Also, the undergrads (from wealthy families) versus PhD students (academically elite) from the same country.
This was really a fascinating discussion to read. I have 4 children, 2 of whom we adopted from China (daughter born in 2003 and son born in 2004) and we live in a very racially non diverse area. Iâve often wondered how they will interact with Chinese born peers when they get to that stage. Right now, literally all of the Chinese that they know are American born (or also adopted). Iâve thought of hosting an exchange student from China for that exact reason.
*Related, but a little off topic: we spent about a month in China and really loved the people. Those we spoke with were nearly all government employees. At the time (2004 and 2006), we were told that most everything was government owned (Iâve read this is changing). This was a big reason we were given for the large number of children available for adoption. Because of Chinaâs one child policy (really a one boy, two child policy), there were many children that were orphaned. If you were over your child limit, not only would you face a steep hefty fine for having another child, the child would get no state benefits whatsoeverâŠno documentation, no state education, etcâŠSo families with enough money to privately educate their child and could pay the fine, could have more kids. The poor and government employees, could not. A government employee could lose his/her job over an un-authorized pregnancy. An âover the limitâ pregnancy in a typical family meant the parents had the choice of abandonment for either domestic adoption (where documentation and benefits would be granted for the adoptive parents) or international adoption, or not having the baby at all. So, as in this country (and everywhere), more money means more opportunity. But I donât think it means everything. Power seems to be the biggest factor. Those who are not under government control, can do a lot more. Even having more children. Government workers can make a decent living. So itâs not the wealth - itâs the power that seems important. Power and wealth are not necessarily tied to each other in the same way it is here. At least, that was my observation. I admit, all of my observations are not based on academic finding but on anecdotal observations from my time in China and talking with the locals.
The student coming to America from China may be 2nd or 3rd tier students but they obviously come from very wealthy families. Only the wealthy privately educate their children. To me, this means that the school you go to matters more in China than the economic class from which you come.
We are Penn State alumni and I expect at least half of my kids to go to PSU. That being said, International students make up 9% of the Penn State student body (vs. UIUC where it is 15%) and is also ranked #2 on the list of the most expensive public universities in the country (vs. UIUC, #8). Penn State is not a state school, but state related. It receives a small percentage of its funding from the state, so I suppose that it makes sense that they are looking for full pay OOS students.
@jlhpsu I have to ask, how tough was it to adapt a boy? I thought it was nearly impossible. 
Iâve read stories about how some families are spending their life savings to send children to the USA for school.
This NYT article describes the sacrifices made by lower income families in China for education.
Remind me to stop complaining about my monthly payment to our college prepaid planâŠ
@PurpleTitanâ
That number is a little low for Illinois (a little low for undergrad, a lot low for school-wide, but I think graduate level international is not so important).
Harvardâs international enrollment percentage has been very steady. UIUCâs has been rapidly increasing, not simply âhigher than beforeâ. I think this is the point of interest and why you donât hear much about Harvard being overrun.
In Fall of 2004, total undergraduate enrollment was 4.4% international.
in Fall of 2014, total undergraduate enrollment was 16.4% international.
The graduate level has moved from the 30s to the 40s over the same time period.
This is from the DMI site, which lists residency of roughly 1.5-2% of undergrads as âunknownâ; so both the 2004 and 2014 percentages are a little understated (massive number of graduate students have âunknownâ residency).
I thought the article was great, and what is obvious to me is that despite all the resources being committed to integrating internationals into the campus community at Illinois, more must be done.
I would also like to know what percentage of these internationals, not just Chinese, are staying in the US after graduation. Someone mentioned alumni giving. How do you raise funds from students who go back home? It canât be easy, and I donât think a few one-offs from the occasional billionaire proves anything. Iâm not aware of any actual research on the topic, but it seems very intuitive to me that internationals would be harder to raise funds from than domestic graduates (Bachelor graduates that is).
@Gator88NE There are certainly more girls available for adoption in China, but itâs not true that there arenât any boys. China has a one boy, two child rule. If you have a boy first, thatâs it. You arenât permitted to have more. If you have another child and itâs a boy, you must give him up or face the fines.
