Chinese Student Enrollment in US Universities Continues Multi-Year Decline (economist.com) 54
Chinese student enrollment at American universities has dropped to 277,000 in the 2023-24 academic year, down from a peak of 372,000 in 2019-20, according to data in a new report examining shifting global education patterns. The decline accelerated following the State Department's May 28th announcement of an "aggressive" campaign to revoke visas for Chinese students in "critical fields" of science and engineering, as well as those with unspecified Communist Party "connections."
The trend reflects broader economic and geopolitical pressures beyond visa restrictions. Chinese families increasingly view American education as too expensive amid China's economic downturn and property market decline, while domestic employers have grown suspicious of foreign-educated graduates. Meanwhile, Chinese students are choosing alternatives including Britain, which hosted nearly 150,000 Chinese students in 2023-24, and regional destinations like Japan, where Chinese enrollment increased to 115,000 in 2023 from under 100,000 in 2019.
The trend reflects broader economic and geopolitical pressures beyond visa restrictions. Chinese families increasingly view American education as too expensive amid China's economic downturn and property market decline, while domestic employers have grown suspicious of foreign-educated graduates. Meanwhile, Chinese students are choosing alternatives including Britain, which hosted nearly 150,000 Chinese students in 2023-24, and regional destinations like Japan, where Chinese enrollment increased to 115,000 in 2023 from under 100,000 in 2019.
only the spys will come now (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I believe those are the very people the current administration wants to weed out, since they will take all our cutting edge technology back to China with them.
That really is, I believe, the theory.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It takes a special kind of /. 'tard to downvote this comment as it is the truth.
US total research is going down too. (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if there's a coincidence.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL. People downvote because this is an inconvenient fact. It's pretty clear that the total amount of influential research in the US has been either stagnant in numbers or been going down in the last few years, and scientific journals are now showing this fact.
Re: (Score:2)
In addition to that, especially in highly technical fields tons of papers have Chinese first authors. The US isn't just brain draining with these moves, but actively brain dumping.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a coincidence, but the causation is not direct. It's just that both are driven by another cause. Both funding cuts to research, arbitrary decisions about visas, etc. are driven by xenophobic paranoia.
This *isn't* to claim that there aren't real concerns, but the real concerns are a trivial proportion.
Re: (Score:1)
are driven by xenophobic paranoia.
Recognizing the Chinese Garbage Nation's lack of innovation and history of IP theft is not paranoia.
Meritocracy (Score:2, Troll)
And the "meritocracy" people claim this is in pursuit of more educational opportunities for American students without a molecule of irony.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope. No one is going to claim the crappy straw man argument you proposed. In general it is a bad idea to assume that people you disagree with are stupid, it reflects poorly on you for arguing with morons.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope. No one is going to claim the crappy straw man argument you proposed.
True!
In general it is a bad idea to assume that people you disagree with are stupid, it reflects poorly on you for arguing with morons.
Nah, that's the old way of thinking. The new hip way of arguing with people is to assert that they believe or do something so outrageous even a child could tell how dumb it is, regardless of what they actually believe or do. If they argue, try to correct, etc. ignore everything they say and just rephrase what you said the first time. Repeat until they give up.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
George Bernard Shaw
Re:Meritocracy (Score:4, Informative)
"President Trump on Wednesday said Harvard should have a cap on the number of international students it admits to create more spots for Americans, undercutting his administration's argument that merit alone should guide admissions practices as it escalates its fight with the elite university."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0... [nytimes.com]
Mod post above up! (Score:2)
Mod the post above me up, I have no mod points.
I love this shit. A bunch of people claiming strawman and generally talking down to the person making the point above only for it to turn out it's straight from the horses mouth.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't understand. Trump's intelligence is immeasurable and he's playing 5D chess. Only his supporters can interpret what he actually said. They cannot lose any argument because what he said can always be interpreted to support their position, even if it conflicts with their previous interpretations of the same statement.
Re: (Score:1)
I can agree with the cap on international students undercutting a policy on admissions based on merit alone. What I find a problem with is seeing universities in the USA taking government funds to educate people from foreign nations that have no intention to stay here to apply that education for the benefit of Americans. The federal government is not obligated to subsidize the education of foreigners. I can take that further, the federal government is not obligated to subsidize anyone's education.
If fore
Re: (Score:1)
Foreign students are often the only ones who pay the list price at universities. I have personally know of two institutions where foreign students are essentially subsidizing local students, and it is reportedly the same at most colleges.
> That money will have strings attached.
Yes. They have to follow the law.
But the law does not require appeasing the toddler-in-chief or buying his cryptocoin or abrogating the free speech of their students.
Trump does not give a shit about about following the law in order
Re: (Score:1)
Perhaps the law doesn't require universities to appease whomever sits in the Oval Office but the Department of Education is handing out this money and they answer to POTUS. POTUS has wide latitude on how federal funds are spent, so unless Congress laid out specifically which universities got how much money by some specific date there's a means for POTUS to hold this money over the head of these universities to make them beg.
Was it Clinton or Obama that thought it was "neat" on how he could dictate governme
Re: (Score:1)
If they did something about the Indians (Score:4, Interesting)
There are entire programs at universities that are not open to americans. They exist to bring Indians here on student Visas so they can then be handed out to the tech companies as workers. I've encountered these on multiple occasions trying to either move up or find a better role with a company.
