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Subscribe to RSSThe number of Chinese undergraduate students in the U.S. has doubled in the last two years. China's booming economy and the ability of families to pay tuition in full is also playing a big role. NBC's Adrienne Mong reports.
BEIJING – Wenzy Duan dreams about becoming a delegate to the United Nations.
“I know this [ambition] is pretty high,” said the 17-year old Beijing native. “But I think I can give it a shot.”
To prepare, Duan wants to study international relations at an American college – someplace like the University of Washington. “I hear [it] is good at social science," she said.
The University of Washington is one of approximately 10 U.S. universities Duan plans to apply to in the coming year with the help of an education consultant she hired last summer.
“I know that the scores is not the only thing that the university will consider whether you can get in or not,” said the high school senior.
Duan is not alone. Today, China sends more of its students to America than any other country. During the 2010-11 academic year, 157,588 Chinese students were studying in the U.S. – an increase of 23 percent from the previous year, according to the Institute of International Education.
The growing market of Chinese students wanting to go to the U.S. has created various cottage industries in China and the U.S. – among them are education consultants who help students navigate the maze of college applications and "brokers" representing American universities who seek student candidates paying full tuition. But it's also fueled anxiety among American students and their parents about increased competition from abroad.
Education consultants: the main cottage industry
“When [Chinese students] decide to come to the U.S. and study in the U.S. school, they have no idea,” said Steven Ma, president of ThinkTank Learning, the consulting group with which Duan is working. "What do colleges in the U.S. look for anyway? What do they want? What type of students they want? And that’s where we come in.”
ThinkTank Learning, based in Santa Clara, Calif., offers tutoring and college counseling. Most of the students contracting its services have been Asian-American, but Ma said increasingly his firm began fielding calls from mainland Chinese families wanting their advice.
Eventually ThinkTank Learning opened a branch in Shenzhen in 2009 and then in Beijing a year later. It charges anywhere from $17,000 to almost $40,000 for tailored consultation packages lasting six to 12 months, dispensing advice on choosing the right schools, writing essays, or preparing for interviews.
“They’ll just tell you when you need to get something done by what deadline and how do you prepare your application to the school’s standards,” said Julia Yin, Duan’s mother, a petroleum engineer who hails from Hunan province. “Basically, everything is DIY [do it yourself.]"
Go West, Young Man (and Woman)
China sent its first student to an American college in 1850: A native of Guangdong Province named Yung Wing earned his degree from Yale University, paving the way for thousands more over the following century.
The flow of students from China to America dried up in the 1950s when the establishment of the People’s Republic of China gave way to tumult and isolation, and did not re-start until 1974 1978.
From then until just a few years ago, "It was almost all graduate students, most of them funded by the host universities through research assistantships or teaching assistantships," said Peggy Blumenthal, senior counselor to the president at the Institute of International Education (IIE).
Now, Chinese undergraduates drive the growth, particularly in the past two years. At the start of the 2006-07 academic year, 9,955 Chinese undergrads were enrolled in U.S. schools. The following year, that figure jumped to 16,450. By the 2010-11 academic year, 56,976 undergraduates made up a third of all Chinese students living in the U.S.
“What you’re seeing is the growth of the middle class of China who can really afford to send their kids to the U.S.,” said Blumenthal. “The Chinese undergrads are all coming virtually self-funded.”
Adrienne Mong
Wenzy Duan (centre) and her mother, Julia Yin, go over college choices with a ThinkTank Learning consultant in Beijing.
The fact that so many students pay their own way has not gone unnoticed.
"Foreign students spend about $21 billion a year in the U.S. in tuition and living expenses for them and their families,” said Charles Bennett, Minister-Counselor for Consular Affairs at the U.S. embassy in Beijing – where Ambassador Gary Locke has made among his top priorities the expansion of visa processing capacity in China.
“That’s a very large sum of money for U.S. academic institutions,” continued Bennett, especially as so many face shrinking endowments or reduced state funding.
The Chinese comprise at least 21 percent of all international students newly enrolled in American schools, which means that they and their families contribute roughly $4 billion to the American economy, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Edging out American students in America?
Recent reports, however, have suggested mainland Chinese students and their ability to pay full tuition are costing American students placement in American colleges. A bankrupt state school system in California – one of the most popular destinations for Chinese students – has meant that its well-regarded schools are seeing record enrollments from out-of-state and international students.
For the 2010-11 academic year, California welcomed the most international students – 96,535. And for the tenth year in a row the University of Southern California was the leading host U.S. institution for overseas students, enrolling 8,615, according to the IIE.