If you have a girl as your first child, you can try again for a boy. If itâs another girl, you either keep her and you are done, or you give her up and try again for a boy.
That means that mostly it is second children, mainly girls, but sometimes boys, that are given up for adoption (well, abandoned. Itâs illegal in China to âgive upâ a baby - so itâs done anonymously always). Also, medically needy boys are well represented in the Chinese orphanages. That was our case. Our son was considered medically needy - he was born with a cleft lip/palate so he was considered âSpecial Needsâ. He was 3 months old before he was abandoned, so his birth parents did try to keep him apparently - but in the area of China where he is from (Ningxia province in Western China) there is not a lot of wealth and without education and supplies it is nearly impossible to feed a cleft child. We adopted him when he was 2 and he is 10 1/2 years old now and doing just great.
We have another son adopted from Russia as an infant (heâs 16 now), where it is much easier to adopt a boy than a girl. Different cultural demandsâŠ
@LucieTheLakieâ
That same quote stood out to me, that they essentially raced to China when they realized they had been derelict in marketing outside of Illinois for so long and had no way to raise funds from that demographic quickly. Granted, they were well funded back in the day and didnât need or want to expand OOS enrollment. But still, I didnât expect them to admit that, for all intents and purposes, this whole international expansion was an act of economic desperation (yeah, we knew it, I just didnât expect to see someone admit it).
Another point I took from the article is the massive amount of resources dedicated to integrating these students. Internationals pay a premium tuition to OOS domestic students, but it seems to me that net-net the school brings fewer dollars to the bottom line from internationals after taking into account all the expanded services required.
EGADS! Some in-state students pay close to $20K a year for tuition and fees (Feeâs are $3,566 in 2014).
Tuition and fees
Residents: $15,602 - 20,606
Non-Residents(OOS): $30,228 - $35,232
International: $31,042 - $38,080
Last time I ran UIUCâs net price calculator, the net price for an in state EFC = $0 student in CS was about $15000. Probably several thousand dollars out of reach of the studentâs ability to self fund with direct loan and work.
@YZAmyatin: I think you are over-imagining the cost of services. UIUC is still a public, and services generally are still below the level of the private elites. Plus, several thousand extra full-pays can pay for a lot. Also, UIUC didnât ârace to Chinaâ. As the article pointed out, UIUC actually had done minimal recruiting or marketing in China compared to some other schools. What is happening is that the Chinese upper-middle and upper classes are expanding fast, and the biggest beneficiaries (besides the top-ranked schools) are the top engineering schools and schools known for finance. Unlike the top engineering privates like MIT, Stanford, and Cornell (or other private elites), who either do not have the capacity to or donât see a rationale for expanding their population of full-pay internationals tremendously, the top engineering publics like UIUC, Purdue, and UC-Berkeley can both expand and have felt an impetus in recent years (due to state funding cuts/freezes) to take in more qualified OOS full-pays.
Thus why this article is being written about UIUC instead of, say, MIT.
Furthermore, UIUC actually has a long history with China (it was one of the top destinations for Chinese students looking to study in the US even something like 80 years ago) and long has enjoyed a top reputation in the Sinosphere.
Thus why this article is being written about UIUC instead of, say, GTech.
Lol, and I thought I was a capitalist roader, not a denialist.
Where do most of the people without practical experience of the situation live?
http://international.illinois.edu/China-UI.html:
âFor over a century, the University of Illinois has enjoyed a long and rich tradition of engagement with China. In fact, between 1910 and 1950, more than 25 percent of all Chinese students who came to the United States to pursue their higher education chose to attend the University of Illinois.â
Not sure what the relevance of the reference to private elites is. My point was that the gap between international tuition and OOS tuition is not a real gap. The international students cost more to service and it is probably a wash at best.
International at UIUC is only a few thousand $ a year more expensive that OOS domestic. The following are all direct quotes from the articleâŠ
-
"increased demand from international students who have needs that differ from those of their American peers at the writing center, the career services center, the counseling center, etc. " [sounds expensive]
-
âIn 2013, UIUC created the position of director of international student integrationâ [todayâs âpositionâ is tomorrowâs âdepartmentâ]
-
âfaculty members at UIUC felt unprepared for the rapid increase in international studentsâ- [how much $ to prepare those faculty members?]
