How Chinese student boom has kept US public universities afloat, and why Trump’s America First stance might affect that

When Qingqing Chui arrived in the United States five years ago as a master’s student, she noticed there were few other Chinese students at Florida Atlantic University. It’s not in the Ivy League of colleges preferred by most foreign students.

However, the 28-year-old native of Henan province says more Chinese undergraduates have been arriving during the past two years. She attributes this to the more structured university education found in the US, the growing middle class in China, and an increasing number of Chinese students discovering the rest of the world through films, music and pop culture.

The trend isn’t limited to southeastern Florida, either; it’s nationwide, and the boom may be helping US public universities endure tougher times.

A recent working paper by the US National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that between 1996 and 2012, as state governments began cutting funding, public research universities enrolled more overseas students. The number of undergraduate students from China soared from around 20,000 in 2008 to almost 140,000 by 2015. The report concluded that if the universities had not enrolled more international students, who pay higher tuition fees than their US counterparts, they may have been forced to make steeper budget cuts or increase tuition fees for in-state students.

Sarah Turner, professor of economics and education at the University of Virginia, and a co-author of the report, says public universities in the US are able to buffer the shocks in state cutbacks by tapping a growing pool of foreign students.