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Progressing to China-related careers: unveiling the hidden curriculum in Chinese international higher education

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A Correction to this article was published on 31 August 2023

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Abstract

Chinese higher education policy texts appear to suggest that training ‘para-diplomats’ is a goal of China’s international student recruitment. However, few studies have considered the ways such policies are recontextualised and implemented at the institutional (meso-) level and become integral to students’ career pathways after graduation. To address this paucity, I purposefully selected two Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs) and undertook an ethnographic study to explore their policy work of translation. Basil Bernstein’s notions of classification and framing are employed here to nuance the mechanisms by which hidden messages were deliberately sent out by case-study institutions in everyday practices and processes. The findings reveal that routine aspects of university life, including visual cues, events and activities, and interactions between teachers and students, differed in their strengths of classification and framing, which either expanded or limited the range of career pathways that international students could envisage or progress to. This study offers a valuable contribution to the literature on higher education policy ‘implementation studies’, especially in the Chinese context, adding to our understandings about the powerful influence of the hidden curriculum on international students’ career choice. The implications of China’s experiences are discussed in terms of the role played by HEIs in the nexus of shaping graduates’ career choice and enhancing the national soft power.

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Notes

  1. Guidance counsellors in Chinese higher education, or ‘fudao yuan’ in translation, are trained personnel ‘tasked with keeping close tabs on their student charges to ensure that their beliefs and behaviour do not violate approved boundaries’ (Perry, 2020, p. 10).

  2. The HSK (hanyu shuiping kaoshi), translated as the Chinese Proficiency Test, is an international standardised test of Chinese language proficiency, which assesses non-native Chinese speakers’ abilities in using the Chinese language in their daily, academic, and professional lives. Test takers who are able to pass the HSK (Level III) can communicate in Chinese at a basic level in their daily, and those who pass the HSK (Level IV) can converse in Chinese on a wide range of topics and are able to communicate fluently with native Chinese speakers.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China – Centre for Language Education and Cooperation (general project) [grant number: 22YH45C].

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  1. School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Wen Xu

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The original online version of this article was revised: In this article reference citation “Author, 2023” and “Author, 2022” should have been “Xu & Sthal, 2023” and “Xu, 2021”. The original article has been corrected.

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Xu, W. Progressing to China-related careers: unveiling the hidden curriculum in Chinese international higher education. High Educ 87, 1709–1725 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01086-w

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