Immobile Transnationalisms? Young People and Their in situ Experiences of ‘International’ Education in Hong Kong

Introduction

As recently claimed by the British Council, in their guide to UK qualifications in Hong Kong, “employers generally prefer graduates who have international experience” (British Council, 2009, p. 6). Indeed, assumptions about the inherent value of ‘international experience’, within a contemporary global knowledge economy, are generally considered axiomatic. There are presently more than 3 million individuals studying for qualifications at tertiary level outside their home countries, reflecting a remarkable upward trend, over the past two decades, in the number of international students world-wide (OECD, 2010). These students are acutely aware of the value attached to international experience and the benefits that are likely to accrue, to them, from obtaining non-local, international academic credentials. Research on international students in higher education clearly attests to this—an ‘overseas education’ frequently proffers significant rewards, over and above the advantages of obtaining a local or domestic university degree (Ong, 1999; Waters, 2006, 2008; Xiang and Shen, 2009). ‘International experience’ is central to this; as Murphy-Lejeune has argued

The main difference between student travellers and their [non-mobile] peers rests in the acquisition of what we shall refer to as ‘mobility capital’ … Mobility capital is a sub-component of human capital, enabling individuals to enhance their skills because of the richness of the international experience gained by living abroad (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002, p. 51).

Many other studies have highlighted similar benefits attached to the ‘international experience’ (for example, Brooks and Waters, 2011; Chew, 2010; Favell, 2008; Findlay and King, 2010). Mobile students, for example, are generally thought to possess better linguistic skills and to have a more ‘cosmopolitan’ outlook than their ‘local’ counterparts, and employers have been shown to value (and reward) these traits (Hui, 2003; Waters, 2006; Yeung, 2003). The figure of the ‘international student’ has also been dissected, in the academic literature, in relation to a number of wider intellectual questions, encompassing cosmopolitanism (Matthews and Sidhu, 2005; Mitchell, 2003), transnationalism (Gargano, 2009; Ong, 1999), nationality (Baas, 2006; Butcher, 2004; Robertson, 2009), urban transformation (Chatterton, 2010; Fincher and Shaw, 2009; Smith, 2009), racialisation (Collins, 2006; Matthews and Sidhu, 2005), class reproduction (Ong, 1999; Waters, 2006; Waters and Brooks, 2010) and post-colonialism (Madge et al., 2009). What unites these discussions is the importance (sometimes implicitly) placed on students’ embodied mobility. International students have been perceived as interesting and remarkable precisely because they are temporarily ‘out of place’, away from and yet constantly evoking ‘home’ (Collins, 2008; Ghosh and Wang, 2003).

In contrast to this stress on mobility—and a fashion within the social sciences more broadly to examine ‘mobilities’—in this paper, we deliberately focus on the immobile ‘international’ student. This is not a misnomer, but refers to the hundreds of thousands of individuals world-wide studying for ‘international’ (i.e. foreign) academic qualifications at home. These are a distinct, almost invisible, and ostensibly less privileged group of students (vis-à-vis their internationally mobile counterparts), for whom both a local university place and the possibility of flying abroad for higher education are unobtainable, and yet the urgency and imperative attached to acquiring a degree qualification remain. These are international students, but of a different kind. For these students, a university degree is made possible through programmes administered by a foreign (also known as ‘non-local’) higher education provider. To date, the literature has had very little to say about such students, undertaking international degree programmes in situ. Our own research has focused on the recent provision of ‘non-local’ higher education in Hong Kong. Here, undergraduate (‘top-up’) degrees are completed in one to two years, following a Higher Diploma or Associate Degree attained at a local continuing education institution. This is not ‘distance learning’; rather, it involves face-to-face teaching through lectures and seminars—sometimes using all overseas (or ‘flying’) faculty, sometimes all domestic faculty and sometimes (most commonly) a mix of both. The majority of such international degrees delivered in Hong Kong are not ‘joint’ degrees, but are awarded solely by the British university (although often delivered in collaboration with a local Higher Education Institute (HEI)). Whilst Australian and American HEIs have a presence in Hong Kong, this is overshadowed by the influence of British establishments. According to the Hong Kong Education Bureau, in December 2010 there were at least 550 degree programmes run by 36 different UK HEIs in Hong Kong, representing more than 60 per cent of all non-local courses available (Education Bureau, 2010). Most of these programmes are less than 10 years old (Tang and Nollent, 2007). Although this paper focuses mainly on undergraduate-level study (so-called ‘top-up’ degrees), programmes are also available at Master and Doctoral level. Over half of our interview sample were studying/have studied at undergraduate level, however, which reflects the more substantial cohort of ‘British’ Transnational Education (TNE) students in Hong Kong (according to a recent British Council (2011) report, 73 per cent are studying at undergraduate level).

