The subsequent time you stroll via UTown, the inexperienced hub on the coronary heart of the Nationwide College of Singapore’s campus, you’ll be greeted by an uncommon sight: teams of vacationers, led by pupil docents, posing for photographs at college landmarks.
Vacationers have lengthy flocked to Western universities, like Oxford and Cambridge within the UK, or Harvard and Yale within the U.S. However guests are actually including Asian campuses to their itineraries.
The development first began to emerge in early 2024, when teams of Chinese language vacationers started to indicate up on college campuses in locations like Hong Kong and Singapore.
It’s a part of a rising curiosity in Asian universities amongst Chinese language households. China is the world’s largest supply of worldwide college students, with multiple million college students going abroad in 2023, in keeping with UNESCO.
But shifting geopolitical relations are prompting Chinese language college students to look past conventional locations within the West. In line with UNESCO, the variety of inbound Chinese language college students to the U.S. dropped by 20% between 2018 and 2023.
Chinese language college students are as a substitute contemplating different locations in east and southeast Asia. South Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia reported 17%, 82% and 273% development, respectively, in enrolment charges of scholars from mainland China within the half-decade since 2018.
Singapore—with its majority ethnic Chinese language inhabitants—is one other high vacation spot, with native media estimating almost half the town’s worldwide college students hail from China.
Extra consideration means extra guests. A concentrate on schooling in Asia “causes parents to prioritize bringing their young children to see the university of their choice, and promote their aspirations to attend university,” says Gerard Postiglione, an emeritus professor at HKU’s schooling school.
“For these families, visits to a university with their children is not just a tourist event. It is a cultural event, akin to visiting a museum but also aspirational.”
Chinese language vacationers are additionally visiting campuses in South Korea, like Ewha Girls’s College in Seoul, Jung Jisun, an affiliate professor from HKU, factors out. “Tourists are attracted by their campus landscapes and the surrounding neighborhood, which features Korean youth culture.”
Within the case of HKU, the town’s oldest college, Jung means that vacationers are drawn to its heritage buildings, paying homage to British colonial structure. Such buildings have been hit on Xiaohongshu, the Chinese language social media app that’s turn into widespread with sightseeing Chinese language vacationers.
Too many individuals
However burgeoning customer numbers can get in the way in which of campus operations. Canteens and inner bus providers have reportedly struggled to deal with vacationers desperate to have a style of native pupil life. Vacationers even peek into school rooms to see how college college students take their programs, Jung mentioned.
Campuses have taken diverse stances on the way to handle guests.
Some, like NUS, go for a managed but welcoming stance to vacationers. In early 2025, the college skilled over 70 college students to conduct guided excursions for vacationers. In addition they constructed a customer centre in late 2024 to offer them with a “meaningful and engaging experience”.
Others, corresponding to HKU and NTU, are taking a extra stringent strategy, forcing vacationers to pre-register and pay an entry price earlier than setting foot on campus. HKU, for instance, expenses guests 140 Hong Kong {dollars} ($18) for a 90-minute guided tour of campus.
Whereas these measures have helped to regulate customer circulate, some teachers, like Jung, are apprehensive that they could go too far in limiting entry to public areas on campus.
“I am concerned about the role of public universities and their relationship with the local community,” she says. “Public universities are intended to be open spaces for the public, as they are operated with local taxpayers’ money—and people should have access to the campus and feel connected to the university.”
