Roughly 15 per cent of the growth of master’s programmes in the US can be directly?attributed to the “ripple effect” of the massive expansion of Chinese higher education in recent decades, according to a new study.
The number of universities and colleges in China doubled between 1999 and 2010, with the number of Chinese graduate students travelling to the US increasing in parallel.
By combining administrative data from China’s admissions system with US visa data, researchers estimated that the Middle Kingdom’s expansion can account for approximately 27 per cent of the overall growth in Chinese graduate enrolment in the US between 2003 and 2015.
, the paper finds that the effect was notably stronger for students in STEM fields, for those attending top-tier public research universities?and at master’s level.
“These findings suggest that the influx of Chinese master’s students helps support the broader academic ecosystem – potentially by generating additional tuition revenue and prompting universities to expand program offerings,” it says.
“Our findings add a novel perspective that one country’s educational policy can have ripple effects on the other side of the world,” it adds.
Co-author Gaurav Khanna, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), said these students helped generate much-needed tuition revenue, which was used to cross-subsidise American students and those from other international destinations.
“These students became vital to the financial health of American higher education,” he told?探花视频. “Their presence also spurred the creation of new STEM master’s programmes and drew in additional students from around the world.”
A “back-of-envelope analysis” showed that China’s expansion accounted for roughly 15 per cent of the overall growth in US master’s programmes and 10 per cent of the total increase in master’s degrees awarded to American students.
Each additional Chinese master’s student was found to be associated with an increase of around 0.26 domestic master’s students, and 0.50 international master’s students.
Chinese students have accounted for roughly a third of all international students in the US over the past decade. According to the paper, their sheer scale and their concentration in STEM fields make them “uniquely consequential” for cross-border educational and economic outcomes.
Despite his administration pledging to “aggressively revoke” visas?for students linked to the Chinese Communist Party, Donald?Trump announced plans earlier this year to welcome 600,000 Chinese students to?US universities.
Co-author Riuxue Jia, a professor of economics at UC San Diego, said Trump’s reversal was more likely to be driven by broader geopolitical competition between the two countries.
If Chinese students stopped coming in such large numbers, she said the immediate effect would be financial. “Fewer Chinese students would mean less tuition revenue in the short and medium run. The longer-run consequences are harder to predict.”
Jia said the indirect benefits – including contributions to overall vitality of US universities and local college-town economies – would also be lost.
The paper finds that Chinese students stimulated employment in local economies through increased demand for everyday goods and services. For every 100 additional Chinese master’s students, the net job creation rate increased by 0.7 percentage points.
“A sharp decline in their numbers,?whether from tighter visa rules or rising geopolitical tensions, would therefore ripple outward – reducing revenue for universities and dampening growth in the towns that depend on them,” added Khanna.
“In short, the flow of Chinese students has quietly underpinned both the academic and economic vitality of many US colleges and college towns.”
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