Non-local degree programmes have a much wider significance—they are part of an ever shifting and evolving landscape of ‘international education’ (Waters, 2012). They represent a growing component of a multibillion pound, multifaceted higher education industry, which includes the proliferation of language schools catering to international students, ‘satellite’ university campuses and whole new ‘education town’ complexes, distance- or e-learning, international MBA and DBA programmes, and the development of national education ‘brands’—an industry built on the mythical properties of ‘the international experience’. Public HEIs (universities and colleges) are heavily implicated in this international education industry and, whilst internationally mobile students are undoubtedly a critical component of their internationalisation strategies, they are not the only component. As Drummond Bone observed in a report to the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, quoting the British Council

The level and mode of student recruitment to the UK is “unsustainable in the longer term … institutions must move from equating international strategy with student recruitment alone to a much wider internationalisation agenda where there is a balance in overseas activity between recruitment, partnerships, research and capacity building” (Bone, 2009, p.1).

Our research would suggest that expanding the provision of UK degrees abroad (to students in their home countries) is seen by many institutions as vital for sustaining internationalisation into the future. The figures are instructive: in 2008/09, TNE was worth over £210 million to the UK economy (BIS, 2011). Latest Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data have shown there to be 21 280 individuals in Hong Kong studying for a British degree (compared with 20 845 in Singapore, 20 525 in Malaysia and 10 450 in mainland China) (British Council, 2011). Yet the students undertaking these programmes have not received anything approximating the same level of critical academic analysis and media interest as internationally mobile students. It is essential, we would argue, that we understand the meanings and effects for young people locally of ‘off-shore provision’.

The absence of mobility within these programmes is suggestive of some of the bigger issues at stake. Hong Kong students will study for (say) a Durham University, Middlesex University or Coventry University degree in Hong Kong, without ever having lived in or travelled to the UK. These degrees are defined, by the British Council, as ‘transnational education’ and yet they involve no international mobility on the part of the student, even when it may include the mobility of a UK faculty. This raises a number of pertinent questions around the exact nature of the ‘student experience’ acquired through transnational education. What kind of individual chooses to study an international programme at home? Are these young people, undertaking a British degree in Hong Kong, missing out on the ‘embodied cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1986) or ‘mobility capital’ (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002) that several authors have suggested is an integral part of international study (for example, Favell, 2008; Ong, 1999) and with what implications? Can British degrees in Hong Kong nevertheless provide some component of a much revered ‘international experience’? To date, virtually nothing has been published on the motivations and experiences of these students (see Waters and Leung, 2012).

In this paper, we initiate a discussion around transnational higher education in an attempt to answer these critical questions. We think it is important to do so, not least because a significant proportion of British HEIs are now engaged in transnational education in one form or another and (as noted earlier) thousands of young people are being educated in this way.

To this end, we continue the paper by briefly considering the relationship between mobility and access to educational opportunities. The next section describes in detail our research methodology—this paper draws on the findings of a recent project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (in the UK) and the Research Grants Council (in Hong Kong) that has included an examination of the experiences of students on, and graduates of, British degree programmes in Hong Kong. We then turn to discuss our findings. First, we consider the ‘types’ of student choosing to study for a British degree in Hong Kong by presenting some ‘portraits’ emerging from our data. As will be seen, these individuals do not represent the archetypal ‘international student’. We then consider more specifically the international nature of these students’ experiences, before concluding with some thoughts on the increasing geographical differentiation of international higher education and the implications of this for non-mobile students in particular.

