With poor job prospects for Chinese students, is it still worth investing in a US education?

The number of Chinese students in the US rose from 81,127 in 2007/08 to 304,040 in 2014/15, an increase of 275 per cent in seven years, according to the Institute of International Education.

This skyrocketing growth resulted in a corresponding increase in their estimated financial contributions to the US economy, from US$2 billion in 2007/08 to US$9.5 billion in 2014/15, according to Nafsa: Association of International Educators.

This rapid growth was a boon to US higher education as many institutions were feeling the pressure of budget cuts after the 2008 global financial crisis. It was also a time when competing nations like Australia and the UK were hit harder and Chinese students shifted their focus towards the US.

With this unprecedented rise of international students came the challenges of integrating them and satisfying academic, social and career expectations. Many institutions have struggled to adapt.

Most of the top US universities with the largest number of Chinese students are large public institutions, according to a list recently published by Foreign Policy. This is not a surprise as they are more affordable for four-year undergraduate programmes.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign tops the list. An article from Inside Higher Ed traces the dramatic growth of Chinese undergraduates at the university from just 37 in 2000 to 2,898 in 2014.

In public institutions, international students pay two to three times the tuition fees of their American counterparts. Chinese students are the most attractive segment for US colleges and universities as they are more likely to enrol at undergraduate level than the next biggest source country – India – whose students tend to take shorter master’s programmes.