But the IIE argues adding mainland Chinese students is helpful for diversity. “Most Americans will not study abroad. On the other hand, their careers will be global,” observed Blumenthal. “They need to learn how to interact with professionals from other countries, and many of them will be from China. There are very few industries or business not affected by China.”
Moreover, at the graduate level, Chinese students aren’t competing against American students for a seat in the classroom, according to Blumenthal. “There still aren’t enough Americans in the pipeline wanting to get graduate training in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math,” she said.
But detractors note other challenges have surfaced as a result of so many Chinese students going to U.S. schools. Among them is whether some applicants from the mainland are cheating their way into admissions by falsifying their academic records or achievements.
One consulting company in Beijing that works U.S. universities, Zinch China, says 90 percent of Chinese undergraduates submit false recommendation letters for their U.S. college applications and that 70 percent enlist someone else to write their essays.
The dishonesty works the other way, too. A growing number of “education brokers,” who work on behalf of U.S. institutions to solicit Chinese students, have led to misrepresentations and predatory fees, according to a revealing report from Bloomberg News. Some agents promise admission to top-flight schools, charge exorbitant fees, in some instances including a portion of scholarship funds, and students can end up at schools that are a far cry from the "dream schools" they hope to attend.
Can China produce innovative thinkers?
The desire among Chinese students to seek an American college degree has grown stronger over the years owing to a number of factors.
Adrienne Mong
The parents of Dolly Luo believe an American college education will improve their daughter's future career prospects.
Above everything else, there is the fierce competition for gaining admissions to a preeminent Chinese university. The selection process is decided solely by the gaokao, an annual national college entrance examination that lasts nine grueling hours over two to three days.
This past year, more than 9 million students across China took the gaokao. And believe it or not, that number has been declining since 2008 as more students opt out of the gaokao and sign up for exams like the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), both of which are generally prerequisites for applying to any U.S. college or university.
A lively debate is growing about whether China’s education system can produce innovative thinkers who can enable the country to lead – not just catch up with or follow in the footsteps of industrialized economies like the U.S. or Britain. Such concerns triggered a widespread discussion online when Steve Jobs died earlier this year.
“The students here are not as robotic as Americans think,” said Gene Hwang, a 27-year-old Taiwanese-American, who has been working in China for ThinkTank Learning for almost two years. “But they are held back by some of the systems in schools, which emphasize rote memorization…. We work with them on [developing] critical thinking.”
Broadening those horizons
“When I get into America, I can get [a liberal] education [that] could open my mind,” said Zhang Yuqi, a soft-spoken but intense 17-year-old high school senior.
He’s been working with a ThinkTank Learning consultant for three months, reviewing which schools to apply to and working on his essays. A possible math major, he has his eye on Carnegie-Mellon and Emory where he hopes to find a climate that differs from his elite Beijing high school, which he says has too many “planned activities.”
Duan wants to study in the U.S., because “they accept all different kinds of different ideas. You can dream about anything,” she said. “In America, I can experience more…maybe all kinds of things I will never experience in China.”
For high school junior Dolly Luo, it's simply about getting the best education. “The U.S. has the most well-developed college education," said the 16-year-old Beijing native who loves Harry Potter and dreams about attending an Ivy League college.
Her parents have similar faith in the U.S. college experience.
“She will have more opportunities, and it will broaden her horizons,” said William Luo. In fact, Dolly’s father had harbored his own U.S. scholarly ambitions, but he didn’t have the financial resources to enable him to pursue his graduate studies in America.
“I hope when Dolly goes abroad and she learns American values or Western values that she can absorb the Western education – the good parts: the culture, the education,” continued Luo. “In China, we would need that.”
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Like every other industry in the country, this one is selling us out too for a quick pay off. Then what? I'll tell you what. Nothing. That's what we will have left.
Oh well. As long as a few get rich. They can always go somewhere else when we're a 3rd world country.
You actually think we can hold on to a third world rating, More like fourth or fifith class world ranking. Then someday in the future. China will being sending back our old production industries when they find that America has a huge, cheap work force, that is starving to death and will work as slaves.
The Chinese have the pre-college training to be able to excel at math, chemistry, and science in general.
Upon graduation, they can find jobs in the US because they are willing to work for half the going rate in exchange for an H1-B (work visa---company sponsored). They might not be imaginative thinkers---yet---but they can grind out the hard work every day.
So the universities can keep making the hen da qian (mega bucks) on their education costs, but the graduates displace citizen competitors for those jobs.
