WASHINGTON (AP) – In the Chinese city of Shanghai, two young women seeking an education abroad have both decided against going to the United States (US), a destination of choice for decades that may be losing its shine.
For Helen Dong, a 22-year-old senior studying advertising, it was the cost. “It doesn’t work for me when you have to spend CNY2 million (USD278,000) but find no job upon returning,” she said. Dong is headed to Hong Kong this fall instead.
Costs were not a concern for Yvonne Wong, 24, now studying comparative literature and cultures in a master’s programme at the University of Bristol in Britain. For her, the issue was safety.
“Families in Shanghai usually don’t want to send their daughters to a place where guns are not banned – that was the primary reason,” Wong said. “Between the US and the United Kingdom (UK), the UK is safer, and that’s the biggest consideration for my parents.”
With an interest in studying abroad rebounding after the pandemic, there are signs that the decades-long run that has sent an estimated three million Chinese students to the US, including many of the country’s brightest, could be trending down, as geopolitical shifts redefine US-China relations.
Cutting people-to-people exchanges could have a lasting impact on relations between the two countries. “International education is a bridge,” said executive director Fanta Aw of the NAFSA Association of International Educators, based in Washington.
“A long-term bridge, because the students who come today are the engineers of the future. They are the politicians of the future, they are the business entrepreneurs of the future.”
“Not seeing that pipeline as strong means that we in the US have to pay attention, because China-US relations are very important,.”
Aw said the decrease is more notable in US undergraduate programmes, which she attributed to a declining population in China from low birthrates, more regional choices for Chinese families and the high costs of a US education. But graduate programmes have not been spared.
Associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University in Boston Zheng Yi has seen the number of Chinese applicants to one of the school’s engineering programmes shrink to single digits, compared with 20 to 30 students before the pandemic.
He said the waning interest could be partly due to China’s growing patriotism that nudges students to attend Chinese institutes instead.
Chief executive officer Andrew Chen of Pittsburgh-based WholeRen Education, which has advised Chinese students in the US for the past 14 years, said the downward trend is here to stay.
“This is not a periodic wave,” he said. “This is a new era.” The Chinese government has sidelined English education, hyped gun violence in the US, and portrayed the US as a declining power.
As a result, Chen said, Chinese families are hesitant to send their children to the US.
Beijing has criticised the US for its unfriendly policy toward some Chinese students, citing an executive order by former president Donald Trump to keep out Chinese students who have attended schools with links to the Chinese military.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry also has protested that a number of Chinese students have been unfairly interrogated and sent home upon arrival at US airports in recent months.
Spokeswoman Mao Ning recently describing the US actions as “selective, discriminatory and politically motivated”.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said fewer than “one tenth of one per cent” of Chinese students have been detained or denied admission.
Still, many young Chinese, especially those whose parents were foreign-educated, are eager to study abroad. The China-based education service provider New Oriental said the students hope degrees from reputable foreign universities will improve their career prospects in a tough job market at home, where the unemployment rate for those 16 to 24 stood at nearly 15 per cent in December.
But their preferences have shifted from the US to the UK, according to EIC Education, a Chinese consultancy specialising in international education. The students like the shorter study programmes and the quality and affordability of a British education, as well as the feeling of safety.
The Institute of International Education, which publishes annual reports on international students, has found that US schools are prioritising students from India over China, especially for graduate programmes.
However, it also found that 36 per cent of schools reported increases in new Chinese students in fall 2023.
In its most recent report, the Council of Graduate Schools said US universities have seen a surge in applications and enrollments from India and countries in sub-Saharan Africa since fall 2020, while those from Chinese nationals have declined.
“Increasing competition from Chinese institutions of higher learning and the growing geopolitical tension between China and the US may be contributing to this trend,” the council report said.
