Chapter 10: Addressing Offshore Disconnections Between Chinese and Western Business Academics and Students

China’s growing economy has produced a huge demand for Western educated business graduates. However, Australian universities’ experiences with Chinese students and vice versa, are not free of problems. This chapter reports on difficulties experienced by offshore Chinese students, while studying an Australian Business Administration program. Findings of the study indicate ways in which Western universities can improve the design of offshore joint programs with Chinese partners, to better target course content and delivery to meet the needs of Chinese students.

The Dawkins reform proposals (Dawkins, 1988) regarding tertiary education in Australia, and the subsequent pursuit of international student enrolments by many universities, saw a new array of partnership arrangements in the international arena ( Willis, 2005, 2006). These ranged from enrolling students in courses at host institutions in Australia, to establishing campuses in other countries, providing external study materials to students in other countries, and offering hybrid arrangements with partners, who deliver lectures and tutorials to international students in their host countries. In the 1990s in China, as part of the review of tertiary education, a number of institutions entered into the last of these options with foreign universities, including some from Australia.