Literature Review Post Blog #2

Ma, Yingyi. Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education. Columbia University Press,2020. 

About the Book
This book talks about the general trend of Chinese international undergraduate students in American higher education where undergraduate enrollment from China rose from under 10,000 to over 135,000. These privileges form a relationship between strong countries that helps to provide a broader experience to young people. The book intensively dig into why Chinese international students decide to study in the United States, what does this experience mean to them, and what does higher education in the U.S. should provide to keep attracting more young people.
Authors

Yingyi Ma is an associate professor of sociology and senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where she is also director of the Asian/Asian American Studies Program. She argues that these students' experiences embody the duality of ambition and anxiety that arises from social changes in China. Yet the intricacy and pressure of these systems generate a great deal of anxiety, from applying to colleges before arriving, to studying and socializing on campus, and to looking ahead upon graduation.
Key Terms
"Ambitious and Anxious" - policy implications for American colleges and universities, including recruitment, student experiences, faculty support, and career services.

"Competitive advantage"-a condition or circumstance that puts a company in a favorable or superior business position

"Economic/Academic Elites"
"Expressive individualism vs pragmatic collectivism"
"Fixed vs Growth mindsets"
"Ability vs Effort"

Quotations
→ "In short, school rankings largely direct students' choices: Chinese students will go to the highest-ranking school they possibly can. rankings provided by the U.S. New & World Report are the bible in this process. In addition, family networks and knowledge about specific schools sometimes play a determining role in Chinese students' college choices" (Ma 45).

→ "Chinese students choose their college majors in the broad context of a collectivist-oriented society, where they are influenced by their parents, teachers and peer networks. The shared value among these influences is pragmatism- a focus on the jobs students can get from their college majors- rather than the idealism of self-exploration and self development through college education" (Ma 168).

→"I feel that studying abroad has humanized me. In my Chinese high school, we felt like test-taking robots, with intensive knowledge input every day, and our output was test scores. Now I realize that academics are important, but there is other equally important stuff in life, such as family, inter-personal relationships, self-care, and human connections" (Ma 179)

Values
I think this would be a gook resource to use for my research since it directly answer my research questions by providing specific interviews and surveys from Chinese international students.