olympic coach, cooking, film studies and music at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, to band camp, space camp and various others camps at Brown, Duke, UC Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Columbia and more.
Indeed, the options are just baffling. Zou knows this market well and is acutely aware that the future isn’t just in Chinese students going overseas; it’s increasingly about American students coming to China to learn more about the 21st-century powerhouse and interact with locals in a lingo that they’ve been attempting to master back home.
“It works both ways,” says Zou. “Families entrust us with the task of educating their children outside of the regular education system. We provide a cross-cultural service that is very beneficial for students looking to expand their horizons, meet friends and alumni from future overseas schools, and also get a chance to meet industry greats and get up close and personal with professionals in elite circles.
“In a nutshell, we bring out the best in a child and help them realize their full potential.”
Zou speaks from personal experience. The charismatic and very well-connected former TV host is a graduate of Columbia University, an Ivy League college, and holds a master's degree in international public affairs.
As you read this, Derek Li will be playing golf in Massachusetts, visiting the Google campus, and engaging in advanced programming and application development at MIT. How’s that for a future Chinese leader?
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