Mobility, Cultural Capital and Educational Opportunities

There has been, over the past few years, a nascent interest amongst academics in the ways in which spatial mobility intersects with access to education/educational opportunities. A now classic account of this relationship was provided by educational sociologist Stephen Ball and colleagues, who have, in a series of papers, examined “the interplay between social class, cultural capital and choice” (in Greater London)—and mobility (Ball et al., 1995, pp. 52–53). In their analysis, parents are divided into ‘working-class locals’ and ‘middle-class cosmopolitans’: whilst the former group typically chose a local school for their child (said to reflect daily practicalities), they write that: “for many middle-class parents travel and distance emerge as contingent factors, not priority or determinate ones” (p. 65). Middle-class families were seen, therefore, to travel frequently outside their locality, engaging with the education market in a far more ‘strategic’—and, it has to be said, geographical—‘fashion’ (Ball et al., 1995, p. 56). In so doing, middle-class families not only drew on their exsiting ‘stock’ of cultural capital, but were able, through the education system, to ensure the intergenerational reproduction of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984). The parallels between the findings of Ball et al. (1995) for this local education market and Waters (2006), who examined Hong Kong students emigrating to Canada for education, suggest very similar processes at work within local, regional and international education markets. In Waters’s (2006) account, middle-class parents in Hong Kong were seen to be cosmopolitan in the truest sense of the word—they were highly strategic in their decision to engage with an international education market, choosing to travel significant distances (and across continents) in pursuit of educational opportunities for their children (and thereby also opting out of the local system). This pursuit of educational opportunities was strongly associated with the desire to accumulate cultural capital

Western academic credentials are assumed to represent far more than specific competences, ‘guaranteeing’ a whole host of embodied characteristics tantamount to the possession of a ‘general culture’ by their holder (Waters, 2006, p. 185).

These characteristics included: English language proficiency, sense of humour, (a North American) accent, comportment, confidence and creativity in the workplace. Embodied cultural capital such as this is inextricably linked to students’ experiences of living and studying abroad, and could be seen to have direct and measurable benefits for graduates in the local labour market—overseas-educated individuals in Hong Kong were able effortlessly to exchange their cultural capital into economic capital, thereby reproducing their families’ privileged status (Waters, 2008).

Several other academic accounts have highlighted the links between educational opportunities, (international/transnational) mobility and the reproduction of social privilege (Xiang and Shen, 2009; Brooks and Waters, 2009; Favell, 2008; Findlay et al., 2012; Murphy-Lejeune, 2002; Waters and Brooks, 2010; Waters, 2012). There is little doubt that ‘choice’ in relation to education, and the possibility of physical movement, are intertwined. Those best placed to engage with an international market in higher education are also the most mobile—they are able to access the resources (economic, social and cultural) necessary for mobility. There is a small, parallel academic literature, too, on the relative immobility of the least privileged students in relation to higher education (Christie, 2007; Hinton, 2011; Holdsworth, 2009). For a variety of reasons (some economic, but others more intangible and related to students’ habitus), ¹ the children of working-class families are far less likely to move away to attend university than are their middle-class counterparts. As we will show later in the paper, this relationship between social class and (im)mobility is evident, too, in relation to the pursuit of ‘non-local’, in situ degree programmes in Hong Kong. And yet, despite this interest in young people and (im)mobility, and the clear importance of the topic, detailed empirical studies are lacking, as a number of commentators have recently suggested (Barker et al., 2009; Bushin, 2008; Dobson, 2009; Skelton, 2009). Our work is a small attempt to address this deficiency.

