Two teenage Chinese girls who were on their way to attend a summer camp in the United States were killed in the Asiana Airlines plane crash in San Francisco on Saturday. While the nation mourns their deaths, some people have again questioned the need for overseas study tours, says an article in People's Daily. Excerpts:

Recent years have seen a massive growth in the overseas study tour market in China. In fact, a slew of travel agencies and training institutions have been cashing in on schools' preference for overseas study tours.

But there is an ugly side to the "superficial prosperity" of the overseas study tour market. Not only do the schools that arrange such tours make money (despite calling themselves non-profit institutions), but also most tours have been reduced to one-day visits to famous foreign universities. In most case, Chinese students hardly get a chance to study, however briefly, in foreign universities, as the advertisements generally promise.

Study tours nowadays are different from the ones that were arranged in the past and gave only "brilliant" students the opportunity to study abroad. Today, as long as a family can afford the fees, it can send a child on a study tour abroad. The fact that more than tens of thousands of students from elementary and junior middle schools in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, will go on overseas study tours during this summer alone proves this point.

Arranging for overseas studies and study tours has become an industry. Everyone wants to get a share in the huge market that offers ready and good money. Surveys show that some travel agencies that don't have even the basic experience of running overseas tours have entered the market and are offering to organize overseas study programs and then subcontracting them to agencies abroad to handle the relevant issues.

What is surprising is that some schools are handing over their students to such unqualified agencies, leaving people to question their real motive.

Obviously, some schools have forgotten their basic responsibility and buried their principles to use their students as moneymaking tools. Many parents are forced to bow to the commercial dictates of such schools because they don't want to jeopardize the academic career of their children.

Shockingly, parents whose children go on such tours also have to pay for the travel expenses of the teachers accompanying them. Parents expect their children to go out into the wider world to broaden their horizon and gather experience, for which they pay huge amounts of money. But what their children get in return is a fruitless adventure without any guarantee for safety.

Since overseas study tours should offer students the opportunity to travel, meet with people their own age in other countries and gather knowledge, they should never be reduced to fun and games dictated by commercial interests. Only by strengthening relevant regulations and taking steps to prevent schools and travel agencies to act in collusion to dupe students can the authorities restore the real purpose of overseas study tours.

(China Daily 07/11/2013 page9)