Western universities’ reliance on China exposed

Financial Times 22 February 2020

Australia, the United States and New Zealand are among more than a dozen nations to impose a ban on entry to anyone who is neither a citizen nor a permanent resident if they travelled in China within the past 14 days, reports the Financial Times.

The measures, aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus, pose a multibillion-dollar threat to Western universities, which have become increasingly reliant on income from Chinese students. Universities in Australia, North America and Europe increasingly rely on income from Chinese students. Many have been forced to suspend classes with Chinese students stranded abroad or in quarantine, scramble to provide alternative tuition online and are watching to see whether the next round of applicants will be reduced with entrance exams delayed.

The number of Chinese studying overseas has doubled to 869,000 in the decade to 2017, according to the Sydney-based Centre for Independent Studies think-tank. In the US, there were more than 300,000 Chinese students in 2018-19, according to the Institute of International Education. In the UK, more than 86,000 Chinese enrolled in higher education last year. Australia is still more vulnerable: one in 10 students at its top eight universities is Chinese, the highest ratio in the developed world.
Full report on the Financial Times site

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