Students from China 'welcome' at US colleges

State Department official says efforts are smoothing path back to campuses

A senior US State Department official said that efforts are being made to reduce barriers and cut waiting times for Chinese applying for student visas after enrollments from China dropped in the 2021-22 school year.

The number of students from China — the top place of origin among international students in the United States — was nearly 9 percent below that of the previous year.

The decline was 15 percent in the 2020-21 school year, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a Nov 9 news conference for the Open Doors 2022 Report on International Educational Exchange, which was released on Monday to mark International Education Week, Ethan Rosenzweig, deputy assistant secretary of state for academic programs, said that the Biden administration has been "very clear" that Chinese students are welcome in the US.

US President Joe Biden has kept intact a proclamation issued in May 2020 by his predecessor, Donald Trump, which asks US consular officers to deny visas to Chinese students and researchers deemed "security threats" for alleged links to the Chinese military.

Asked about the concerns and difficulties of Chinese students in obtaining visas in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, Rosenzweig said he understood that those issues are "on everybody's mind".

"It's very important to note for your China Daily readers and for all students that Chinese students are welcome here, that our bureaus cooperate very closely to ensure that barriers are reduced, that wait times are minimal, and that Chinese students who have legitimate educational pursuits in the US are welcome here as easily as possible," Rosenzweig said.

Math and computer science surpassed engineering as the leading field of study for international students in 2021-22. In all, 41 percent of all international students are studying in those fields, according to the Open Doors Report, which measures and outlines trends in international student mobility.

In the fiscal year that concluded on Sept 30, US embassies and consulates worldwide issued nearly 600,000 student visas, 65,000 of which went to Chinese students, according to Robert Batchelder, a consul general at the US State Department.

Decreasing data

In June, the peak time for students to apply for visas to prepare for the start of the fall semester, the US issued 18,860 F-1 visas to Chinese nationals, down from 34,001 for the same period in 2019, according to State Department data.

"In STEM fields, I know there's a concern that applicants are scrutinized closely and that many of them are denied," Batchelder told China Daily. He said some perceptions about visa applications were "unfounded" and the scrutiny of and difficulty in student visa applications in China are no more difficult or complicated than elsewhere in the world.

The May 2020 presidential proclamation applies to a "very small handful of people, like maybe a couple in a week", he said. The "vast, overwhelming" majority of Chinese students who are looking to study in the US, including in STEM fields, are able to get their visas "without any serious delays or complications", he said.

But on the ground, even students who have been issued visas have experienced ordeals when landing on US soil.

In late September last year, the Chinese embassy in the US "lodged solemn representations" with the US about what happened to a Chinese student, who, with a valid visa issued by the US government, was deported after being "wantonly" interrogated at the border entrance and confined in a small room for more than 50 hours.

While the pandemic depressed study-abroad numbers, the tensions between China and the US have also been felt in the student programs between the two countries.

The number of US students going to study in China declined by 84.6 percent in the 2021-22 academic year to stand at 382, the lowest since the 2011/2012 academic year, when there were 14,887 US students at Chinese campuses, data from the Open Doors report indicated.

It also showed that after recording a nearly 15 percent drop in the number of international students from China in the 2020-21 academic year, the biggest decline in a decade, US colleges and universities continued to see the ranks of Chinese students shrink; this academic year, by 8.6 percent.

At 290,086 students, China remained the top-sending country to US campuses, which continue to prioritize recruitment in the country, Rosenzweig said.

Still, it was the first time since 2014 that the number of Chinese students in the US dipped below the 300,000 mark, making the share of Chinese students among all US international students tumble from 34.6 percent in the 2019-20 academic year to 30.6 percent.

Rosenzweig said he hoped more US universities could recruit "in person" in China.

That activity has become increasingly feasible, as China just fine-tuned its pandemic control measures on Friday, removing the "circuit breaker" mechanism for incoming international flights and cutting the quarantine duration for inbound travelers.

In a podcast discussion with the Brookings Institution and Center for Strategic and International Studies researchers on Sept 15, Amy E. Gadsden, the University of Pennsylvania's associate vice-provost for global initiatives, said the US still is an attractive destination for international students, but uncertainties in the US could motivate some to study elsewhere.

"We do have a lot of students, and again, I don't have data on this, but anecdotally [there are students] who are choosing to go to the UK, choosing to go to Canada, choosing to go to Australia, and other top leading institutions because of the uncertainties involved in studying the United States, because they are worried about the visas, because they are worried about the challenges of coming in and out," she said.

"And it doesn't help, I mean, the anti-Asian sentiment and the perceptions of violence in America just don't help us sell higher education abroad," Gadsden added.

The Open Doors Report, released by the US State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education, found that there were 948,519 international students in the US during the 2021-22 academic year, up 4 percent over the previous academic year.

International students enrolled for the first time at a US college or university increased by 80 percent year over year, a return to pre-pandemic levels, and 90 percent of enrolled international students have returned to in-person learning across US campuses.

Chinese students contributed $10.5 billion to the US economy, according to the report.