Research Methodology

The project, on which this paper draws, has examined the growth of TNE in Hong Kong, and particularly the development of British degree programmes, involving UK-based HEIs and government-funded (i.e. University Grants Committee) HEIs. As noted earlier, such ‘partnerships’ between domestic and overseas providers offer local students the opportunity to obtain an ‘international’ higher degree conferred by a British university. The project, conducted over two years (2009–11), was qualitative in nature, and has included in-depth interviews with 70 students and graduates in Hong Kong, 18 interviews with UK educational ‘providers’ and 9 interviews with employers/recruiters (also in Hong Kong). Students and graduates were recruited through a number of different channels: an advertisement sent out on our behalf by the British Council (Hong Kong), several different UK universities and the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education secured by the far the largest proportion of our sample, but we also relied, in a small number of cases, on a snowball sampling method using personal contacts. All but a couple of interviews with students and graduates were conducted in Cantonese and translated into English. ² In an attempt to represent the full range of qualifications offered by British universities in Hong Kong, our sample included: 36 ‘top-up’ (i.e. undergraduate) degrees; 22 Master degrees; 2 PhDs; 2 Bachelor of Law degrees (LLB); 10 certificates (i.e. conversion to LLB); and 1 diploma. Non-local undergraduate programmes are known, locally, as ‘top-up’ degrees. These degrees are usually taken after students have completed an Associate Degree or a Higher Diploma at a local institution. One- or two-year ‘top-up’ programmes are therefore seen as ‘topping up’ the associate degree or higher diploma qualification to degree level. In total, we examined 73 programmes (three individuals had studied more than one programme). Twenty-seven individuals (out of our sample of 70) were male and 43 were female; 32 were graduates and 38 were current students. The median age was 27 for graduates and 24 for students. Across the whole sample, 15 different UK universities and 5 different Hong Kong HEIs were represented. Pseudonyms have been used for individuals, degree programmes and universities in order to maintain the anonymity of research participants. ³

It is important here to state that some of the young people that we have interviewed for this project are perhaps not ‘young’ in the conventional sense; however, we concur with Jeffrey (2008, p. 741), who argues that ‘young’ can encompass 16–30-year-olds, reflecting “how ideas of youth have been stretched in varied global settings”. He continues that an

inability to move quickly from school to university into secure employment has created a generation … in their later teens and twenties who often remain unmarried, are unable to establish financial independence, and are widely identified as young (Jeffrey, 2008, p. 741).

Many of the individuals involved in our project would clearly identify in this way.

Immobile International Students: Some Portraits

Leon Lam, aged 26, works in Hong Kong within the information technology sector. He received a BA (hons) in business from a UK university in 2006, having studied for one year, full-time at a local HEI. His is a very typical story of failure in the Hong Kong school system and the desperate need, therefore, to find an alternative route to degree-level study. He had been forced to repeat his Form 5 examinations (the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination or HKCEE, usually taken around the age of 16), to enable him to gain the marks necessary to progress on to tertiary education. Failing to get sufficiently high marks in his A (Advanced) level examinations (to enter a local university directly), he studied for a Higher Diploma for two years, before embarking on the one-year UK ‘top-up’ degree. His parents funded his education up until his higher diploma studies, after which he was self-funded. His family have no direct experience of attending university. When asked why he had chosen the UK ‘top-up’ degree, he answered

Its selling point was that it only required one year to complete a degree course. It sounded attractive to me.

However, the speed of the degree meant that Leon missed out on ‘university life’ during the programme. His good marks, obtained during the course, meant that he won a scholarship to visit the UK for one week at the end of his course. He said: “It was like a sightseeing tour rather than a study trip”. They visited the university campus and saw a bit of the town and surrounding area. In fact, the British university only paid for his accommodation—he was responsible for his flights and transfers to and from the airport. The university took a lot of photos, which they then used the following year in their publicity for the ‘top-up’ programme back in Hong Kong. Leon said: “the trip would be a selling point to the people who are interested in this course”. Despite his reservations about some aspects of his degree and, as he described it, his low expectations of it, he found it easy to secure a satisfactory job after his graduation—a fact that he attributes largely to good social connections developed with local lecturers teaching on the programme.

