China sends more students to US universities than any other nation, survey finds, despite bilateral unease
- Over 290,000 came to American institutions of higher education in 2021-2022 academic year, down 8.6 per cent compared with previous year
- Uptick in graduate students, half of them studying STEM subjects, fuelled influx ‘independent of the state of relationships or political tensions’
Despite soaring tensions between Washington and Beijing, China continued to send more students to study at US universities last year than any other nation, according to an annual State Department survey made public on Monday.
A total of 290,086 Chinese students came to US institutions of higher education for undergraduate study, graduate work and short-term postgraduate employment in the 2021-2022 academic year, the survey found.
That number was 8.6 per cent lower than the previous school year – largely due to a 12.8 per cent drop in the number of Chinese undergraduate students coming to the US for college. Last year 109,492 Chinese undergraduates studied in the US.
Yet the population of Chinese graduate students in the US grew by 3.6 per cent, up to 123,182.
Half of the Chinese students came to the US to study maths, computer science, engineering and other “STEM” subjects, according to the survey.