Universities love it because they get their money either way and it's a lot of money from a foreign student. If the student becomes an employee for a American tech company they pay off the loans with the wages from the tech company and if they don't they go back to their country and default on the loans leaving the American taxpayer to foot the bill.
It really pisses me off because my kid is struggling to get the money for grad school.
And these are not geniuses. These are just people who are pretty good at math. There are tons and tons of students in America that could do that work if we care to be bothered educating them.
But really with the American first crowd it's not about even racism anymore it's about signaling that they belong to the group.
Seriously look it up. There's a name for it. It's called "costly signaling". It's basically similar to virtue signaling only a little different because you are supporting whatever the fuck comes along to let everybody know you are a good member of the group. The goal isn't necessarily to show off how virtuous you are it's to show that you are a dedicated member of the in group. It's a technique pioneered for religious cults that gets applied to political cults.
Re: (Score:3)
James Bowman's beard [thepinknews.com] is a Hindu-Racial-Supremacist Shit Bitch from the Modi Nazi Party.
As for the programs at American universities not open to Americans... fuck that racist shit.
Re: (Score:1)
"There are entire programs at universities that are not open to americans."
Show me these with evidence that they are not open to US citizens. Until you do, I call bullshit.
"It really pisses me off because my kid is struggling to get the money for grad school. "
When I did my PhD, if you were good enough for a graduate program you were on a paid TA/RA position. The rest that turned up were tourists. I do not believe that this has changed in the last decade.
Re: (Score:2)
Are Americans to dumb to fill these slots? (Score:1)
Re:Are Americans to dumb to fill these slots? (Score:4, Insightful)
No. The universities can charge a lot more for foreign students.
Re: (Score:1)
No. The universities can charge a lot more for foreign students.
Must the foreign students come from China? How about some students from South Africa? It can give them a few years away from the troubles there, maybe things will have calmed down by the time they graduate.
As I recall universities charged different fees based on living in the state or being from out of the state, as in they didn't care if you crossed a state line or an ocean to get there they charged the same non-resident fees. If universities charged even more for those that came from outside the USA th
Not going to work that way (Score:3, Insightful)
Now he and his xenophobic self-defeaters are being deliberate assholes, trying to scare anyone sane into going elsewhere. And it is working.
So if you're a smart, capable kid who can attend a top-tier school, do you want to go to the US school in that's in decline, or to the overseas school where all the other smart people are?
Re:So long (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee whatever will we do without spies ^H^H^H^H^H^H students flying drones over our naval facilities and taking patents and trade secrets back home.
Replace the word "students" with "tourists and investors" and you will have your answer.
More to the point I think you will find those students were only a tiny fraction of the students, the rest were cash cows for the US universities who will now take their money elsewhere.
Re: (Score:3)
Gee whatever will we do without spies ^H^H^H^H^H^H students flying drones over our naval facilities and taking patents and trade secrets back home.
Replace the word "students" with "tourists and investors" and you will have your answer.
More to the point I think you will find those students were only a tiny fraction of the students, the rest were cash cows for the US universities who will now take their money elsewhere.
Except that the cash is drying up anyway, per the article source. And it was inevitable that enrollment would slow down as soon as China ramped up their higher education system enough to provide for their own needs. That's been their M.O. in every other sector of their economy: get Western help until self-sufficient, then kick the West out to protect their own markets. Education is no different from factories in this case.
He just doesn't like Harvard (Score:2, Insightful)
A university like Harvard represents much of what triggers his insecurities. He wouldn't be admitted to that sort of club himself, and he is unable to debate with the sort of intellectual clout they wield. He would feel a lot better if they were struck down.
Trump probably could've gotten into Harvard (Score:1)
if his Daddy made a big donation AND his Daddy made him study well enough to get the minimum grades on the entrance exams.
After all, he did get into Wharton, and he graduated, which is no easy feat.
Whether he could've graduated from Harvard under his own merit (without cheating), or whether he cheated his way into or through Wharton, I can't say.
Re: (Score:1)
stops its shipments of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors to the cartels.
stops its massive IP theft
stops claiming the South China Sea as Chinese territory.
That works but it would seem that the larger issue is that the CCP is coercing students to spy on the USA as a condition of being allowed to leave China on a student visa.
It might not be "fair" to punish the individual students on having their visas revoked if there's no proof that individual is spying, being a "mule" for drugs, or whatever else we've seen come out of China to the detriment of American safety and security. There is a benefit to the CCP in having students go to the USA for a superior educat
Shocking (Score:2)
Chinese student enrollment at American universities has dropped to 277,000 in the 2023-24 academic year, down from a peak of 372,000 in 2019-20 ... The decline accelerated following the State Department's May 28th announcement of an "aggressive" campaign to revoke visas for Chinese students in "critical fields" of science and engineering
From the Gee-I-Wonder-Why-That's-Happening Dept
To put things in context, out of 13M students (Score:3)
To have a proper perspective, you have to keep in mind China has more than 13 million high school graduates in 2025, with only about 5 million seats in higher education.
277,000 enrollment is only 2% of the total, or about 3-4% out of those 8 million who cannot get into local universities in China.
The 100,000 or so figure throw about for other destinations is less than 1% of this year's high school graduates.
So the change is about less than 0.5%. About as significant as the Dow dropping 200 points.