Summary:

Many Chinese universities have recently released reports giving details of their graduate outcomes. Analysis of these reports has revealed the universities with the largest number of students going on to postgraduate study overseas, which may be valuable to UK institutions.

The analysis – carried out by Cingta, a Chinese HE data research platform – covered 42 top Chinese universities included in the country’s World Class Universities and Disciplines project at the institutional level. 39 of these universities provided information on bachelor’s degree graduates who continued their studies at the postgraduate level, of which 36 broke down this data between students staying in China and going overseas for their postgraduate study.

The data on the percentage of students enrolling in postgraduate courses was unsurprising, with the table led by Tsinghua University and Peking University (PKU) – generally recognised as China’s top two universities. Over 81 per cent of Tsinghua graduates and three quarters of graduates from PKU decided to continue their education at the postgraduate level.

Meanwhile, the university with the highest proportion of students going abroad for further study was Fudan University in Shanghai. This was followed by Renmin University and Peking University, both in Beijing. At all three of these universities, over 30 per cent of students enrolled in an overseas university after graduation.

After taking into account the overall number of graduates, however, the university sending the most graduates abroad for postgraduate study was Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, with Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou taking second place. In total, six universities sent 1,000 or more students overseas.

The table below gives a complete list of the 36 universities for which overseas study data is available, sorted by the total number of graduates going overseas for postgraduate courses:

University

Bachelor's Degree Graduates

% progressing to PG studies (total)

% progressing to PG studies overseas

No. progressing to PG studies overseas

Zhejiang University

5,493

62.0%

24.2%

1,327

Sun Yat-Sen University

6,910

50.5%

18.8%

1,299

Wuhan University

6,850

58.7%

18.5%

1,267

Huazhong University of Science & Technology

7,112

57.9%

14.5%

1,031

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC)

4,992

65.2%

20.3%

1,015

Shanghai Jiaotong University

3,600

66.4%

28.1%

1,010

Sichuan University

8,836

43.4%

11.2%

987

Renmin University

3,045

65.4%

31.9%

972

Fudan University

2,789

67.4%

33.0%

921

Tsinghua University

3,119

81.5%

28.8%

898

Beijing Institute of Technology

3,761

65.0%

21.9%

822

Peking University

2,645

75.2%

30.9%

816

Xiamen University

4,504

46.0%

16.4%

739

Nanjing University

3,060

63.8%

23.8%

727

South China University of Technology

6,223

36.1%

11.5%

716

Shandong University

6,697

45.9%

10.2%

681

Nankai University

3,252

59.0%

20.9%

678

Southeast University

4,101

49.7%

15.6%

639

Dalian University of Technology

5,608

47.7%

11.4%

638

Beihang University

3,105

73.6%

20.5%

637

Jilin University

10,043

44.1%

6.2%

627

Hunan University

4,911

41.3%

12.7%

622

China Agricultural University

2,742

60.8%

19.7%

541

East China Normal University

3,345

46.8%

16.0%

535

Central South University

7,916

43.8%

6.7%

532

University of Science and Technology of China

1,806

73.8%

28.7%

518

Xi'an Jiaotong University

3,607

64.3%

14.3%

514

Tianjin University

3,945

55.0%

12.9%

508

Beijing Normal University

2,455

62.4%

19.1%

470

Chongqing University

6,758

36.4%

6.5%

438

Zhengzhou University

11,877

30.2%

3.5%

419

Harbin Institute of Technology

3,546

56.5%

10.9%

386

Ocean University of China

3,716

44.8%

9.6%

358

Northwestern Polytechnical University

3,585

58.1%

7.3%

262

Lanzhou University

4,481

41.7%

4.7%

209

Yunnan University

3,842

24.0%

3.2%

124

 

Analysis by Kevin Prest, Senior Analyst East Asia

Knowledge of the institutions sending the most graduates overseas may be helpful for UK universities looking to prioritise their postgraduate recruitment activities.

All of the universities in the table above have been included in the Chinese Ministry of Education’s World Class Universities and Disciplines project at the institutional level, placing them among the country’s most elite universities. This means that their graduates tend to be educated to a high standard, which is linked to being better able to cope with the rigours of a UK postgraduate degree programme.

Sources

1. Analysis of 42 “world class” universities’ graduate outcomes (In Chinese, from Cingta’s public WeChat account): https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/3mS3XPz8hvVHB6fckMLJlg