Sophie Cheng, also aged 26, received a BA (hons) in business from a British university. She completed the programme in two years (2008–10), during the evenings and part-time, and continued to work in her (full-time) job as a bank clerk in Hong Kong. Like Leon (and nearly all of our research participants), she failed the HKCEE at the first attempt. She explained

I studied in Pui Tak College for my secondary school and I had repeated Form 5. I succeeded in my second attempt of HKCEE, and I could get into Form 6 and 7. After that, I took HKAL [A levels]. I did not get enough grades to get into Hong Kong local universities. Then I chose to study [for an] Associate Degree in X University [in Hong Kong]. After I had studied for two years there, I started working from then. I have been working in X Commercial Bank for five years, since I graduated in 2005.

Sophie was keen to stress that she had been treated differently by employers because she was not a ‘degree holder’ and had only a higher diploma

I guess if a person obtains a Higher Diploma, the path would be the same as me. Like me, my title is a clerk. But for a degree graduate, the title would be a trainee, [and they would be] trained for one year. After a year, they would be assistant operational officer. … The nature [of the work] is different.

After three years working as a clerk in a bank, she decided that she needed a degree, in order to progress. She looked to courses that, first, she could get onto with a Higher Diploma and, secondly, that she could complete in the shortest possible time: “My mentality when I applied for this ‘top-up’ degree was to get a degree as soon as possible”. The British degree course that she chose provided her with this. She perceived the ‘top-up’ degree as an option for someone unable to attend the same university in Britain. She said

[These degrees are] very obviously only a path or way out for someone who cannot study local degrees and you don’t have the money to go overseas to study university there, so that you study this kind of [top-up] degree.

These portraits closely resemble the experiences and circumstances of individuals from across our sample. The limits of their cultural, social and economic capital (Bourdieu, 1986), in relation to their educational experiences, were apparent. All of the students in our sample, undertaking undergraduate ‘top-up’ programmes, had failed to progress successfully from school to higher education. The majority did not have a family history of attending university. Many undertaking these programmes were forced to work part-time (or even full-time) in order to finance their studies. Some have been stuck for several years in what they perceive to be ‘dead-end’ jobs, as a consequence of ‘not being a degree holder’. Consequently, non-local degree programmes provide individuals without any other options with the possibility of holding a university degree; they tend to be completed in a very short space of time (1–2 years) compared with ‘normal’ international and local degrees; and any ‘international’ element would seem to be negligible. This difference between TNE and domestic HE is likely to be exacerbated now that Hong Kong institutions have moved (in 2011) to a four-year degree structure. These suggest strongly the limits to the cultural capital attainable on these programmes—beyond the ‘degree’ certificate. In the remainder of this paper, we focus upon the last of these points—the international dimension—asking what, if anything, do these TNE qualifications provide by way of an ‘international’ university experience and what does this mean in terms of the ability of students/graduates to accumulate valuable cultural capital?

Non-local Degrees: Providing an ‘International’ Experience?

Non-local degrees are ostensibly British in more than just name. All of them use teaching materials devised in the UK and ‘flown in’ (examples are rarely tailored, we are told, to meet local needs). ⁴ Many of them are taught by UK-based lecturers (‘flying faculty’) who deliver intensive programmes over anything ranging from several days to three weeks. In theory, the language of instruction is English. Some of the scripts (exams and coursework) are sent to the UK for marking and all of these programmes have UK-resident external examiners ensuring quality control. Some offer graduation ceremonies at the British university and all provide an authentic British university certificate. There is, as we have suggested, a significant ‘range’ in terms of the extent of British involvement: some programmes are all ‘UK taught’; others are ‘franchised’ (whereby degree materials are sold to the Hong Kong institution and then wholly delivered, often in Cantonese, by ‘local’ lecturers). Whatever the precise delivery ‘model’, however, students/graduates interviewed for this research were unanimous in the claim that there was very little ‘international experience’ to be found.

