American Universities Are Addicted to Chinese Students - and It's Unhealthy for Both

American universities are becoming economically dependent on Chinese students because the majority of them pay full tuition, a growing necessity for cash-strapped US educational institutions.

The Chinese are thought to be excellent students who study hard, test well and are not the party-animals that some of their fellow American scholars prove to be. But an increasing number of Chinese students are being expelled for cheating and poor grades. A recent case in Pittsburgh revealed a conspiracy by Chinese students charging other Chinese to fraudulently take SAT tests for them. Research is showing that stunning numbers of Chinese transcripts, claims of English proficiency and recommendations are falsified.

The problem is that fewer Americans can afford to go to college without financial aid. And due to austerity policies, governments are reducing university funding. Co-dependence always has hidden costs. JL

Matt Schiavenza reports in The Atlantic:

Is the relationship between Chinese students and American universities sustainable? The Chinese government has invested billions of dollars in its education system to persuade students to remain in the country. For American universities, expelling Chinese students may be an overture to a bigger problem—them not coming at all.

A startling number of Chinese students are getting kicked out of American colleges. According to a white paper published by WholeRen, a Pittsburgh-based consultancy, an estimated 8,000 students from China were expelled from universities and colleges across the United States in 2013-4. The vast majority of these students—around 80 percent—were removed due to cheating or failing their classes.
As long as universities have existed, students have found a way to get expelled from them. But the prevalence of expulsions of Chinese students should be a source of alarm for American university administrators. According to the Institute of International Education, 274,439 students from China attended school in the United States in 2013-4, a 16 percent jump from the year before. Chinese students represent 31 percent of all international students in the country and contributed an estimated $22 billion to the U.S. economy in 2014.

“American universities are addicted to Chinese students.”

In the past, Chinese students in the United States tended to be graduate students living on tight budgets. Now, a large number of students come from China’s wealthiest and most powerful families—the daughter of President Xi Jinping, for example, studied under an assumed name at Harvard. The presence of wealthy Chinese students at American universities has even caught the attention of luxury brands eager to capitalize on them. Bergdorf Goodman, the New York City-based department store, sponsored Chinese New Year celebrations at NYU and Columbia, while Bloomingdales organized a fashion show for Chinese students at their shopping center in Chicago.
Chinese students have become a big market in the United States—and nobody understands this better than the universities themselves. Over 60 percent of Chinese students cover the full cost of an American university education themselves, effectively subsidizing the education of their lower-income American peers. Some schools—such as Purdue University in Indiana—profit further by charging additional fees for international students.

But the symbiotic relationship between cash-strapped American schools and Chinese students is not without its problems. Demand for an overseas education has spawned a cottage industry of businesses in China that help students prepare their applications. The industry is poorly regulated and fraud is rampant. According to Zinch China, an education consulting company, 90 percent of Chinese applicants submit fake recommendations, 70 percent have other people write their essays, 50 percent have forged high school transcripts, and 10 percent list academic awards and other achievements they did not receive. As a result, many students arrive in the U.S. and find that their English isn’t good enough to follow lectures or write papers.
Until recently, American schools have been happy to look the other way.
“American universities are addicted to Chinese students,” Parke Muth, a Virginia-based education consultant with extensive experience in China, told me last year. “They're good test takers. They tend not to get into too much trouble. They're not party animals. The schools are getting a lot of money, and they, frankly, are not doing a lot in terms of orientation.”
Is the relationship between Chinese students and American universities sustainable? The Chinese government has invested billions of dollars in improving its own tertiary education system in an attempt to persuade students to remain in the country.
“China is beefing up their labs, their research, while in the U.S. they've cut back,” said Muth. “At the grad level, students are staying in China because now they're starting to be able to compete.”
For American universities, expelling Chinese students may someday be an overture to a bigger problem—them not coming at all.