US universities reap benefits of surge in overseas study

The ambitions of Chinese students are shifting: no longer are they attracted just by the glittering names such as Harvard. Pursuit of education abroad is becoming an end in itself. Universities far less renowned than Georgia Tech are reaping the benefits. More than 800,000 Chinese went abroad to study at all levels in 2012 and 2013. In those two years they made up more than a quarter of the 3 million who had done so since China began opening to the outside world in 1978, reports The Economist.

The boom in study in America is especially striking. More than 110,000 students from China were enrolled as undergraduates at American universities in the academic year of 2013-14, eleven times as many as in 2006-07. They now account for 30% of all foreign undergraduates.

By comparison, the number of Chinese undergraduates in Britain less than doubled over the same period, to 35,000. The total number of Chinese in all types of higher education in America – 274,000 – was more than four times as many as in 2006-07, according to the New York-based Institute of International Education.
Full report on The Economist site