After the pandemic, young Chinese are again looking to study abroad. But the decades-long run that has sent an estimated 3 million Chinese students to the U.S. could be trending down.

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With an interest in studying abroad rebounding after the pandemic, there are signs that the decades-long run that has sent an estimated 3 million Chinese students to the U.S., including many of the country’s brightest, could be trending down, as geopolitical shifts redefine U.S.-China relations.

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Aw said the decrease is more notable in U.S. undergraduate programs, which she attributed to a declining population in China from low birthrates, bitter U.S.-China relations, more regional choices for Chinese families and the high costs of a U.S. education.

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Andrew Chen, chief executive officer of Pittsburgh-based WholeRen Education, which has advised Chinese students in the U.S. 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 U.S., and portrayed the U.S. as a declining power. As a result, Chen said, Chinese families are hesitant to send their children to the U.S.

  • idiomaddict@feddit.de
    61·
    6 months ago

    We have less rigorous education and it costs more than scores of other options. There might be good schools, but I’ve taken classes at Yale and at state schools, and neither was at all rigorous in comparison to good (but not great) German public schools. Yale taught at a higher level, but grade inflation is a real issue for the Ivy League schools. German university is straight up insane to me- I once got points off a student teaching lesson because the school paper I’d printed a worksheet on was not completely opaque (it wasn’t, but it looked like normal paper, you couldn’t read it from the back side or anything, plus they gave it to me). I think that’s too overboard (also I can’t predict what they’ll notice as a flaw), but it’s a huge difference in standards. If you’re looking for the best education possible, you probably want the highest standards. In as competitive a labor market as China, I assume that unless you are accepted to an Ivy League, it just makes more sense to study elsewhere.

    Plus the guns, possibility of a trump reelection, and the very strong suspicion Chinese people face in higher level academia…

    • Not_mikey@slrpnk.net
      4·
      6 months ago

      It’s not about the actual level or rigor of education, just the perception. Unless the employer back in China studied in a German school they probably won’t know the difference and think it’s like any other western education. It’s more about name recognition and the ivy’s are “known” as the best and that sort of association probably boosts the perception of all U.S. schools. If anything students will want to go to the school with less rigor and that’s easier if an employers not going to know the difference.

      Also English remains the lingua franca and the u.s. is china’s largest trading partner. There’s probably more demand for workers who can talk to and relate to English speaking clients then Germans. so if not the u.s. they’ll probably end up going to Britain , like the girl in the article, or Australia or Canada.

      • idiomaddict@feddit.de
        3·
        6 months ago

        I was looking at it more from the perspective of truly wanting to get as skilled as you possibly can. Something with the cache of an Ivy League or MIT is probably going to be better for your resume than genuine competence, but that’s not probably really the case for a school like Smith or Emerson and it’s almost definitely not the case for a state school (excluding some of the UC system and occasional others, subject area dependent).

        There definitely are some lazy students everywhere, but there’s also a lot of competition in the entire Chinese school system. I don’t know how many of the lazy students get to a position where they have a shot at studying outside of China, but maybe that’s way off base. It jibes with what my Chinese classmates say about their process for getting here, but I’m not an expert at all. Plus I do actually also know a Chinese student who came to study in Germany against the wishes of the government, so maybe it’s more common than I would expect. Unfortunately he’s currently in China and it doesn’t seem like he’ll be able to come back because of beurocratic Rock Paper Scissors, but my cohort is petitioning on his behalf, so hopefully it makes a difference.

        English is definitely a plus for the US, but if I had the option to choose, I’d choose the other five eyes (there has to be another way to refer to them, right?) first, just due to costs and quantity of trump supporters.

        Outside of anglophone countries, I definitely don’t think Germany is for everyone, it’s a harder and less useful language to learn than Spanish or French and the weather is not great, but there are also fewer and less fluent English speakers than in Nordic countries (though Germany still has really good English accessibility in larger or more studenty cities). I do think the French language and universities probably also have some cache and Spanish is an incredibly useful language, especially as Mexico becomes a more important trading partner for China.