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By surprise, China’s top university students are collectively abandoning study abroad.
Recently, a set of data is too shocking
The number of undergraduates from Peking University going abroad for further study in 2024 is 641, compared with 818 in 2019, a decrease of more than 21 .
Tsinghua University has not yet announced the data for 2024, but in just a few years from 2019 to 2023, there is a decrease of 196 people, a decrease of up to 28 .
The biggest change, Beijing Institute of Technology, from 675 people in 2019 to 330 people in 2024, a reduction of more than 51 , has been cut.
And other traditionally famous schools such as the University of Science and Technology of China Fudan University, the number of overseas students in these five years also shrunk by 28 57 and 17 70 respectively.
This set of data, tearing open the tip of the iceberg of the times turn.
What is the signal of the end of the study abroad era? What will happen to the tens of millions of college students?
Study abroad, suddenly does not smell good.
You may not have realized that more and more Chinese people are not going to the United Kingdom, the United States and other traditional study abroad countries to study.
Chen Zhiwen, a member of the Academic Committee of the Chinese Society for Educational Development Strategies, found that in recent years, the number of students studying abroad at Tsinghua University, Harvard University, Western University of Technology, Beihang University, and other famous universities of science and technology has fallen sharply, and the decline of some universities has been particularly pronounced, and the decline in 2022 was even close to 2.3.
For example, Harbin Institute of Technology, the number of undergraduates going abroad in 2019 was 478, and there will be only 182 left in 2022, a decline of 61 82 percent.
Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the number of undergraduates going abroad in 2019 was 659, and in 2022 it will be 245, with a decline of 62.82%.
Not only that, from the relevant data, in the United States Britain Canada and other countries that are the destination for Chinese students to study abroad, China is losing its status as the first source country, giving way to India.
Chen Zhiwen pointed out in an interview with surging news
In almost all Western countries, Chinese students have experienced a decline in numbers or weak growth, while India is catching up across the board.
Let’s look at it in comparison with a set of data. Data from OPEN DOORS, an authoritative U.S. information bank, shows that between 2020 and 2024, the number of all international students in the United States increased from less than 920,000 to nearly 1.13 million, an increase of about 23 26 . While the number of Chinese students studying in the United States has continued to decline, has long fallen below 300,000, 2020 2021 and 2023 2024 two academic years compared to a decrease of 12 58 .
Simply put, contrary to the growing trend of international students coming to the U.S., the number of Chinese students coming to the U.S. is declining rather than increasing.
China’s number of students going to the United States will even be overtaken by India in 2024, surrendering the title of the top country to study in the United States for 15 years.
Looking at another big country, the United Kingdom, the attraction of studying abroad seems to be declining. 430,000 student visas were issued by the British Home Office in the year from July 2023 to June 2024, a drop of 13% compared with the number of visas issued in the same period last year.
And Chinese students studying in the UK likewise, according to the annual visa statistics released by the UK, the number of mainland Chinese students studying in the UK peaked two years ago and has been gradually decreasing over the past two years.
If even the United Kingdom and the United States, the global leaders in higher education, are becoming less attractive to Chinese students, the situation in other countries speaks for itself.
However, I have discovered an unexpected new phenomenon Asia, which is becoming a new target for many Chinese students.
For example, Singapore. The 2023 Chinese Students Studying Abroad Report released by New Oriental shows that the percentage of Chinese graduate students considering staying in the U.S. has dropped from 45 to 30 in the five years from 2019 to 2023 . In contrast, the percentage of students considering applying to schools in Singapore has risen from 9 to 15.
Figure Chinese graduate students’ preference for studying abroad has changed
Source: New Oriental Report on Chinese Students Studying Abroad 2023
And then there’s Malaysia. Statistics from EMGS, Malaysia’s global education service, show that the number of applications from China to study in Malaysia has nearly tripled over the past five years. 2024 saw as many as 33,000 applications from Chinese students, already accounting for 40% of the total international student applications in Malaysia.
Is the shift of Chinese students to study abroad a proactive move or a reluctant one?
Behind the shift in the direction of study abroad is the influence of the mega-trend of the times.
From a macro point of view, the complex international situation is indispensable. Security vetting has become a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of many international students.
Some media reports
More and more universities are under multiple pressures to become participants in research reviews
In the collected cases, Chinese students also faced the inability to get an offer due to the sensitivity of the discipline or school, and some could not pass the visa review after getting the offer, some had their review become an indefinite wait, and some suffered from dropping out of the program halfway through the program.
Several major study abroad countries have coincidentally imposed restrictions and bans on Chinese students.
The United States, as early as 2018, mandated shorter visa validity periods for Chinese students in science technology engineering and math programs.In 2020, the United States revoked the visas of more than 1,000 Chinese nationals, suspending the entry of students and researchers from China who were deemed to be security risks.
The UK, which introduced the ATAS study ban, naming Chinese students as restricted from studying a range of science and engineering disciplines, including physics chemistry cyber technology artificial intelligence, and facing re-examination every six months, even if they escape temporarily
Even Switzerland is no longer neutral and has begun to increase scrutiny of Chinese students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich announced a new security vetting measure at the end of 2024, increasing the number of restrictions on Chinese universities. In addition to what we often refer to as the Seven Sons of National Defense, it also includes key universities and research institutes such as Sichuan University Sun Yat-sen University and the China Academy of Engineering Physics.
