Breaking open pathway programs: exploring the value and values of international students

这项研究提案旨在通过考虑商业途径项目创造和利用的价值来探索它们的崛起。(路径项目是一家跨国公司经营的语言学校，与讲英语的大学合作。)具体地说，该提案寻求跟踪从北京到伦敦大学的跨国流动中出现的学生支出和活动路径。建议的方法借鉴了支出跟踪研究中使用的方法，包括对北京和伦敦的学生、家长和招聘代理的采访。这一提议在理论上的新颖性来自于考虑学生通过路径计划的身体运动在创造价值中扮演的角色。这是发现(当地)价值体系和(全球)市场之间紧张关系的一条很有希望的途径。同时应用经济学和人类学对价值的理解，有助于使这些紧张关系变得可见，并有助于我们理解路径项目的兴起。其目的是获取丰富的支出和流动性数据，进而深化当代关于教育商业化和全球化的讨论。

The research proposal is designed to explore the rise in commercial pathway programs by considering the value they create and leverage. (A pathway programme is a language school that is run by a multinational corporation, and which partners with English-speaking universities.) Specifically, the proposal seeks to track pathway student expenditures and activities that arise in transnational movements from Beijing to universities located in London. The suggested approach draws on methods used in expenditure tracking studies, including interviews with students, parents, and recruiting agents in Beijing and London. The theoretical novelty of this proposal comes from considering what role the physical movement of students-through pathway programmes-plays in the creation of value. This is a promising avenue to uncover tensions between (local) value systems and (global) markets. Applied in tandem, economic and anthropological understandings of value can help make these tensions visible, and inform our understanding of the rise of pathway programs. The aim is to capture rich expenditure and mobility data, which in turn can deepen contemporary discussions about the commercialisation and globalisation of education.