As usual, the ordinary citizen here takes it in the shorts because of our rush to exploit China, while secretly, and steadily, the Chinese are actually doing the same to us, but worse. The real question is wjho's absorbing who? Or another way of stating that is, 'where are the eventual allegiances when push comes to shove'?
I have been in business in China for 20 years, so I have watched this whole thing develop. At some point in the future, we will have given away the store to the point where there's no going back. China meanwhile, continues on it's series of 5-year plans, and has a hidden agenda, while we don't seem to have any plans at all.
Reference:
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War".
I bet the Chinese are astouned to find that Chinese HS Students are better educated in Math , Science and Chemistry then, the US College professors.
They may or may not be that good, but they come here with the idea of becoming that good, and they usually are able to do it.
i dont think you get the point THEY DONT WANT TO STAY HERE. They wanna get trained here go back and kick our asses
Do not forget that the article states that some of the Chinese lie to the college admissions. If so smart why the lie?
But this is the way you guys wanted it right???
College has been about exclusion NOT higher eduction. IF you have the money to attend then you can get an eduction to "SEPARATE" yourself from the other pee ons in society & get a better job that pays more money right? That's the point isn't it?
I mean, isn't that what private school is all about too? Isn't that why most people who can afford to send their little ones to private school, don't care what happens to the public school system because........it doesn't affect them, because THEY have money?
Sounds like the "Chickens have come home to roost" for some of those NOW being affected. Now the great grandchildren & grandchildren of those few priveldged who started this exclusionary crap are feeling the affects of what their foreparents did.
Good!
No Dan, your wrong, it isn't the money part. It is what they are teaching our Children.
Send your Child to a Private or a Christian school and they will be farther ahead then the Public School Children, when it comes to Graduation time and getting into College.
I went to a Catholic Grade School back in the 50'S and when I did go to a public School I was a year ahead. Believe me I wasn't the Brightest Star in the sky.
I hope none of them are spies. I am sure we are doing a wonderful job of ensuring they are not. That is sarcasm in case you didn't notice.
China does not need spies, They just buy out our nations industries, Move them to China and then re-engineer the machines to work better, cheaper and faster.
I wish that China would copy our US CONGRESS and operate that way, Then at least we could start to compete with China as the Copied Chinese Congress would sell them out to the highest briber. Like they do in the USA./
You are a little off base there Greg. They have plenty of spies here and sometimes get caught. Watch the news.
China needs our College education system, might has well let them have it. After all, most of our Jobs are already in China, and more heading there every day. The USA does not need any more higher education, as we are a service sector nation, Burgers, Fries, and Tacos. You sure don't need a degree to flip burgers now do you?
And wait till they star buying the universities. Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT and many others.
First they pay $17-40,000 to a broker and THEN pay cash for their education. Our good paying manufacturing jobs sent to China enables these Chinese student's parents to do this. They come from a very structured way of life where any mention of an idea that the Chinese government doesn't like means imprisonment or death. The ideas and freedoms these students learn in America will lead to thoughts of freedom in China. This is something that the Chinese government can't tolerate. The solution is to bring American teachers to China where the government can maintain control. In the meantime, Americans continue to vote for canidates that are ruining America and turning our nation into a Third World nation. We need to create an atmosphere that promotes big business, reduce the size of government, curb federal spending, and stop the thinking that Americans are "entitled" to be taken care by the government.
Keith: I am a foreing. This is now, wait until China starts buying the Universities in the entire USA.
Please just give China UCLA and NYU, It would be doing us a great favor.
We are lost in this country. Our Education systems are failing out Students. Why???? Because we want to teach our Children the Liberal Lifestyle. Don't worry little Johnny, you said one and one is three, Well at least you tried.
Health Class, Mary I'll teach you how to put on a condom so when your little 14 year old body has sex you won't have to worry, OH by the way watch that it doesn't break or you'll get pregnant, But don't worry we will run you down to Plan Parenthood and they will take care of you. Your Mother and Father, Don't worry NO ONE will tell them.
Oh by the way Mark, your different ,if you love George that's fine tell him how much you love him, it's normal.
Just what our For Fathers set up for us.
One and One is three, Its not, its five, where did you go to school.
