Why So Many Chinese Students Come to the U.S...

They’re eager to escape flawed education systems back home, where low standards are leaving many ill-prepared for a global economy

The Wall Street Journal
By Te-Ping Chen and Miriam Jordan

YANGZHOU, China—Fan Yue looked into the future and didn’t like what she saw.

As a high-school student in this eastern Chinese city of 4.6 million, she dreamed of going to college and studying education. But most Chinese universities are uninspiring, she said. She heard cheating was pervasive and that many people skip class. Students are required to study “Mao Zedong thought.”

Just getting in takes years of study for the gaokao entrance exam, which is like the SAT on steroids. Students must memorize poetry tracing back to the 7th century. Few of the millions who take it get into China’s top universities, with competition in Ms. Fan’s home province of Jiangsu particularly fierce.

Going through such a process “where I don’t learn anything” would be soul-crushing, said Ms. Fan, 20 years old. “There’s no meaning there.”

There was another option: America. She had heard it was dangerous and wondered if she’d need to carry a knife. Her parents were against it.

Yet on a brief visit to the U.S., she was inspired by the leafy campuses and sense of academic freedom. She applied to the University of California, Irvine, and got in.

Many people assume foreign students at U.S. colleges are rich, pampered youths out to have a good time before returning home to lives of privilege. Sometimes this is true.

But as the number of foreign students surges on U.S. campuses—nearly a million were enrolled last year, up more than 40% from five years earlier—more are coming from middle-class backgrounds like Fan Yue’s.

They’re eager to escape flawed education systems back home, where low standards are leaving many ill-prepared for a global economy.

This is especially true in China, by far the biggest source of foreign students in America. Many Chinese youths see their own universities as diploma mills, churning out graduates whose earnings potential is often bleak. Government statistics show the average monthly salary for college graduates half a year after leaving school was 3,487 yuan ($539), slightly less than what a migrant worker in the construction sector makes on average.

Such rejections are the latest sign of how some Chinese families are questioning domestic institutions and looking for options abroad.

Beijing has responded by pouring money into higher education to try to make its system globally competitive. Authorities have also tightened the reins on international programs that prepare students to study abroad.

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