Coronavirus: US education faces US$15 billion hit as Chinese students stay away
- Travel restrictions and continued uncertainty about when campuses will reopen has reduced enrolments from America’s biggest group of international students
- Demand was already softening due to worsening US-China relations before Covid-19 pandemic struck
The disease – which has spread to more than 185 countries, infected more than 2.6 million people and claimed more than 180,000 lives worldwide – has caused unprecedented disruption. Borders are closed and travel has been significantly limited to contain the spread.
For American schools, it has meant reduced Chinese demand for higher education in the 2020-21 academic year, according to a congressional report into the cascading economic impacts of the pandemic published on Tuesday by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
The report identified a host of issues, from delays or cancellations of US entrance exams in China, to indefinite travel restrictions and continued uncertainty about when US college campuses will reopen. The consequences could be severe, with nearly a third of all tuition payments to US public universities coming from international students.
China has remained the largest source of international students for the US in the past decade, with 369,548 Chinese students enrolled in US higher education programmes in 2018, more than three times the count from nine years earlier, according to the Institute of International Education. The group together contributed US$15 billion in tuition payments.