I have a brother who went to public schools from K-12, Bachelors degree and Masters in Engineering. When he decided to get his PhD he went to MIT in Cambridge. He's 6'1' with blond hair and blue eyes. He said he always felt like he was going to school in Asia. Regarding the ability of Chinese students to be innovative thinkers, I'll go with what he told me. Although an education at that level is not a time for group think, he says that every time an assignment was given, the Asian students gathered into groups to solve the problem through consensus. While the anglo students went out on their own to do the work themselves. I don't know if that's anecdotal or a sign of the problem mentioned in the above article. Just an observation I thought worth sharing.
I work with a Chinese engineer. She does everything "by the book" and is unable to think outside the box. If it isn't in the book, she's lost. If the book says that a sign should be erected 100' from the intersection and the distance between two intersections is 75', she's lost. Absolutely no common sense and a total inability to picture what something looks like in the field or how it's built. Working and education is everything. She, and her husband (also Chinese), have no outside life. They work, go home, and study. She went to a department Christmas lucheon and we had to show her how to throw a dart. She had never thrown a ball or anything. Athletes in China are taken care of by the government and removed from their families. Their culture is totally different from ours. We think and voice our opinions. If we see something unjust, we try and correct it. If you do this in China, the Chinese government will either put you in prison or execute you.
Dont think to much it means ------------->>> A divided country where we dont even feel good asking other americans to group out and solve problems. Look at our cities... HUGEE!!! car>parking>job>parking>car>house>sleep and it starts all over again
So how did this paradox develop, where Americans have the sort of community that a dictator would love; while the Chinese students who grew up with tyrants work in harmony together?
This country needs to focus on education from Grade One. Upon graduation, the colleges should not only compete for the best and brightest, but our government and the institution itself should assist in making it possible for those students to go on to higher education and succeed. For a long, long time it's been perfectly alright to pass a student along regardless of his or her ability to even read and write. It really is no wonder that we are falling behind in almost every area. Students seem to think they are going to graduate from college and immediately enter an executive level job in corporate America. Far more emphasis needs to be placed on math and science.
Our kids and many adults have been taught that they are "entitled" to graduate. They are taught that they are "entitled" to everything including being taken care of by the government if they decide not to work. This "entitlement" way of thinking is what needs to be changed. It's kind of simple, if you don't work, you don't eat. When people realize that if they don't take care of themselves, no one is going to take care of them. Then they will start believing that education and a good job is everything if they want a good life.
yea otter but the group where that individual thrives is very important. This idea of individualism is wrong to. Brotherhood is the way to go. Now that doesnt mean 1 person does all the job..no, it means we are a group we think as a group and we work as a group
The US is well on its way to become China's largest province.
The only hope is to go back to innovation and technology. Make the patent system free of charge! Get rid of the 18-month patent hold. Create invention centers to help inventors develop their ideas. Go back to being creative. Enforce global intellectual property. Time to get real America. Go back to your roots of invention and development. Intellect is priceless! Reinvent the way you live!
The first to market wins, Regardless of the patent, China, as do many nations, buy up us products, Reinvent them, making them better and cheaper, IE, THE US cannot, ever, make and sell solar panels, with the quality and cost of that of China, Unless, the us Company is heavly compensated by the US Govt, IE, Solondra. Keep the patent system the same or even change it, its not going to help.
In such a scenario, the corporation will be first to market.
Study the Story Photo above, They must be Chinese, No one texting, playing grab ass or involved in random acts of bullsh..ting! They all are paying attention and working. Those damn Chinese are making us look bad.
"Moreover, at the graduate level, Chinese students aren’t competing against American students for a seat in the classroom, according to Blumenthal. “There still aren’t enough Americans in the pipeline wanting to get graduate training in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math,” she said."
From my personal experience as a doctoral student, this is not accurate. We were competing directly against Chinese students not only for admission, but for assistantship positions. So, not only we were vastly outnumbered (as Americans) by Chinese students in the program, but they all were there on full tuition waivers and with stipends. By contrast, most of us were paying out-of-pocket (either cash or loans) until the opportunity presented itself for us to be able to obtain either a fellowship or an assistantship of our own.
The danger, from where I sit, is not that we admit foreign students. It is that we admit students on tuition waivers and scholarships from foreign countries, namely China, and deny the same to our own students. The experience I had, as mentioned above, was at a large public university in the Midwest, not on the coast. Note in there, "public university" not private. That means that you and me, the taxpayers, were not only paying to fund the university, we were subsidizing foreign students to attend it at the same time, while expecting American students to take out loans to cover attendance.
Something is very wrong with that, and frankly, we are competing with these students for not only seats (admission) but funding as well.
