Foreign degrees losing value for Chinese students

Nearly 70% of Chinese students who returned after studying abroad said they were “unsatisfied” with job opportunities at home because an overseas degree no longer guarantees them better pay than those who studied in China, a recent survey found. Over two-thirds of those surveyed by the Center for China & Globalization, an independent think tank, said their annual salaries were comparable to their peers in similar positions who studied at home, Caixin reports. An increase in the number of returnees also means that foreign graduates are no longer a rare commodity in the intensely competitive Chinese job market. More than half a million Chinese students headed overseas for an education in 2015, and another 400,000 returned home, according to the Ministry of Education. Nearly 2.8 million Chinese students have completed their studies abroad since 1978, after China opened up its economy.