Plateauing, Nosediving, or Bound for Recovery? Making Sense of the News About Chinese Students Bound for the US

In the past 2 months, we’ve seen attention-grabbing headlines reporting plunges in Chinese international students heading to the US, but we’ve also seen IIE Open Doors data reporting a 1% increase in international students. These headlines may garner clicks, but they obscure the far more important discussion about the medium and long term prospects for Chinese international students coming to the US. As universities allocate resources for the upcoming year of vaccine distribution and a future post-COVID world, it matters greatly if the US is heading toward long-term decline, a modest K-shaped recovery ending in below 2019 levels, or a V-shaped recovery with a resumption of pre-2019 levels. We dive into the data to contextualize these statistics and identify key determinants of the nature of this recovery.

The US Department of Commerce reported a 61% drop in entries from student visa holders and 70% from China. Similarly, the Department of State reported a 99% decline in Chinese student visa issuance. In contrast, however, the Institute of International Education Open Doors data reports a .8% increase in Chinese international students, although according to a survey of 700 of IIE’s member institutions, new international enrollments dropped 43%.

There is no data source that tells the full story. IIE data is from 2019-2020, so it doesn’t include the full scope of the pandemic. At the same time, the US Department of Commerce tallies movement of student visa holders in and out of the country, and entries made by the same person are counted multiple times. Under normal circumstances, international students may travel home and back several times in one year, racking up more entries, while travel has been stunted this year due to COVID-19. There are also fewer foreign students entering the US to begin their studies. Hence, the data is agnostic to international students who stayed in the US for the full year and students who continued their studies remotely. In addition, the State Department reports visa issuance, which doesn't include remote learners and students who plan to defer their higher education. As such, the precipitous drops in entries from student visa holders and visa issuance look more drastic than is actually the case.

However, it is true that there has been some decline in Chinese international students for a myriad of reasons. Most new students had to choose between remote learning, deferring admission, taking a gap year, or dropping out of college admissions. Few went to public universities because of the difficulty of rapidly prepping for gaokao, while short term study abroad was basically non-existent. 

Consulate closures and tighter visa policies made it harder to enroll in a US university. The recent ban on students and researchers with ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army turned many people away, as did US’s 2019 restrictions on visas for Chinese students who researched any technology with implications in national security and the 2018 reduction in the visa length for Chinese graduate students in technology fields from five years to one. Even for those who could procure visas, COVID travel limitations, and increased flight costs hindered travel to the United States. Aside from logistical hindrances, the prevalence of COVID and unrelenting political tensions between the US and China also deterred students. 

“America has been a heated-discussion destination/college choice for the parents and students,” Shi Wang, a leading college counselor in China, said. “Some parents are considering putting away the idea of going for internationalized education and wait to see how it goes in the coming years, either postponing to select the international track or going overseas, including high school study or undergraduate study. But there are people sticking to their faith and still working on applying overseas.”

To summarize, there is clear agreement that travel barriers and embassy closures meant very few new arrivals from China. Much of the dropoff in total enrollment can be attributed to a downward trend in new enrollments, due to many students formally deferring their admission (they committed to one school and will enroll at a later date) or informally deferring (students will reapply at a later time). This conclusion is supported by data that shows that there's not been a big uptick in gaokao test takers or in new enrollments in other main study markets like Canada, the UK, Australia, or New Zealand. Differences remain between education systems, which means that students who prepared for 3 years to study in the US face a transition barrier in just switching to a different country.

Many say that there is reason to expect a big recovery because of pent up demand and the expectation that the Biden administration will be more welcoming. Enrollment declined sharply after SARS and 9/11 as well, but numbers went back to normal after these big crises. Regardless of the conditions in the United States, the Chinese university education system and the gaokao are deeply unattractive to many, and the international and gaokao tracks are so divergent that many students are still looking to matriculate to universities abroad even if they could not do so this year.

Early admission numbers for the Class of 2025 support these predictions. At the University of Virginia, the number of early decision applications rose 35% and the number of early action applications increased by 15% compared to 2019. Similarly, the early action numbers at the University of Georgia spiked by 27%. Although universities have not released any data on international applicants in particular, the rise in early decision and early action applications is indicative of pent-up demand from both international and domestic students.

There are several factors that will influence the shape of the recovery curve. The first is the speed of vaccine rollout in the US versus competitor study destinations: If the vaccine rollout in the United States lags behind competitor countries like the UK, Canada, and Australia, the US will lose many international students to those countries in the short term. If the vaccine becomes available at about the same time, the United States is well-positioned to attract much of the pent-up demand.

The second factor includes student visa policies and post-graduation work opportunities. The recovery of the US economy and the Biden administration’s approach to visa policies will be significant factors in international students’ choice. Another key consideration is how well US universities can absorb an abnormally large influx post-pandemic. It’s not just the demand of international students that matters, but the available supply of spots at US universities.

In the meantime, the quality of remote experiences will significantly impact prospective students’ decisions. Stories of international students’ experiences with remote learning travel quickly through word of mouth in China, and students often compare how accommodating and welcoming their universities. In particular, it is especially difficult for international students to forge connections with peers and professors in a remote learning environment, so how successful universities are at integrating these students into virtual communities is important.

While it is true that Chinese enrollment in US universities has declined in 2020 due to the pandemic and the Trump administration’s stringent visa policies, patterns in past crises suggest that there is pent-up demand and that numbers will bounce back over the next couple of years. There is reason to be optimistic, as the transition to a Biden presidency, recovering economy, and impending vaccine distribution will likely spark renewed interest in US universities.