英国位于欧洲大陆西北面，英国本土位于大不列颠群岛，被北海、英吉利海峡、凯尔特海、爱尔兰海和大西洋包围。

Professor Steve Smith is the chair of the Universities UK, the representative body for the executive heads of UK universities and an umbrella group for the university sector.

He says the UK and China have very strong ties in the educational field, especially in higher education, since many Chinese study in British universities, meanwhile, the same percentage of British students come to study in China as well.

"About 85,000 Chinese students studying in UK at the moment, nearly 50,000 in universities, more and more Chinese students want to come to the UK. And our prediction is the number of Chinese students wanting to come and live in UK universities will increase in the next few years."

Professor Smith says among the Chinese who expect to study at UK universities, business school is usually ranked as number one or two in popularity.

"Accounting, finance, business, economics, science… and engineering follows that definitely, but the biggest group is in business studies. We have massive demand from international students for business school."

Chinese students have always been considered hard-working and dedicated. Nevertheless, Professor Smith noticed a change among today's Chinese students in UK universities.

"I think the big change is now they are absolutely fascinated about another country. They are inquisitive, they want to find out, they want question, they want to be critical, they want to argue, they want to explore. I think maybe 20 years ago, they were more interested in coming and learning, full stop. Now they are interested in learning, succeeding definitely, but also questioning."

He adds that Chinese students nowadays can bring a lot to the university. Meanwhile, they are more willing to participate with activities in their campus life.

"They come to Britain, they read the papers, they explore, they watch TV, and they talk to other students. But maybe ten twenty years ago, they would be there to study, and they stay by themselves very much. I have to say they are tremendous ambassadors for the country, because they are very loyal, very proud of China."

Students do learn a lot from studying in a multicultural environment, however, before students flock to universities abroad, Professor Smith advises students do some research before hand.

"I think anyone planning to come needs to spend time thinking about what they want, not just taking a flash ad word, or word of mouth, because the last thing we want is students who come on a misunderstanding, we want students to come knowing what we(universities) are really good at, and enjoying it."

He adds, students can go to the website of their expected university, go to publications, and look at the discussion forums on the web about the university. And it's important for students to work out what is that they want from the degree, what they want to study, and what kind of city they want to live in.

For CRI, I am Zhang Wan.

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