Chinese eyeing US degrees turn more discerning – is the opportunity still worth the risk?
– 6 min read
US has ‘pre-eminent global research universities, for now,’ professor says as data shows Chinese still want American degrees but are pickier
Ralph Jennings in San Francisco Published: 26 Jul 2025
Jason Lin of Xiamen surprised his mother this year by applying to 10 undergraduate schools in the United States and receiving a US$15,000 annual scholarship from Brandeis University near Boston. There, he intends to earn a master’s degree in economics over the next five years.
But to his mother, it’s like he’s venturing into the wild, compounding the anxiety parents often feel when their adult children leave the nest.
She’s afraid of “instability” in the US. And Lin, 19, has concerns that even a traffic ticket could get him deported. But he weighed the pros and cons, laid it all on the table for his mother, and decided on Brandeis in time for the coming fall semester.
Despite a sharp increase in US-China tensions this year, Chinese students such as Lin are still pursuing American higher education much as they have in the past, but they are being more selective than before, according to applicants and university officials.
“Basically, the thought of going to the States came to me when I was in ninth grade,” Lin explained. He expects more academic freedom in the US than in other countries and recalls the “vibe” in New York when he visited as a tourist.
Well-known schools, highly ranked programmes associated with the majors of students’ choices, and flexible financial aid packages have become bigger draws.
And if the university campus is located in a relatively safe American city, it gets bonus points in the selection process among Chinese applicants.
“The US does have the pre-eminent global research universities, for now at least,” said Rory Truex, an assistant professor with Princeton University’s Department of Politics. “And many students are willing to take the risks to get access to that opportunity.”
Some public and private universities across the US are expecting the number of students from China during the 2025-2026 term to be comparable to enrolment figures over the past five years.
The University of New Mexico, a public school specialising in STEM and health-related disciplines, has 89 Chinese students on campus and expects 20 more this autumn, putting the total higher than at the same time last year or in 2023, according to campus communications director Steven Carr.
The university welcomed 21 new Chinese students last autumn, and 16 at the start of the 2023 academic year.
Chinese nationals appreciate that the school has affordable tuition; offers scholarships for undergraduates and graduate students; and features hands-on learning opportunities in graduate programmes, Carr said. He said the campus can sometimes offer “resources tailored to international students”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May that the United States would start “aggressively” revoking visas issued to Chinese students and would “enhance scrutiny” of new applications.
The administration of US President Donald Trump was on track after its first 100 days to deport about half a million people this year, according to the Migration Policy Institute think tank. Singapore has been tipped to attract more Chinese students due to perceived instability in the US.
In June, Trump announced that the US would indeed allow Chinese students into American universities, as part of a wider deal with China.
However, many students and their parents were already on high alert over reports of students being denied visas, being detained at immigration checkpoints, or being shown hostility in America amid bilateral spats over trade and competing geopolitical ambitions.
A pivotal moment came in May, when the Department of Homeland Security took steps to restrict the entry of new international students and considered revoking existing visas for current Harvard students, citing national security.
But a federal judge blocked the government’s move to bar foreign students and scholars from entering the US to study or work at Harvard, and the Ivy League school made that clear on its website.
The University of California, San Francisco, admitted eight students from abroad for the upcoming academic year to its nationally ranked pharmacy graduate school, and five were Chinese nationals. One more was admitted from China but could not get a US visa.
Last year, just four out of the School of Pharmacy’s 127 students were from other countries. Applications from China, a perennial chief source of applicants, have shown no sign of slowing, said the school’s admissions director, Joel Gonzalez.
“For the most part … when you look at the number of international students, probably the majority of them are going to be from China,” Gonzales said at his office in a tower of classrooms and university-run medical wards up the hill from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and a city bus ride from Chinatown.
Reasons for their applications “could be the diversity of San Francisco versus somewhere in the [US] Midwest that might not be as inviting to a student in China”, he said.
“And we’re the top-ranked programme in California, so I can’t help but think that those variables come into play.”
While broader geopolitical and visa challenges remain part of the conversation, many students still view US education as a valuable investment
Andrew Staples, Chico State
It was another well-ranked programme, Human Computer Interaction, that drew Zhou Yubo to the University of Michigan for his graduate studies in August. Now he is just waiting to see whether he gets the necessary student visa, having already waited more than six weeks.
The 22-year-old, with a tech-related undergraduate degree and two previous stays in the US, said he believed the campus in Ann Arbor would be “a good place to study hard”, due to what he sees as a lack of entertainment options compared with other university towns.
Personal careers are now more important to US-bound Chinese students than visa issues or geopolitical pressures, said Perry Link, a comparative literature-Chinese professor at the University of California, Riverside.
“The graduate students, who are mostly in STEM fields, are interested in joining the international quest to advance scientific learning in universities or companies in the US,” Link said.
“Undergraduates are usually full-tuition-paying students from wealthy or fairly wealthy backgrounds in China,” he said.
“A lot of them study business or accounting and are looking for careers in the US or in family-affiliated firms back in China. They like to position themselves to do well in both systems – Chinese and American.”
Another Ivy League school, Cornell University, has similarly found little change this year from last, despite some Chinese students having a little trouble getting visas, said Wendy Wolford, vice-provost for international affairs. Cornell lets students without visas start their studies at one of Cornell’s three “top” partner schools in other countries, she said.
The California State University campus in the inland college town of Chico counts Chinese nationals as 3.5 per cent of the international student body, public relations director Andrew Staples said. The relatively small, crime-free city of 101,000 people is a selling point, he added.
Students from second- and third-tier Chinese cities may go for the state school’s relatively low tuition and living costs, compared with schools in bigger American urban areas, Staples said.
“Chico’s setting as a university town offers an accessible and immersive American college experience that appeals to students and families alike,” he said.
“While broader geopolitical and visa challenges remain part of the conversation, many students still view US education as a valuable investment, and [they view] Chico State as a supportive and reputable option within that landscape.”
But Professor Link’s university, located east of Los Angeles, has seen its expected Chinese student contingent shrink to 343 this year from 885 last year and 1,107 in the 2023-2024 year, according to a campus publicist.
“Their motivation has to do with the well-established reputation of US higher education,” vice-provost for international affairs Marko Princevac said.
“But indeed, nowadays there are many more opportunities, as the UK, EU and other countries are opening more and more for international students and are trying to take advantage of apparent US unwelcomeness,” Princevac said.
“They offer lower cost, apparently safer and more welcoming environments.”
The Trump administration’s efforts this year to restrict Chinese students’ access to US education have fanned doubts among Chinese families weighing where to send their university-age children.
And some families have responded by shifting their consideration to universities closer to home or elsewhere in the West, such as Canada. They also point to uncertainties in the American job market for Chinese nationals after graduation, such as whether the US would even grant them a work visa upon receiving a job offer.
According to the latest Open Doors report by the New York-based non-profit Institute of International Education, there were 277,398 Chinese students in the US during the 2023-2024 academic year, down 4 per cent from 289,526 over the 2022-2023 academic year.
The institute has not released data for the most recent academic year.
