Yingyi Ma, "Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education" (Columbia UP, 2020)

About this episode

Yingyi Ma discusses the experiences of Chinese college students in American higher education, highlighting their ambitions and anxieties.

In Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education (Columbia UP, 2020), sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of a new wave of international Chinese students—mostly self-funded—who have transformed American higher education over the past decade. This privileged yet diverse group of young people, emerging from a rapidly changing China, must navigate the complications and confusions of their formative years while bridging the world’s two most powerful countries. How do these students come to study in the United States? What does that experience mean to them? And what does American higher education need to know—and do—in order to continue attracting these students and supporting them adequately? Drawing on research conducted in both Chinese high schools and American colleges and universities, Ma’s book offers illuminating insights into the experiences that define this new wave of students: above all, a duality of ambition and anxiety rooted in the transformative social changes of contemporary China. These students and their families are ambitious in seeking to navigate two very different educational systems and…

People in this episode

Guest: Yingyi Ma

Topics covered

• Chinese college students
• American higher education
• international students
• ambition and anxiety
• educational systems
• policy implications

Keywords

• Chinese students
• higher education
• sociology
• international education
• student experiences
• educational challenges
• policy recommendations

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Columbia UP

Places: China, United States

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