Then things may be worse. For a long time, I have wondered if or why graduate students, many who come from situations which are much better than the average undergraduate student, get most or all of their research subsidized. But if these subsidies are being given to foreign students too, that really is sickening.
Especially in the face of budget catastrophe's at the K-12 level. Is there really a 'money problem'?
Questions to ask are...
Why is the cost of college eduction so high and rising?
Is it due to Ivy league professors asking for higher and higher pay? Or is University administration a bloated animal out of control that needs to be constantly funded.
I don't believe US universities are teaching anything new and revolutionary that justifies the higher and higher fees.
Yes, The US education system has to high a payroll, for sure, To many benifits and to many perks. That we can no longer afford, That is why the colleges are trying to get the rich Chinese to come to our schools. We need to consider separating, COLLEGE from SPORTS, as the two are no way related. College Sports costs are out of control and have no bearing being paid for by the public. These college sports should be religated to SPORTS clubs, paid for by the members. Every US college sports participant costs on the average 80 thousand dollars per year. And its not paid for by the students.
Agree similar to the separation of church and state, the Penn State scandal calls for separation of sports and education.
If they want to come here then CHARGE them 300% what you charge the USA citizens. The Chinese have not shed blood, or paid taxes, that have contributed to the education system. I am fed up with educating the rest of the world, trying to assist the rest of the world, police the rest of the world, and be humanitarian to the rest of the world by paying exorbitant taxes. We owe China almost 1 TRILLION dollars so remove that debt and we will let that be the charge for creating competition for our own citizens in the job market.
Its the asian invasion at University of Iowa..and they get many bennifits and "special" treatment...to top it off we hire Asian professors who hire only Asian assistants..and NONE of them speak clear english..not even the prof. SSooo when we can't understand and have trouble in the class..and we tell him..and in perfect english , he says "Not my problem"...NO help from administration..it all boils down to the $$$ and he is paid $350,000 +++...Hahahahah we are so stupid...Asians own our farm land..our banks...and our colleges..Sorry NONE of them plan on going back...they LOVE it here..this is THEIR country now..
Cant do anything now, *they* are as American as you and I.
Even going to school for 8 years does not seem to improve the english speaking skills of some, as is evident in the medical field.
US debt, 17.3 TRILLION Dollars, Chinese Debt. 0 dollars, They have a cash surplus of 2 TRILLION Dollars. And we owe them 2 trillion dollars, Everytime you hear that the US Has another trade deficiet, It means that the wealth of the USA is LEAVING the USA, A Nation MUST have a Trade surplus to expand, and provide services for those that are no longer working. WE have lost complete sight of that ONE FACT. NO SURPLUS, NO FUTURE.
I see future of US schools in shows such as Glee. The show highlights lot of individuality, artsy fluff but no stuff that will make America better in technology, health care or manufacturing.
i wouldn't let anyone in this country if they are communist, but then again, we don't even know about obama, his wife just became proud to be a American.
not only is there the issue of crowding out U.S. students from colleges; but there is the underlying issue of these
chinese coming here as part of the elaborate spy network china sets up in many places. they worm themselves into positions that give them access to what are confidential to top secret parts of these schools. i use stanford and u of washington as examples of where access can be initiated to gather seemingly innocous data. but when combined with other bits and pieces becomes a leak to us here at home.
Upset with the high rise in college costs, Check out the new costs of Health insurance and care since the "Affordable health care bill" was bullied into law. Costs have risen some 16% in less then 18 months. No justice or reason in it waht so ever. I guess those Health care lobbyists who wrote the bill, considered themselves FIRST?
Then you tax payers give them food stamps and wellfare housing. This country better hope Ron Paul gets elected.
I live in Davis, CA, home of UCD, and the number of Asian faces is astounding. Stopped at a light, next to a UC bus stop, the other day I counted 18 kids and 2 were not Asian. Pretty typical percentage. What are American kids doing? How many wil stay here and compete for jobs?
Our kids and many adults have been taught that they are "entitled" to graduate. They are taught that they are "entitled" to everything including being taken care of by the government if they decide not to work. This "entitlement" way of thinking is what needs to be changed. It's kind of simple, if you don't work, you don't eat. When people realize that if they don't take care of themselves, no one is going to take care of them. Then they will start believing that education and a good job is everything if they want a good life.
Until the Arab Spring, All education in Libya was FREE, including, going to an american college, all paid for by OIL profits. Its to bad that this nation does not take back OUR OWN OIL and Energy Reserves. And sell them at a profit for the nation to provide low cost or free education. Like those big bad Arab states used to do. OH ON.