It is important to stress that (contrary to our initial assumptions) this was not unexpected or unanticipated by the students themselves. Not only that, but the ‘international’ nature of their degree programme was, for most students, incidental or irrelevant, and had little or no bearing on their decision to undertake it in the first place. Students chose these degrees because, at undergraduate level, it was the only way of accessing a degree-level qualification. Usually, individuals must decide between different types of non-local provision; typically, a British and Australian provider. Peter’s views were commonly voiced

I would classify a local degree as first tier, and then the UK/Hong Kong ‘top-up’ degree as second tier, some joint degrees with other countries, such as Australia, would be put as third tier (Peter Chan, aged 27, who graduated with a BA hons from a UK university in 2007).

Amongst our sample, a clear pattern emerged: students will always choose a degree accredited by a university in Hong Kong over one accredited by an overseas institution, and would (if given the option) opt to study abroad over staying at home and studying in situ. Although the top-up degree is the least-favoured option, then, for these (less privileged) students, it is the only option. Most of these students are under no illusion that they will receive an ‘international’ experience from a non-local ‘top-up’ degree programme. ⁵ When Stephen Chow was asked to recall the ‘British’ elements in his degree programme, he replied that there were “none” … “unless”, he continued, “the strong Scottish accent of the professors can be counted” (Stephen, aged 24, is currently studying part-time for a two-year MSc in ‘management’). Some graduates were quite cynical about the ‘British input’ into their degrees; Leon described the ‘flying faculty’ as “just a kind of gimmick”

They just followed standard guidelines to organise the programme. They had prepared well beforehand. Therefore, it made no difference whether it was an English professor or even an Indian professor.

These experiences suggest that there are clearly limits to the quality of ‘international experience’ that can realistically be offered to local Hong Kong students in situ. This would matter less if the programmes were not marketed as British.

There is, we have found, a more problematic element to the fact that non-local degree programmes involve no international mobility. As mentioned earlier, most students, upon graduation, receive a degree certificate identical to one that is conferred to students in the UK. Consequently, several graduates reported having found themselves in an awkward position, where they have had to decide whether or not to ‘confess’ to potential employers, colleagues or clients about the ‘real’ nature of their degree. Leon succinctly described the dilemma thus: “Sometimes it was quite embarrassing to be asked if I studied in the United Kingdom, when people saw my [degree] certificate”. Another interviewee, David, further exemplifies this point

One day I went … to meet a client … I introduced myself and this guy said to me: ‘Your English should be better [because] you have come back from the UK’ … So I needed to explain [that I did my British degree in Hong Kong]. But sometimes I ask myself, do I really need to explain myself? … However, I do not want people to feel that I am intentionally misleading them. I am honest and I did not go to the UK. So even now, I am still thinking of how I should deal with this kind of situation … I remember when I had my job interview. In the interview, there were also other applicants from HKU [University of Hong Kong], CUHK [Chinese University of Hong Kong]. We had a group interview. I would say I graduated from X [UK] university … I think it is a matter of how I identify myself. I don’t want to … mention [it] but I also don’t want to be misunderstood that I claimed I had been studying in the UK, but kept quiet about it (David Kwok, aged 24, who graduated with a British university degree in 2009, Hong Kong).

The lack of mobility involved here clearly has implications for young people seeking employment on the back of their degree qualification. They are quite simply unable, through a static TNE programme, to acquire the specific kinds of skills that employers and colleagues would expect from an international degree (Waters, 2006) and the legitimacy of their qualifications is, consequently, called into question. They often reported lacking the ‘confidence’ of students educated overseas and, as David suggests, graduates’ ineptitude in English (an inability to converse fluently and confidently) is a major aspect of this. As Bourdieu has written in relation to the accumulation of cultural capital

It implies a labor of inculcation and assimilation, [and] costs time, time which must be invested personally by the investor … with all the privation, renunciation, and sacrifice that it may entail (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 244).

