Factors Influencing Chinese Students’ Decisions to Study in the United States

The number of Chinese students studying in the U.S. has increased drastically over the years. China ranked as the top country of the origin for U.S. bound international students for six years in a row, with 98,235 students in 2009, 127,822 students in 2010, 157,558 students in 2011, 194,029 students in 2012, 235,597 students in 2013, and 274,439 students in 2014 (Institute of International Education, 2015). The bulk of student applications have changed from a majority of graduate students to mostly undergraduate students (Chow, 2011). According to the Institute of International Education (2015), there were 886,052 international students studying in colleges and universities in the U.S. in the 2013/2014 academic year, contributing more than $27 billion to the U.S. economy in 50 states. Among them, China remained the top country of origin by providing 31% of all international students in the U.S. (Institute of International Education, 2015). However, the report from the Institute of International Education (2015) did not provide reasons why more and more Chinese come to the U.S. to study. Since research studies on the factors that influenced Chinese students' decisions to study in the U.S. are limited, it is imperative to conduct this study.The goal of this study was to explore factors that contributed to Chinese students' decisions to study in the United States over all other options. This study could be beneficial to policy makers, university administrators, educators, and researchers. The information could provide Chinese university administrators and government officials to better understand how they might improve curriculum or policies to retain Chinese students. University administrators in the U.S. could use the information to make better decisions on students' admission policies. Educational leaders can identify potential problems, adjust learning programs, or refine the enrollment process to better serve the needs of international students.LITERATURE REVIEWThere were three theories that provided the foundation for this study: Constructivism, Social Learning, and Confucianism. Constructivism maintains that personal experiences and social situations influence a person's perception of reality. Constructivism involves the belief that people create references for events and influences to give them a sense of meaning and order (Hein, 1991). Learning is regarded as a process that requires individuals to form new references from sensory input actively and to construct new meaning from events they experienced in the past (Hein, 1991). Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory focuses on the actions of others as a teaching tool (Culatta, 2012). Bandura reasoned that people learned by watching the actions of others and from their observations determined which actions were safe or unsafe to repeat (Culatta, 2012). Human beings are unique in that they do not need to experience something personally to understand whether a particular thing is good or bad. Confucianism emphasizes great respect for social order and traditional family values (Lu, 2014). In Confucius' doctrine, there should be no distinction of the classes in teaching (Legge, 2004). The teachings of Confucius help cement the importance of education into the minds of the Chinese people and communicate the importance of education as a way of social advancement.Overview of Chinese EducationDuring the last century, China has witnessed many changes-the most important of these being the rise in power of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1940s. Before the establishment of the People's Republic of China, about 80% of the Chinese population was illiterate; after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, greater emphasis was placed on educational equality (China in Brief, 2000). The Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1970s reversed education progress, and thrust the entire country into chaos. "Young people were encouraged to revolt and to attack the four olds: old ideas, old customs, old habits, and old culture" (Adams, Stivers, & Bin, 2003, p. …