-
" workshops for support staff on intercultural communication, a one-credit applied communication course intended to help international students navigate the academic and social environment at UIUC, an enrichment academy in the business school that targets international studentsâŠ" [guessing the kids from Indiana and Wisconsin donât need this stuff]
-
âThe office of inclusion and intercultural relations sponsored an âintercultural dialogue seriesâ focused on China this past fall.â [is the âoffice of inclusion and intercultural relationsâ expanding or contracting in an environment of rapidly expanding international enrollment?]
My point, which was really only a side comment, was that a few thousand $ probably does not cover all thatâŠ
By ârace to Chinaâ, I did not mean âjump on a plane and get there faster than somebody elseâ
This is a moot point I think. The article clearly describes a race to China, even if you would use different terminology. I am intimately familiar with the history you cite, but the history did not mean a thing until Illinois decided to change its behavior.
ârace to Chinaâ = make the decision to enroll these kids at a rate much higher than before because they had no other way to raise money fastâŠ
This is why the article is being written about UIUC and not MITâŠ
âAt the root of this, really, is the financial pressures and the fact that the U of I did not cultivate a domestic out-of-state student body,â says Abelmann. âWe did not have a domestic out-of-state student body ready when we needed more out-of-state tuition.â .
The decision to enroll more students from China was conscious, not organic. It was independent of the history you quote, which simply made the decision easier, and the results more successful. It would be much more economical and preferable to get the money from OOS domestics, but the school simply doesnât have enough demand from that demographic. It is clear from the quote (and, frankly, without the quote) that a rapid increase the enrollment of students from China would never have happened had the school been able to attract OOS domestics in similar numbers.
Ah, you were comparing Internationals with Domestic OOS, not In-state.
Hereâs the thing: Outside of Cal, UMich, UVa, UCLA, & UNC, which publics have a big ready pool of qualified OOS (numbering in the thousands) willing to pay full-price and to step in when more money is needed? Which ones are surrounded by states with flat or decreasing HS graduates?
The influx in international undergrads (specifically Chinese undergrads) isnât particular to UofI, I hope you are aware. They have been rising pretty dramatically at Purdue, MSU, and Minnesota as well (and probably other publics with good/great engineering and business programs).
The international undergraduate population at UMinny rose by 30% and 24.4%, respectively in 2010 and 2011:
http://global.umn.edu/icc/student-voices/background.html
âNo, American society is nowhere near as stratified by university background.â
And the proof of that is that (paradoxically) the parents who seem to push hardest for Elites or Bust most often did not graduate from those, but from some state U in Louisiana, or even some overseas college very few people have heard of. Yet these wildly successful parents who graduated from âinvisibleâ U. S. colleges â with no resultant harm-- demand almost hysterically that their children be admitted to one of 10 schools. The illogic is too much and complete lacks credibility.
I crunched the numbers and that statement describes 96.51% of my post, and 99.98% of my post as it relates to UIUC.
Onward towards 100%!
A 2011 UIC report on Enrollment Management:
http://www.senate.illinois.edu/sc_external_emreport.pdf
Clearly UIUC is under-performing as compared to the other Big 10 schools, in the area of OOS recruitment. Using UMinny as an example, 31% are OOS and 5% are Foreign countries (residence), while UIUC is 10% and 13% (as of fall 2013).
I get the sense, from reading the report, that they would prefer to increase OOS student enrollment, but are not succeeding, so they compensate by increase international student enrollment. Looking at a few other Big 10 schools, Michigan is 37% (OOS) and 5% (foreign), Purdue is 28% and 15%, IU-Bloomington 29% and 9%, Michigan State is 11% and 15% (much more like UIUC), OSU is 17% and 8%, and Wisconsin-Madison is 35% and 9%.
@Nerdyparentâ, actually itâs a Lakeland Terrier (âLakieâ), but I am a lover of all terriers, big, small, wirehair and smooth. 
@YZamyatinâ, many large universities have development officers and alumni relations directors who travel overseas attending alumni events and cultivating potential donors. Depends on the school, but foreign alumni can be a very important source of both funds and important connections.
