

The China Boom on US Campuses - cwan
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/education/07china-t.html?ref=education

======
fhe
I am a Chinese who went to college (a small liberal arts college) in the
States. This was 10 years ago, so I am not part of the current wave. I
returned to China after graduation, and have recently begun interviewing
applicants for my alma mater (because there are now so many applicants from
China). I have been meeting currently enrolled students and applicants. Here
are a few observations.

\- there are indeed a lot more of them than before. at the time I was
attending, each year we had maybe one student from China. Now they enroll 5-6
every year.

\- more rich kids. when i was attending, the chinese students were all
attending on a full scholarship from the school (private US education cost
being what it was, and Chinese per capita GDP being what it was, few Chinese
families could afford it without the scholarship) - these probably explains
why they admitted only one student from China per year. but these days, the
families don't seem to bat an eye paying the full $40K+/year.

\- students are getting more mainstream. in the 90s, applying to colleges from
China was like a hack. nobody knew much about anything. to even dream of such
things was to be a little quirky. but these days there are all these SAT prep
courses and consultants (two of my friends were in this business), and high
schools have dedicated advisors on applying to US colleges. and this shows in
the students admitted. I remember back then the Chinese students were more
creative and original and adventurous (for coming to the US is a
risky/adventurous thing to do. selection bias here, not unlike the adventurous
1st generation immigrants coming to the States); these days we get far more
over-achieving resume-builders who were president of student clubs, and I
think will go on to be investment bankers and have successful careers and I
hope will donate back to the school generously one day. Instead of the odd kid
who couldn't fit in, and said "f&!k it, I am getting the hell out of here" --
I was such a kid. (I realize this is probably an unfair judgment because I did
not have as much interaction with the current students/applicants as I had
with people whom I attended school with.)

I am quite ambivalent about the situation. I am happy that my school is
getting some attention at this end of the world. but I don't know how I feel
about the change in the kind of students we attract and will have as alumni.

------
barry-cotter
In brief; a collection of anecdotes about the rapidly increasing number of PRC
students at US universities at undergraduate level, with little in the way of
structure.

Interesting points; The Chinese are going everywhere, including no name
horribly expensive private colleges. They often experience culture shock and
find the drinking and party culture not much fun. The native USAns' social
circles are heavily race stratified, the Chinese often socialise very heavily
among themselves, living in houses that are all Chinese for example.

\- Britain and Australia got there first with the realisation that foreign
students can be conned into going to third or fourth tier universities and
paying handsomely for it. \- There is enormous money in preparing and
"preparing" students for going abroad. \- Interesting snippets about some
universities in the article; the University of Vermont was less than 1%
international student until quite recently, Northwestern either needs money or
wants to expand its brand, and Columbia like Stanford has an education
programme.

~~~
jacques_chester
> Britain and Australia got there first with the realisation that foreign
> students can be conned into going to third or fourth tier universities and
> paying handsomely for it

In Australia, this is partly because the price charged to domestic students is
price-controlled. The "Group of 8" (conceptually our Ivy League) charge the
same as distance education universities.

And the amount received is not very much. Fees for international students are
unregulated and so it has come to pass that Australian students are largely
educated at the expense of foreigners.

It's starting to unravel because the current government have closed a
'loophole' that led from the student visa to permanent residency.

------
drats
This is the third time I've clicked on a link on the HN frontpage today and
been sent to a NYT login page rather than something interesting. I know that
"(nytimes.com)" is behind the link but I feel it behooves the submitter to
point out that it is required: that open access should be able to be safely
assumed.

~~~
ronnier
Try my weekend project:
[http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nytimes.com...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nytimes.com%2f2010%2f11%2f07%2feducation%2f07china-t.html%3fref%3deducation)

~~~
drats
Very nice. Are you using a variation of the Arc90 readability algorithm or
something else? Aha I just saw you talk about them in your "about" page. I was
going to do something similar with the python readability port[1] and Flask
but hadn't got around to it. I am glad someone did, and did it far more
impressively than I could have.

[1]<https://github.com/gfxmonk/python-readability>

~~~
ronnier
Thanks! I took Readability and ported it over to C#. It's not an exact port as
I don't have the DOM and some features of JavaScript in C#. It's using the
same algorithm for most of it.

I did other things too, such as making RSS fees contain the full article, pull
text from PDFs, rewrite links back through the reader...

------
RK
I just went to a small alumni event from my university yesterday and spoke to
some of the "development" people. One of the initiatives the university has
had in the last 4-5 years has been increasing the undergrad enrollment by ~30%
(very controversial with the alumni). Part of that strategy it to greatly
increase foreign undergrad enrollment. The people from the university said
that in the last couple of years the university endowment has down better than
many of its "peer institutions", in large part due to the full tuition paying
international students. In contrast to the NYT story, it seems that many of
the international students I've heard about are actually being paid for by
their governments, although a lot are just from (relatively) rich families as
well.

------
tomotomo
This is a mirror image of the situation in Vietnam, not surprisingly. Loads of
families who have saved too much money and are willing to send their ill-
prepared children to no-name American universities (or community colleges).
Lots of stories of students adjusting to student life abroad "too well",
dropping out and spending their parents' tuition money on partying. In either
case, ROI can easily be measured in decades.

OTOH, I see China's education system rapidly catching up, in sciences although
maybe not in liberal arts.

------
ximeng
For those with stamina, single page link:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/education/07china-t.html?_...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/education/07china-t.html?_r=1&ref=education&pagewanted=all)

This collection of snippets about Chinese undergraduates in the US doesn't
really have much of a hook.

------
pedanticfreak
Now we just need to sell our house surplus to the PRC students after they
graduate. Two birds, one stone.

They're going to work and steal our jobs no matter what. They might as well do
it on US soil and pay US taxes.

