How International Students Can Begin a U.S. College Search

EngPII
Sun, 06 Aug 2017 04:06:56 +0000

@paul2752 is correct: most of the Chinese students have parents who believe spending any and all savings on their (mostly) one child’s education is a driving social value. Living in China for so long, I find the kids today applying for undergraduate education do so because it is easier on their relatively prosperous and highly competitive parents (compared to the previous generation) than the many years of hard work needed by parents at night and weekends to help the kids pass the Chinese gaokao, college entrance exam. Chinese parents, if they can, will spend any and all amounts for their one emperor child to have a good education. US, UK, Aus, NZ, Canada are loaded with full-fare Chinese students. Not many looking for or need aid, from what I see from China.

And most of the fresh grads can’t work in the US afterward as the H1-Bs aren’t being sponsored by US employers anymore. So they go back to China. And they don’t donate money to a school afterward. I’m contacted at least once a month by one of my employees or friends looking for job opportunities in China for their kids with international, mostly US, educations.

In recent years, with 330k Chinese studying in the US, universities have further differentiated their tuition fees from the traditional OOS/International rate to a higher overall international tuition and fees. State flagships don’t receive much contribution from state tax coffers anymore and they make up that revenue with tuition from high-paying foreign kids from Saudi Arabia, China, etc. It’s most definitely about revenue, not diversity–even for the highly competitive privates who don’t provide need-based aid to foreign applicants. Duke doesn’t really NEED 30% of its freshman class from China to ensure global diversity. But the full fare from that 30% works just fine for revenue, all other things being equal.