@jlhpsuâ, we have a child adopted from Russia in the early 2000s as well. As I recall, most adoptive families were looking for infant girls. Boys, especially those with health needs and/or warehoused in dicier parts of the country (like our son), faced terrible odds of ever being placed with families. And at 18 theyâre turned out on the street. Really puts many of our homegrown problems in perspective!
Back to China: Whatâs also interesting to me is the number of US and UK universities that have invited (and now some have sent packing) the Confucius Institute to their campuses. Itâs really all about the need for those Chinese funds, whatever spin is put on it:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute
As the famous bank robber Willie Sutton (allegedly) said: âI rob banks because thatâs where the money is.â
@GatorNE88: UMinny and UW-Madison arenât comparable because WI and MN have tuition reciprocity (and MN has that with one or more of the Dakotas as well), so many/most of their OOS come from that and donât actually net them more than in-state tuition.
UMich is definitely a bigger draw to OOS, but itâs very difficult to get to the level of UMich(/Cal/UVa).
That leaves the IN schools. They have relied on OOS recruitment for a while now (there arenât enough qualified IN kids to fill both giant flagships), but note that a big source of their OOS population is IL, and IL obviously canât be a source of OOS full-pays to UIUC.
Plus, you have to consider the price factor. The OOS tuition at PU, IU, tOSU, UW-Madison, UMinny (,UIowa, ISU, Mizzou) are all lower than UIUCâs OOS tuition (and some of them are fairly generous with merit money to OOS as well). A higher OOS tuition (supported by demand from China) allows UIUC to earn more money per each non-IL student.
Ideally, no doubt every other Midwestern public wants to get to UMichâs level, but attaining that level of cachet in all spheres is rather difficult.
UW has a target of 28% OOS NOT including Minn kids. They are at that level for entering first year.students. It goes down a bit due to heavy instate transfers for the last 2 years but is around 27% overall and growing. Intâs are about 6% of all freshmen
@PurpleTitan PSU is 32% (OOS) and 10% Foreign (residence), University of Iowa is 44% and 9%, Nebraska is 19% and 3%, while Maryland is 29% and 2% (no reason to look up Northwestern).
This isnât a question of reaching Michiganâs level, UIUC simply lags behind almost all of the other Big 10 schools for OOS students. Iâm sure several factors play a role, but UIUC still lags (with the exception of RutgersâŠwhich floats around 5 yo 8% OOS)
If they canât increase the OOS %, then they likely will fall back on International students, even more than today. As the report stated, there are advantages to OOS students, that youâll not have with international.
To increase OOS %, I can think of two strategies. First, increase your profile and recruiting (think U-Chicago type recruiting) which can be expensive.The second is price, must often done via merit scholarships, which is a very expensive option.
Being one of, if not the most expensive public flagship university is the country, is a problem in so many waysâŠ
@Gator88NE: only if you feel that taking in internationals, as opposed to American OOS, is a drawback outside of money.
Money-wise, even with the extra expense to help Chinese students adjust, being able to keep a relatively high OOS tuition (relative to pretty much every other B10 public thatâs not UMich) and discounting relatively little via merit scholarships almost certainly nets UIUC more money than if they followed the lower OOS tuition strategy of UW-Madison/Purdue/IU/UIowa. Especially since the centerpiece of the OOS strategy of those schools is drawing IL kids, who obviously canât be a source of full-pay OOS students to UIUC.
Another thing is that OOS American students seem to care more about how picturesque/beautiful/fun a campus is than Internationals, and the consensus seems to be that Madison, Happy Valley, Bloomington, and Ann Arbor all have Chambana beat in that regard while the Twin Cities and Columbus have Chambana beat when it comes to things to do. While not as hard as catching up with UMich, changing that perception (much of it rooted in reality) would be hard and take both time and money.
Furthermore, unlike IL, the states bordering IL do not have a surplus of qualified students who canât all fit in to their flagship(s). And all of those states have flat or decreasing HS populations.
So Iâm not sure what you would rather have UIUC do. They could always increase marketing, but that may not actually be more cost-effective than just taking in Internationals.