Chinese families are keeping their college kids home. Washington is shutting off everyone else.
This is a transcript, for the video found here:
Bullets:
Mainstream public opinion in China has shifted dramatically, and more now firmly believe that it is a waste of time and money to send Chinese students abroad for university study.
While Chinese families are increasingly choosing domestic schools, Washington is closing off applicants from over a dozen other countries.
Officials claim that this is a push to suppress anti-Semitism on American campuses. But it is also slamming students from countries like Dubai, Turkiye, and even India, where consultants warn of a 70% student decline.
US universities face a severe crisis, and many will not survive.
Report:
Good morning.
This is a twitter post, an X post. It’s got over a million views, even though it’s in Chinese. And it’s typical of hundreds of others just like it.
Here’s the English. Chongqing is a big city in West China. Business executives there were talking about the futility of sending young people abroad to study. It’s not specific as to the United States, by the way. And it illustrates the challenge now for foreign universities, who are trying to recruit Chinese students now.
Number one, the ROI on overseas study is falling, to zero, they are arguing here. Two, The cost of tuition and living abroad is going up, and it’s increasingly unaffordable. Next up, in STEM fields, Chinese students are viewed with suspicion, and getting degrees in other fields are a waste of time and money. Four and Five—the most important employers in China aren’t hiring graduates of foreign universities.
This is a reply and new thread, which points out that China has the world’s industrial bases. Engineering, applied sciences, AI—graduates from those fields need to work somewhere that is actually building things, and China builds things. The Original Poster replied, his point is anecdotal but persuasive, and wonders why an acquaintance of his has gone to Europe to study architectural design. A single neighborhood in Chongqing will do more building than most small countries, and the kid should have just walked down the street from his apartment and talked to the guys building Chongqing.
American universities need lots of international students, because that’s where they make all their money. Foreign students are only 6% of the total, but they pay much higher prices compared to American students. And it is the foreign students that are keeping American university STEM programs solvent. Over half the international students are in STEM fields, and as their numbers drop, universities are struggling to keep those departments open.
Universities are even shutting down entire campuses, right now. In a recent Forbes survey, they identified sixteen more universities unlikely to survive, unless they can bring in a lot more international students, to balance their books.
Another serious challenge, is that one Chinese student is more valuable to US universities, compared to students from other countries. Chinese students come from wealthier families, and attend more expensive programs. They just pay more, in other words. So US schools need to even more new students to replace the ones that aren’t coming from China. And that’s the second serious challenge. The new administration is cutting off access to kids from everywhere else.
Remember, US universities need to find 2 Indian students to replace each Chinese student. But enrollments from India are collapsing. This piece is from just a few days ago—education consultants and visa brokers in India are predicting a 70% to 80% decline in student arrivals from India.
So that’s India. A cliff, straight down. Now there’s this. President Trump signed an executive order against countries whose students are more likely to be sympathetic to Palestinians—let’s leave it at that-- and families from these twelve countries aren’t allowed to send students at all. The State Department is prohibited from granting visas to families from there. But students from everywhere else are getting the same message. Turkey isn’t on that list, but students from there are getting scared away.
American universities then should be preparing themselves for catastrophe. In the first Trump term, colleges saw a 25% drop in Chinese students in the US, and that cost $1.1 billion a year to US higher education, and that’s just for tuition. It is not inclusive of living expenses, transportation, leisure spending. What’s coming now will be much worse. The visa restrictions aren’t only on China, they’re hitting scores of other countries. Higher education is one of the few industries where the US is running a surplus. As big as the American farm sector is, or energy, education is a lot bigger. International students reverse the trade deficits we run in other industries.
More and more-- and more and more--Chinese families are saying they don’t want their kids to go. And now Washington is telling families everywhere else we don’t want their kids to go either.
This is Yangzhou, the Jiangnan Garden Park. Be Good.
Resources and links:
2024 Global Student Flows - US Outlook and Forecast Update
https://www.holoniq.com/notes/2024-global-student-flows---us-outlook-and-forecast-update
Tracking College Closures and Mergers
https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/closed-colleges-list-statistics-major-closures/
International students are rethinking coming to the U.S. That’s a problem for colleges
https://hechingerreport.org/international-students-are-rethinking-coming-to-the-u-s-thats-a-problem-for-colleges/
X, Whatever you do, don’t let your child study abroad
https://x.com/XiaWan27472/status/1936950945688268990
Forbes, Trump’s Foreign Student Crackdown Puts These 16 Struggling Colleges At Risk
US fall intake hit by visa chaos: Consultants warn of 70–80% drop in Indian students
Education Exports Help Offset U.S. Trade Deficit—But New Tariff and Visa Policies Threaten Gains
Why reduced international students could be disastrous for higher ed
https://universitybusiness.com/why-reduced-international-students-could-be-disastrous-for-higher-ed/
"US universities face a severe crisis, and many will not survive."
Good. Unlike the students they've failed, they've earned it.
We can't expect a logical planned response in the West, owing to our university structures and their traditional autonomy. But its also because the nature of this event is not yet comprehensible.
The brunt of this sea-change will fall first on non-university institutions in ALL countries who became dependent on well-funded youth.
Yes, the consequences to the 'liberal' processes inside those wealthy Western universities and institutions will still be catastrophic, even when that's not where the largest numbers of 'international students' were going. That is what we are all being directed to think about.
But looked at more realistically, there was a global credit bubble in education as elsewhere, and it has popped. Its hard for universities to comprehend the enormity of this credit bubble - they were paid to not understand or explain it. Their huge expansion on the backs of these travelling students over three decades was all about credit. And even China has recognized limits to credit in sectors like high-speed rail and apartment blocks..
It's quite easy to destroy things.