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With more income and better education, more Chinese parents are signing their children up for outbound study tours during the summer holiday, hoping to give them a taste of what it is like to study abroad.

Most outbound study tours promoted in China are developed by domestic educational institutions or travel agencies, boasting experiences at prestigious international universities, immersion language courses, and guided campus tours. Some themed study tours have also gained popularity in recent years, such as Premier League, American Boy Scout, British style and etiquette training.

A study tour usually lasts one to four weeks, and averages from 15,000 yuan (about $2219) to 40,000 yuan (about $5917). The majority of participating students are middle school students from first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The hottest destinations are the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Australia, reported the website ce.cn. The annual growth rate of the outbound study tours from 2005 is around forty to fifty percent, and is expected to become a tera-scale market within ten years.

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But the prosperous outbound study tour programs are not without their problems. First, the schedule and the quality of these tours are not standardized. For example, the learning-travelling ratio varies greatly from program to program. According to ce.cn, a so-called six-day coursed-based summer camp tour in Singapore promoted by an online travel agency only includes a half-day English language course, but costs 8,799 yuan (about $1302) per person, much higher than the average cost of a package tour to Singapore, while the actual travel arrangements of both tours are relatively the same. Moreover, the course content of these study tours is usually designed by foreign teachers recruited temporarily by the agency, therefore the quality varies.

In order to tackle the emerging problems in the booming industry, the National Tourism Administration implemented a code of conduct for the study tour industry, which went into effect on May 1. Parents and teenagers are also reminded not to follow the trend if such a tour is unnecessary or unaffordable.