Employing an ethnographic approach, Yang examines the cultural and social reasons that drive the steady influx of Chinese students onto US campuses for their undergraduate degrees. The author applies the Wisconsin model of status attainment and Bourdieu's capital theory as his theoretical framework and analyzes firsthand data from interviews with students, parents, teachers, and educational agents in Shanghai. After a ... Read morethorough discussion of the influence of significant others' values and expectations on students' pursuit of cultural, social, and economic capitals in their educational attainment processes, Yang argues that the impetus for beginning an overseas educational path is a cultural determination to preserve, protect, and promote the mianzi (face, social reputation, and prestige) for students and their families. The book is well written with rich information and eye-opening analysis. It will give readers valuable insight into understanding the surge of Chinese students on US campuses. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.
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The growing wave of Chinese students seeking an American college education has yet to crest; if anything, it is growing in intensity and magnitude. The consequences reach deeply into the education systems of both countries, and also, eventually, to the relationship between the two most powerful nations of this century. Read what Dennis T. Yang has to say to understand the cultural, familial, and economic forces at play in this Chinese drive for an American education, and why it will not soon fade.
Kenneth Prewitt, Columbia University This sophisticated ethnographic study-chock-full of fascinating interview data and the author's bi-cultural insights-illuminates why increasing numbers of Chinese students come to the United States for their undergraduate degrees. Yang's conclusion is that in the milieu of an individualist-oriented U.S. higher educational system, Chinese students acquire mianzi (face or prestige) which enhances their own and their parents social standing in the competitive collectivist society that is contemporary China; Confucius meets Horatio Alger.
Steven I. Levine, University of Montana Dennis T. Yang delivers a well-written, in-depth exploration of the real drivers behind the steady rise in the numbers of Chinese students choosing to study in the U.S. Those in the field of higher education-particularly international education administrators-will find Yang's critical study both timely and insightful.
Portia Williams, Teachers College Columbia University Show Less