Dive Brief:

• The Chinese government has stopped approving new international programs and is moving to make existing programs less attractive and accessible for families because of location and price.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that the Chinese government has moved one school from Beijing to the suburbs, where it may raise tuition — and in Shanghai, some programs have been affected by government-led tuition standardization, making it harder to bring in enough money to operate.
• Critics of international programs in high schools say Western values are becoming too ingrained in the Chinese education system, and the government seems to be discouraging such high levels of out-migration for college.

Dive Insight:

China has been the top sender of international students to U.S. colleges and universities for years. Many schools’ budgets depend on this recruitment because international students often pay higher tuition than domestic ones. Especially as public universities have had to deal with budget cuts and disinvestment at the state level, international students have been an attractive target population for recruitment.

As China moves to limit study abroad, other countries, including Brazil and Saudi Arabia, are doing the opposite, offering state-sponsored scholarships to students interested in getting their higher education in the United States. Right now, China is by far the biggest sender of international students studying in the United States, accounting for nearly one-third of the total population, followed by India and South Korea.