US colleges worry trade war risks flow of Chinese students

Bloomberg

Kirk Brennan, director of undergraduate admission at the University of Southern California, was on a bus in Baotou earlier this month, part of a multi-school recruiting trip in Inner Mongolia, when he heard the news: The Chinese Education Ministry had issued a warning to students studying in the US to be vigilant about restrictions on academic visas.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of international students in general — and Chinese students in particular — to US colleges and universities.
Second only to New York University in its international student population, USC draws about 12 percent of its 47,000 students from China.
Its 1,000 Chinese undergraduates alone could bring in more than $50 million in annual tuition revenue.
But the increasingly fraught relationship over trade between the US and China threatens that pipeline.
Orientations for incoming USC first-years in Beijing and Shanghai went off without a hitch, Brennan said, and as of now, the school has yet to confront “these kinds of road blocks.’’
Over the last decade, US colleges and universities have turned to students from abroad to make up for rising costs and shrinking funding.
And no country has been more eager to import American higher education than China: More than 360,000 Chinese students studied at such schools in the 2017-18 school year, making up one-third of
the overall international student body.
“Every major institution builds international students into their financial model,” said Brad Farnsworth, vice president for global engagement at the American Council on Education, a higher education trade group.
“Universities — and their communities — realise significant economic benefits.”