[LINK] Bloomberg on students from Africa in China

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg's Sarah McGregor writes about African student migration to China.

Prudentia Pefok, a Zambian nanny in Washington, couldn’t afford a college education in the U.S. for her daughter. So she sent her to China.

While not cheap, the $4,000 annual tuition at the Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine fits her budget. Pefok says it also allows her 19-year-old daughter to pursue her dream of becoming a surgeon, while discovering the world outside Zambia.

"I was looking at what I can afford," Pefok said in an interview. "I wanted her to experience a different culture and to give her an opportunity to have broader knowledge of the things I didn't have."

Pefok's daughter is a part of the growing body of Africans studying in China, where the cost of living is in most cases cheaper than big cities in the U.S. and Europe. The Chinese government often sweetens the deal with perks like scholarships, living allowances and round-trip airfare.

The number of African students attending Chinese higher-learning institutes jumped an annual average of 35 percent over the past decade, reaching a record 41,677 in 2014, according to Ministry of Education data. That compares with the U.S., where the enrollment of sub-Saharan African students rose to 33,593 in 2014-15 but remains below levels reached before the financial crisis. Britain last year granted the lowest number of student visas to Africans—20,937—in eight years, government data show.