Small step or giant leap: Former university of Neil Armstrong, Purdue, raises English requirements amid rising China applications

The alma mater of the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, will expect its international applicants – including Chinese students – to reach for the stars when it comes to their English language proficiency, following a recent change in its requirements.

 The rising number of applicants “gives us something to work on”, Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University in the United States, said during a recent visit to Hong Kong.

“We raised, this year, for the second time recently, the English proficiency standard, and made it a little harder, I think, for some Chinese students – not Hong Kong, usually, but the mainland students – to be accepted.”

 Daniels, who is the former governor of Indiana, told the South China Morning Post that about one in 10 of the university’s 30,000 undergraduates was a Chinese student from Hong Kong, the mainland or Taiwan.

About 30 per cent are from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the rest from the mainland.

Ten years ago, the number was half the current level, he said.

“We just found that [among] some of the students in previous years, many had adequate reading and even written English, but their spoken English wasn’t quite as good,” Daniels said.