'American Dream' Losing Its Lust for Chinese Students
(Baonghean) - Caught in the US-China trade war, Chinese students are looking for alternative study destinations - threatening to cut off an important source of revenue for American universities.
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| The US-China trade war is one of the reasons why the number of Chinese students choosing to study in the US has decreased. Photo: AFP |
Visa delays, concerns about having their research activities halted and safety concerns have discouraged Chinese students, according to several study abroad consultancy firms and many parents and students interviewed by AFP.
According to a survey by New Oriental China, education “competitors” such as the UK, Australia and Canada are the countries that benefit the most.
Japan and South Korea – traditional study abroad destinations for China's elite – and parts of Europe, particularly Germany and Scandinavian countries with their strong architecture programs, have also seen growth in applications.
The “discouraging” effect began to appear in the middle of last year, after the Trump administration reduced the visa duration for science and technology students from five years to one year in some cases.
“Right now, it is hard to say for sure whether they can complete their studies,” said Gu Huini, founder of education consultancy Zoom In.
More than a third of the roughly 360,000 Chinese students studying in the US are in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But the number of Chinese students in the US fell 2% in March from a year earlier, the first decline since 2009.
Melissa Zhang, a high school student in Beijing, said she had abandoned plans to go to the United States and was instead studying German in hopes of getting into a robotics program in Dresden. “I wasted a year studying for the SAT,” the 17-year-old said. “But what’s the point of coming to the United States if I could be barred from joining a research lab just because I’m Chinese?”
Melissa's parent, Mingyue, said that “the American dream is losing its luster” for many Chinese students: “If America makes them feel unwelcome, they will go somewhere else… the current generation feels the whole world is open to them.”
