Summary

Earlier in December 2018, the China Scholarship Council (CSC) announced that its main international scholarship scheme for master’s degree students, the National State-Funded Master’s Student Programme, would be cancelled from 2019. This programme funded 800 outbound master’s students in 2018. No official reason was given for the cancellation.

According to local media, CSC will also make changes to doctoral scholarships in 2019, with a net increase of 500 scholarships. The quota for students completing their whole PhD overseas will be reduced from 3,000 to 2,500, but the number of funded students on jointly-supervised PhD programmes, who will spend up to two years overseas as part of their course, will be increased from 6,500 to 7,500.

China will also continue to send students abroad through other programmes – including a small number master’s degree students on programmes such as the Arts Talents Training Plan and the International Issues and Foreign Languages Training Plan.

Analysis by Kevin Prest, Senior Analyst, International Education Services

Although the National State-Funded Master’s Student Programme was the country’s largest master’s level scholarship scheme, these students represent only a small share of Chinese students going abroad. A large majority of Chinese students in the UK are self-funded, while the bulk of state-funded students are studying PhD programmes. The most recent data from HESA shows that only around 95 Chinese students were enrolled on UK master’s degree programmes with overseas government funding in the 2016-17 academic year, mainly at Russell Group institutions. The impact on UK universities will therefore be relatively limited.

At the PhD level, jointly-funded programmes have accounted for an increasing proportion of all scholarships for several years and the number of scholarships for wholly-overseas programmes has not increased since 2015, but this is the first time the quota has actually decreased. This is because China’s policy is aimed at improving the quality of local postgraduate delivery as well as training key talents.

Sources

1. CSC – Announcement of cancellation of the National State-Funded Master’s Student Programme (in Chinese):https://www.csc.edu.cn/news/gonggao/1396

2. ZSR – CSC’s 2019 overseas student scholarship work starts (in Chinese): http://zsr.cc/Item/968133.aspx