Since 2009, EduGlobal has started to focus most of our event activities on second-tier cities in China. The market in the larger, first-tier cities, is quickly reaching saturation point in terms of the amount of information available for students and also with competition between the various education service providers and agents getting more and more intense.
Students in these first-tier cities have a plethora of choices when it comes to education services. However, some second-tier cities are beginning to show strong student recruitment numbers and have potential ability for further growth. Second-tier students need to be made more aware of the choices available to them - the same choices that their first-tier counterparts have been aware of for quite some time.
Some institutions might doubt the student quality from second-tier cities but it seems that many of these institutions are ill-informed. These cities have large numbers of high quality students who have less chance to go to the top universities in China. Their first-tier counterparts, more times than not, scoop the prestigious top university places, not because second-tier students don’t make the grade, but because preference is generally given to residents of first-tier cities.
These students have superb academic foundations and are usually more motivated than their, oft-times complacent, first-tier counterparts. However, they have less knowledge about the options for study in another country. Some second-tier cities have good higher education institutions, such as Nanjing, Wuhan, Fuzhou and Dalian but because of the intense competition, many high caliber students are not gaining access to these institutions so they are settling for universities and courses that don’t reflect their abilities. EduGlobal China endeavors to enlighten these students on the options available to them in foreign countries.
The economies in second-tier cities in China are experiencing rapid growth and, while opening their markets, are attracting more and more investors from around the globe. The people there are experiencing higher disposable incomes as well as a higher budget for their children’s education which means more and more families are able to afford the high cost of sending their child abroad. Most importantly, they wish to give their child the opportunity to have a higher quality education to help them have a better future.
Grace Lin