The United States maintains an eroding lead in higher education, but Chinese student enrollment in U.S. universities is among factors contributing to a more downward trend, a New York-based sociologist said in a Brookings Institute podcast last month.
Chinese students studying in the U.S. "are relatively privileged," Yingyi Ma, a professor and the director of graduate studies in the Sociology Department at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said in the Aug. 25 edition of "Vying for Talent." Their parents often are teachers and professors who have good reasons for choosing universities for their children.
"The answer is their parents were telling them that American higher education have a higher quality," Ma said. "So, this is coming from the inside of Chinese higher education. Some of these institutions are one of the best."
Chinese universities, even in Beijing and Shanghai, just don't measure up. There's also China's hukou system, which restricts where citizens live, limits resources in rural areas and impacts higher education quality in those areas, which restrains "talent mobility" in China far more when compared to the United States, Ma said.
"And then their parents are feeling like Chinese universities, even though on paper – especially in terms of the research indices – publish a lot of papers, a lot of discoveries," Ma said. "But instruction, undergraduate instruction, has been sidelined for years as research has been prioritized. So they decide to send their kids to the United States."
The podcast was hosted by Jude Blanchette, freeman chair in China Studies Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Ryan Hass, senior fellow of foreign policy at the Center for East Asia Policy Studies.
China's hukou system must be reckoned with for parents of children living in that nation's rural areas. About 38% of China's population lived in rural areas last year, according to Trading Economics.
Meanwhile, the number of Chinese students enrolled in U.S. universities increased steadily from 2010 to 2018, according to Statista, which reported 157,558 Chinese students studying in the U.S. during the 2010/11 school year, 369,548 in 2018/19, 372,532 in 2019/20 and 317,299 in 2020/21. China is the leading source of foreign students in U.S. universities, with most coming to the United State to study math, computer science and engineering. China is home to the world's largest state-run education system, in which 32 million students were enrolled in 2020 and from which 8 million students graduated that year. That demonstrates China's education system continues to expand, according to Statista.
In July of last year, Webometrics looked at more than 31,000 universities across the globe and ranked nations based on the cumulative rankings of their universities. Webometrics ranked the U.S. as No. 1, followed by the UK, Australia and Canada. China came in at No. 5, followed by the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany.
During the podcast, Ma also highlighted some challenges that China is facing in developing its human capital.
"I believe the strengths of China's human capital development is what educators have long described as this effort-based learning mindset," Ma said. "So, comparative education researchers have actually made a distinction after they compare not just the China and the U.S., but they actually compare China, Japan, Taiwan – I think the research was initially conducted in Taiwan – compared to what happened in the U.S. classroom. So, they have identified this key distinction between the effort-based learning mindset and the ability-based learning mindset."
Ma said she remains "optimistic about the environment that I’m working in right now" but with a caveat.
"American higher education is still going to be the best, but definitely I think the lead is going to be eroded," she said. "It's not just China. It's the rise of the rest. It's Japan, South Korea. It's Singapore. It's, you know, countries in Europe."
Students from China now are "looking past the United States" and are still coming to U.S. universities but they have other options burgeoning in the wider world, Ma said.
"But the heyday's already passed because of the two main major reasons," she said. "One is anti-Asian hate – the racism and associated safety concerns. The other is the escalating U.S.-China relations. People are worried about the conflict and the war, and they don't really want their children to be caught in that kind of circumstance."