International students—those that travel abroad—invest time in the process of ‘assimilation’, whether that assimilation involves language learning or more implicit inculcated traits. In the next section of the paper, we explore the language implications of studying for an international degree at home.

International Experience and Language Proficiency

The medium of instruction is English, the language of business, science and technology (British Council, 2010, p. 6).

At the beginning the lecturer spoke in English. But after some time, the students ignored him, sleeping in class, so he could not tolerate it. He then spoke in Cantonese (Kitty Ng, aged 24, who completed a British honours degree in one year, full-time, 2007–08, in Hong Kong).

As the weight of extant research on international mobility would suggest, gaining fluency in English is invariably the ultimate goal of many overseas students. Chew (2010) describes the transnational mobility of young people from South-east Asia in terms of ‘linguistic migration’, indicating the pre-eminent importance of language acquisition in driving families’ relocation to English-speaking countries. Some commentators have, understandably, seen this as a form of neo-colonialism—the reassertion, through linguistic imperialism, of a power hierarchy, at the apex of which is the former British Empire (Madge et al, 2009; Park and Bae, 2009). Certainly, the geographies underpinning the internationalisation of higher education can be perceived in this way. The enduring importance of English in contemporary Hong Kong is without doubt a colonial legacy. However, the reality of British ‘top-up’ degrees does not invoke a strong sense of cultural imperialism; rather more pragmatic and mercenary concerns about the financial potential of transnational education predominate, as the actual use of English on these programmes would suggest.

The fact that the British degree programmes offered in Hong Kong are taught in English, we assumed, would be appealing to local young people wanting to have an English-medium educational experience. Indeed, we also assumed that students would possess a high minimum level of English in order to be admitted onto a British programme. The reality is quite different. First, students at local universities have, we are told, far better English than do students on British degree programmes. The following long quotation provides some explanation for this ostensible paradox

They [lecturers on ‘top-up’ programmes] sometimes taught in Cantonese … But I know that local universities in Hong Kong use English to teach, so I think this is a kind of difference. So if one may ask why there is a difference in terms of language abilities between a local university graduate and a ‘top-up’ degree graduate, partly it is because the teaching medium is already different. Local universities still emphasise English, but for ‘top-up’ [programme], the lecturer thought that because our background in English is not too good, so he would use Cantonese as he worries we would not understand if he speaks English. … I think it is because my English was already not good before I studied this [top-up] degree programme. Like for local universities, the condition for admission would be having a certain English level in HKCEE, then in A level. So I think that the hurdles they [local university students] had to pass were more than a [top-up] degree student had to go through, in terms of English (Kitty Ng).

Our interviewees, then, are likely (so they claim) to have far inferior English skills when compared with a student at, say, the University of Hong Kong. We asked Kitty to elaborate further on this important issue of language—especially the fact that British degree programmes are (according to all marketing materials relating to them) taught in English. She said

Well, written things are in English, but orally, it’s all Cantonese, as we have all local teachers, classmates also local. … Foreign lecturers flew in to come. But they only gave lectures, but it was like only they spoke, and not really communicated [with us] (emphasis added).

Several students and graduates stressed the difference between being ‘lectured to’ and being taught. Students’ use of English in the classroom was minimal and superficial

Although we used English in our presentations, and also [in] assignments, it was just like we used English in those few minutes of presenting. I don’t think it helped much. The lecturers just followed the Powerpoint to read it. … I don’t think it helped us much with our English (Sophie Cheng, aged 26, who graduated in 2010 with a British degree).

In her assertions about the importance of language (as an embodied form of ‘cultural capital’), Kitty went on to illustrate, with an example, the advantages accrued from actually going abroad for an international education, thereby physically immersing oneself overseas

I have a relative [with] a very low mark in HKCEE. Once he graduated from an Australian university [in Australia], he got into a big firm to work. But the bank employed him not because he had studied business or finance. He only studied arts and design. It is very obvious that what he studies … is irrelevant. It is because the boss buys his language ability. The boss thinks his English was better … So I imagine if there is such a [top-up] UK/Hong Kong degree course that … [could] train students’ English [so that it] would improve rapidly in a short time, that’s good.