Many international students who applied are tired of feeling unloved after seeing the rejection letters
Realistically, overseas study is also becoming less and less cost-effective. This generation of young people is experiencing the most sobering expulsion from studying abroad.
On the one hand, tuition fees are getting more and more expensive.
Take the United States for example, CollegeBoard released the 2023 2024 U.S. Higher Education Tuition Report , from which we can easily see that the tuition fees for undergraduate and graduate students in both public and private universities are rising. Even for public schools, the total cost is over $20,000 per year.
Not to mention the world’s top colleges and universities, where tuition is rising even higher.
On the other hand, it is the salary expectation for returning to work in your home country that is getting lower and lower.
Data show that in recent years, the actual annual salary of overseas students has been declining, and the rate of decline is quite obvious, even the international students themselves have resigned themselves to their fate, and their salary expectations have dropped.
What’s more, even the selection exams have begun to reject international students. Guangdong, Shandong, Beijing and other places released the announcement of the 2025 Selection and Transfer Examination to narrow the scope of colleges and universities, directly cutting out overseas colleges and universities. It is important to know that, according to a survey report released by the China World Youth Summit and Hire, 74 4 of international students believe that there is a phenomenon of public examination fever among the returnee group.
In addition, it may also be related to the expansion of domestic colleges and universities.
In 2019, a total of 916,500 postgraduate students were enrolled nationwide, an increase of 6 82 over the previous year
In 2020, a total of 1.166 million graduate students will be enrolled nationwide, an increase of 20 74 from the previous year
In 2021, a total of 1.1765 million postgraduates will be enrolled nationwide, an increase of 6 32% over the previous year.
In 2022, a total of 1.2425 million postgraduates will be enrolled nationwide, an increase of 561% over the previous year.
In 2023, a total of 1.317 million graduate students will be enrolled nationwide, an increase of 476% over the previous year.
In just five years, the national enrollment of graduate students has increased by as much as 42 03 .
After carefully combing through the data, we found that the trend of more and more students choosing to stay in domestic colleges and universities to further their studies has become very obvious in these five years.
The rate of further study within the territory of undergraduate education in many prestigious schools has almost always shown an upward trend
In particular, the top stream of colleges and universities Peking University, from 43 51 in 2019 all the way up to 65 20 in 2024, up by a full 22 34.
Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), a science and technology powerhouse in the same capital, is not far behind, rising from 43,69 in 2019 to 62,93 in 2024.
Universities such as the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and Tongji University are also generally increasing their rates of advanced study by around 10 to 20 percent.
The answer is simple: colleges and universities in China are becoming more and more attractive.
For example, some colleges and universities have achieved the true sense of “don’t need me to work hard, all rely on the school’s own competitiveness”.
In the past few years, the strength of domestic colleges and universities has been increasing, which can be seen from the change in the order of the QS World University Rankings.
Peking University, directly forward to the 14th place, an improvement of 16 places
Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), up 162 places
Tongji University, improved by 99 places
Wuhan University, improved by 63 places
Moreover, in the QS World University Rankings of 2025, Tsinghua University and Beihang University surpassed Yale University at the same time. It is important to know that in 2024, these two TOP-level universities in China were still located behind.
At the same time, there are a large number of new research universities in the country, beckoning to the diligent students.
For example, when it was founded, it threatened to be on a par with Tsinghua and Peking University in five years, and comparable to the California Institute of Technology in 15 years, the West Lake University.
As early as 2018, Westlake University began to usher in the return of the first batch of students with an overseas undergraduate or master’s degree background. 2019, this group of graduates from top overseas colleges and universities accounted for 10 percent of the university’s student population, and in 2022, it will further soar to 19 2, nearly doubling the number of students.
Moreover, most of these students are Chinese students who went overseas for their undergraduate or master’s degree, mainly graduating from world-renowned universities such as Yale University, University of California, National University of Singapore and others.
These schools are rich in money and powerful in strength. For example, the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) has an average budget of 565.1 million yuan for 2024, second only to Tsinghua University’s 633.1 million yuan and Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s 582.4 million yuan.
Some students of the Southern University of Science and Technology have shown their income from one semester of graduate school, and they are jealous of their peers!
Its performance is also quite eye-catching, in 2024 in China’s mainland universities Nature Science top publication list, there are two new research universities in the top 10 list.
Southern University of Science and Technology (SUST) and West Lake University (WLU) are ranked seventh and ninth respectively. The number of articles published is more than the century-old Fudan University.
In addition to the above colleges and universities already in operation, there are a large number of new research universities already on the road
Fuyao University of Science and Technology, which is benchmarked against Stanford University, intends to officially enroll in 2025.
Ningbo Oriental University of Science and Technology, which was built with an investment of 46 billion dollars, will enroll students in 2025.
Phase I of Shenzhen Ocean University to be partially completed by 2026
So searching, domestic colleges and universities are really more and more fragrant.
This is the most difficult time, but also the best time. Behind the shift to higher education is actually a precise bet on the dividends of the times. A generation of schoolboys from famous schools are voting with their feet, hoping to go farther.
References
1 Juchao WAVE Study in the UK, it really doesn’t smell good anymore!
2 Punch News Why are young people not keen to study abroad? Expert Explanation
3 Wisdom Valley Trend Trend Too suddenly, many provinces and cities began to reject the selection of international students, what signal?
4 China Newsweek 985 graduates, no longer love to go abroad?
5 Surfing News Study abroad is no longer popular, where are all the famous school students going?
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