In article from state run newspaper Global Times, list of Chinese countermeasures to any Trump administration trade war moves included “China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the US”. Colleges all over U.S. are praying this does not come to pass.
That would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. Chinese students studying in the US aren’t being sent by their government as an act of charity to American universities. If Chinese universities were ranked higher, and there weren’t as many opportunities in the US, maybe fewer Chinese students would be leaving their country to study in America. See, for example, today’s Wall Street Journal on the topic: http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-seeks-to-boost-foreign-enrollment-in-colleges-1479099611
Global Times is a far right newspaper, even by Chinese standard. It has the history of taking on extreme positions that most Chinese would not take them serious.
The number of international Chinese students account for about 1-2% of all college students in the US. Many international Chinese students are not full paying students either, particularly those at graduate levels. Overall, financially or politically, I do not see how such threat should be taken too seriously in the US. Furthermore, many children of top Chinese leaders are or will be studying in the US. I think we simply have far more bargaining power on this front. 
If this stupid thing really happens, there may be a few colleges that could take a hit because they have a higher exposure to international Chinese students. But these universities are largely located in a big city or have a big name. If they really want to dig deeper into their international pools, they should have no problem getting certain levels of replacement students from say India and South Korea.
This kind of threat from GT is childish and resembles those similarly childish threats in the past; e.g., China would sell its US Treasury securities and it would introduce disruption into US economy. The reality is that the market for US Treasury securities is so deep that any disposition from China has been like a drop in the ocean. By the same token, US education market is deep and has wide-spread international appeal.
Would it affect admissions rates at any highly competitive colleges? Or just a drop in the bucket?
It seems to me this would mostly be a problem for university graduate programs.
Good question/thought. I looked up 2016 data from:
http://www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/Fact-Sheets-by-Country/2016#.WCnvvfkrLcs
(click on China to get the download)
and using some simple math it indicates almost 136K Chinese students in the U.S. were undergraduates.
It is hard to believe the undergrads get any help from the state schools and many private schools tend to offer little or no financial help to foreign students.
The majority of Chinese undergrad students are coming to the US largely because the competition to get into their top undergrad colleges is so exceedingly stiff and high pressured that the vast majority of them would have been rejected even from the second or third tier of domestic Mainland Chinese colleges.
That and an increasing number of well-off Mainland Chinese college applicants and their parents are opting out of the national college entrance exam path because of its exceedingly keen competitiveness and associated high stress.
And the perceived quality of colleges outside the first tier or two is so much lower most of the newly upper/upper-middle class Mainland Chinese families feel it’s more worth the full-pay cost to attend American colleges rather than the lower-tiered ones back home.
Your quote would be much more true for grad students. However, unless things have changed drastically within the last few years, most are in fully-funded PhD programs so they’re not paying much/if anything.
Also, even the ones going outside of their country to attend undergrad aren’t limiting themselves to the US. Know of a few Mainlanders who did their undergrads at Oxbridge, Heidelberg, or the Sorbonne who have worked stints in the US on behalf of their respective multi-national corporations or public mass media organizations*.
- Think France24, BBC, etc.
“Would it affect admissions rates at any highly competitive colleges? Or just a drop in the bucket?”
A drop in the bucket at the undergraduate level. Take HYP as examples, each takes in about 10 international Chinese students each year. These schools’ student sizes range from about 1,200 to 1,700 each year. We are talking about less than 1% of student body here.
“A drop in the bucket at the undergraduate level. Take HYP as examples, each takes in about 10 international Chinese students each year. These schools’ student sizes range from about 1,200 to 1,700 each year. We are talking about less than 1% of student body here.”
In this case, I don’t think it’s the number of enrolled Chinese students that matters, but rather the number of Chinese applicants.
“Would it affect admissions rates at any highly competitive colleges? Or just a drop in the bucket?”
If my reading of the question is correct, I think it was about whether the admission rate for US students will be higher if the number of enrolled international Chinese students is lower.
I don’t think trade wars are your biggest hurdle. Unfortunately, US Supreme Court still allows race to be a factor in college admissions. That’s the biggest problem. Race should not be a factor. There’s a huge problem when nearly the first question on the Common App asks if you are AA or Hispanic. It leads to a bifurcation of where the app goes next. Let’s take race out of the College Admission process. MLK’s dream is for everyone.
Preppedparent, I don’t think race in college admissions is really relevant to the possibility of Chinese international students not applying/not enrolling at U.S. universities.
Race is not a factor for international students. The race statistics listed for colleges are for domestic students only.
There are many wealthy Chinese students that go to 2nd or 3rd tier American colleges. They are the ones who didn’t make the cut to Chinese competitive colleges. Their parents would rather have them go to any American (or other international) colleges.
There are number of American colleges that are dependent on full pay international students’ tuitions.
International Chinese students are largely concentrated in urban universities (International Chinese students mostly grew up in a big city, and reputable Chinese universities are mostly urban universities) and state flagship universities (International Chinese students and their families are 'familiar" with the names of state flagship universities by the association of the names of states). I would not call these universities 2nd or 3rd tier universities. The following link shows the weighted ranking of international Chinese students to total students:
The ranked universities are mostly top 100 universities.
It is true that some 3rd tier universities want/hope to expand their full paying international students. But the problem is that they do not have enough international appeal. In terms of percentage, their international Chinese students are actually relatively low as of today.
International undergrad students absolutely prop up our college system because they are almost exclusively full pay. It will be interesting to see what the recent election does to the numbers of international students both applying and coming for college. Demand will remain high for the top tier schools I imagine but for the next couple of rungs down this could really hurt. There are a lot of colleges that will not survive without the money that foreign students bring.
Actually, some of the wealthy undergrad Chinese students I knew who attended elite US colleges…including Ivies were among those rejected from the first or even second-tier of Chinese colleges on the gaokao. Several such undergrads admitted as much…including a couple I was tutoring in history/poli-sci classes.
Know of another 2 who were similarly rejected due to not scoring high enough on the gaokao who ended up attending Oxbridge for undergrad and then coming here to the US for elite grad school or high profile type work for a multinational institution.