Brendan John Worrell

專題推薦：詞解十七大

Hundreds of universities and colleges from all over the world set up shop over the weekend in Beijing's exhibition center to try and capture some of the bright sparks leaping out of China's education system.

Now in its eighth year, it resembled a dress rehearsal for the Olympics opening ceremony with flags from all corners of the globe waving proudly.

Provider nations compete in the study abroad Olympics

Of note at this year's annual expo was the twinning of the event with The European Higher Education Fair - an initiative of the European Commission, coinciding with the announcement of an increased investment of 230 million euros ($327 US million) to be spent over the next two years on their Erasmus Mundus scholarship program.

At a government level strengthening a nation's workplace capacity - via the addition of highly skilled overseas workers - is a challenge. As such,luring bright, hardworking Chinese students and then offering them work visas with an eye to future citizenship, is a practical solution to the lack of homegrown talent, particularly in the science, IT, engineering and accounting fields.

The American Council on Education mentioned with concern a year ago that Australia, Japan and the EU were beginning to pull increasing numbers of these 'overseas Einsteins' compared to the US.

One assumes that the new president who walks into the White House may wish to reverse this trend. It would appear that while recently US visa regulations had relaxed in an effort to try and encourage more international students to return, it was too little too late.

Just this week we saw Jan Figel, the European Commissioner for Education, Training and Youth declare that more Chinese students were choosing Europe - overtaking the US as a preferred destination. Looking around at the expo you could feel it, this fragmented state of American higher education.

On the outer, the Australian presence certainly featured prominently under that nation's Education International umbrella and Study in Australia brand. Under the Howard Government new departments have been set up in an effort to streamline services and improve access and quality for overseas students and their providers- something the US could learn from and something the EU is in part trying to replicate.