The Beijing Municipal Education Commission (BMEC) has launched a new project to send students overseas to study at prestigious universities. The Overseas Development Project was announced on the 24th of March and will support 300-500 undergraduate students per year to study for 2 years under a 1+2+1 model. All tuition fees and international transportation will be covered by BMEC, with the first batch of students to be sent abroad in September 2015. Students will be chosen from those studying at Beijing's city-level universities, which are generally less prestigious than the nationally-administered universities in the city. In future years, students will be able to apply for this scheme directly when applying for university courses.

The subject focus for the project is on industries that could address the strategic development needs of Beijing, including environmental protection, civil engineering, city planning, micro-electronics, mechanical engineering, and food engineering and security. The BMEC will work together with city level universities to set up partnership and sign MoU with target top overseas universities. Within the framework of the MOU, specific cooperation agreements are expected to be signed between Chinese and overseas universities, who will work together to design the courses and curriculum for the students. Partner universities should jointly award and acknowledge the credits of the students, but an overseas degree or diploma is just a “preferred” instead of “compulsory” requirement in this project.

The project does not yet have a set quota for each overseas country. On average BMEC aims to send 10-20 students to each overseas university, with 3-4 students per subject.

Analysis by Liu Jing, Head of Client Services and Research

Based on communication with BMEC, their strategy in the UK is to first raise the project's profile and awareness by securing partnerships with some of the UK's very top universities, before expanding it to other institutions with strengths in their priority subjects. BMEC understands the capacity limitations and high requirements of top UK universities, and are willing to limit the number to just 1-3 students per top university at the initial stage to secure partnerships with the most elite UK institutions.

UK institutions are strongly encouraged to get involved in this project. The impact of the project will cover not only student mobility and tuition fees but could also lead to much wider engagement with Beijing universities, which could lead to further partnerships such as joint research labs, industry-institution joint projects or further training opportunities.

Source: http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s5147/201503/18...

Pls. contact Liu Jing at liu.jing@britishcouncil.org.cn if there are any enquiries.