No, you cannot call it a language course, even though your purpose is just to train students’ English, to become [so that] it sounds like the students had lived overseas. The programmes should still be in computers [for example]. When you have completed, your computing ability should be good, but even more, your English ability would also be better … That would be very advantageous. But the reality is not [like that], at the moment (emphasis added).

Kitty leaves you in no doubt of the perceived importance of English in the context of contemporary Hong Kong and the disadvantaged position that non-mobile ‘transnational’ students find themselves in, compared with both internationally mobile students and local university students. Students who have lived overseas possess a different quality of English proficiency compared with those who have not (see the arguments of Bourdieu, mentioned earlier, in relation to the accumulation of embodied cultural capital). Thus, linguistic skills (in English) are used in Hong Kong as a marker of (classed) difference—and graduates of UK ‘top-up’ programmes find themselves near the bottom. Neo-colonialism in relation to English exists, then, but not obviously when it comes to the delivery of British ‘top-up’ degree programmes in Hong Kong.

Conclusions: Non-local Degree Programmes and the (Geographical) Differentiation of ‘International’ Students/Graduates

In Hong Kong, the number of ‘international’ degree programmes available locally to students has proliferated in recent years and British universities are the largest provider of ‘transnational education’ in the territory. However, the individuals undertaking these programmes remain, in extant discussions of ‘international students’, an invisible group. For these students, an ‘international’ degree programme involves no travel whatsoever, as they are taught and awarded entirely in Hong Kong. This, we have suggested, evokes interesting and pressing questions around the quality of the much-revered ‘international experience’ attainable through transnational education, theorised here (after Bourdieu, 1986) as ‘embodied cultural capital’. The paper has attempted to go some way towards elucidating the relationship between (im)mobility and the accumulation of cultural capital through international/transnational education. We have argued that immobility does have an impact upon young people’s experiences of higher education. Furthermore, immobility is closely tied (as the literature would suggest) to class reproduction—individuals undertaking transnational higher education in situ are, our data would suggest, socially disadvantaged in various ways. This lack of privilege translates into an inability to reproduce and develop cultural capital through higher education.

These transnational forms of education in situ indicate the spatial and social differentiation that is increasingly characterising international HE. The literature on international education focuses overwhelmingly upon relatively economically privileged students, “especially those from the … more well-off economies” (Huang and Yeoh, 2005, p. 383). It has long been recognised that international education is not an option for everyone; on the contrary, research on educational mobilities points to one pervasive fact—international students are, generally affluent, well-resourced and well-connected individuals already in possession of substantial cultural capital (Xiang and Shen, 2009; Brooks and Waters, 2009; Findlay and King, 2010). The process of going abroad for education (and attaining ‘mobility capital’) serves only to reproduce already existing cultural capital. A small number of recent studies, however, are beginning to indicate that international education is itself becoming spatially differentiated along class lines, and related directly to the degree of (im)mobility involved. It has been observed, for example, that ‘less wealthy’ South Koreans are now sending their children to school in Singapore for an ‘international’ educational experience, as a cheaper, nearer and more accessible option than travelling to and living in the distant ‘West’ (Kim, 2010). This differentiation is clearly apparent within our study—our research participants were far removed from the archetypical privileged, cultured and cosmopolitan ‘international student’. As Xiang and Shen have written, we are seeing an increasingly sharp

hierarchical differentiation amongst foreign degrees, … [increased] investment in elite primary and secondary education, and [a] prolonged route of conversion between financial and cultural capital (Xiang and Shen, 2009, p. 519).

Length of time spent in (overseas) education is also a marker of class distinction—what Bourdieu (1984, pp. 53, 54) has termed the capacity to ‘withdraw’ from concerns over ‘economic necessity’. Again, this is something only the most affluent can undertake. Thus, more work is needed, we suggest, on the differences between and within groups of educational migrants.