Latitudes

India leapfrogs China in new graduate enrollments

India has surged ahead of China to become the leading source of new international graduate students in the United States, according to just-released data from the Council of Graduate Schools.

First-time Indian graduate students in the fall of 2021 increased an eye-popping 430-percent over the previous year. Enrollments of new graduate students from China were up by 35 percent from the fall of 2020, according to a survey of American graduate programs by the council.

While India outpaced China in new enrollments, the largest share of international graduate students is still from China. But for the first time, more master’s and certificate students came from India in 2021 than from any other country, the council reports.

The big question: Are the 2021 enrollment figures an aberration, a reflection of pent-up demand caused by the Covid-19 pandemic? Or do they signal the coming of a more permanent realignment, at least at the graduate level, with India, long the No. 2, displacing China as the top sender of students to the United States?

Over all, the number of new international graduate students enrolled at American colleges climbed by 92 percent in 2021. Thanks to that robust growth, American graduate schools regained the ground lost during the pandemic. First-time enrollments had declined by 39 percent between fall 2019 and fall 2020.

Part of the 2021 enrollment increase can be attributed to deferrals of offers of admission a year earlier, at the height of the pandemic, when consulates were largely closed and many international flights were grounded.

Among Indian students, 21 percent of master’s and certificate students and 12 percent of doctoral students deferred admission in fall 2020. Deferral rates from China were not nearly as high during the pandemic, with 6 percent of those admitted to both master’s and doctoral programs electing to defer.

Indian student deferrals likely inflated enrollment totals from that country, although the council did not specifically ask colleges about the share of students who had deferred among first-time enrollments, said Enyu Zhou, a senior analyst at the council. In essence, “Indian students from two consecutive application years were matriculating at the same time,” she said.

New graduate applications from India also increased significantly, by 36 percent. By contrast, since the fall of 2016, the largest one-year increase in applications from India had been 5 percent — and over a couple of years during that period, Indian graduate-student applications actually fell.

In addition to India, the council found strong growth from sub-Saharan Africa. Applications from the region rose by 64 percent and first-time enrollments by 103 percent. The council’s findings are based on responses from 361 institutions, or about half those surveyed.

Meanwhile, applications for the fall of 2021 from China dropped by 16 percent.

One reason for the drop in Chinese applicants may be that for much of the 2021 admissions cycle, international students from China were barred from traveling to the United States, at least directly. (They could travel to a third country and quarantine before coming to the United States.)

It wasn’t until late April 2021 that the Biden administration exempted Chinese student-visa holders from the pandemic travel ban — long after 2021 graduate applications were due. Uncertainty about whether they would be permitted to come to America may have depressed applications from China in particular. Only students from a handful of other countries — Brazil, Iran, and South Africa — faced such strict bans.

American consulates in China were also slow to restart visa services, while those in India prioritized student-visa applicants in the summer of 2021 — although there have been ongoing complaints about visa backlogs in both countries.

Despite the decline in applications, first-time Chinese graduate enrollments substantially increased in 2021. Still, there are concerns, many of which predate the pandemic, that American colleges are becoming less attractive to Chinese students: American politics and policies can make it tougher for students from China to study and work in the United States, educational options at home and in other countries may be more appealing, and some families may be questioning the return on a costly American degree. Geopolitical tensions between the two countries are also at a generational high.

If interest from Chinese students, who account for one of three international students in the United States, wanes, where will colleges turn? At the graduate level, perhaps, the answer might be India.

What are the enrollment trends at your institution, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels? Country-based college counselors, what are you seeing? Tell me at karin.fischer@chronicle.com.

Carnegie Mellon gets big investment for its campus in Africa

The Mastercard Foundation will invest more than $275 million in Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Rwanda, as part of an effort to expand advanced engineering and technology education and provide more academic opportunities to students from disadvantaged communities across Africa.

The philanthropy’s funding will help start an endowment to permanently support the 10-year-old institution, known as Carnegie Mellon University Africa. As part of the effort, it will expand its student body by a third and recruit and provide greater financial assistance to talented students, especially those from marginalized groups, including women, displaced persons, and those with disabilities.

The partnership also will start a Center for the Inclusive Digital Transformation of Africa, supporting a research and innovation network among universities across Africa and involving Carnegie Mellon faculty members in projects on digital transformation and health, finance, and agriculture.

Carnegie Mellon is the only American research university with master’s degree programs and full-time faculty, staff, and operations in Africa. But the university has been criticized for working with the Rwandan government, whose president, Paul Kagame, has been accused of human-rights abuses. In an essay earlier this year in The Review, Tom Zoellner, a professor of English at Chapman University, questioned whether working with Kagame was consistent with Carnegie Mellon’s mission and ideals.

Lawsuit challenges presidential order on Chinese students

A group of Chinese students are suing to reverse a Trump-era executive order that denies student visas to graduates of Chinese universities that are said to have ties with the Chinese military or national-security agencies.

A class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in Illinois seeks to overturn Presidential Proclamation 10043. The June 2020 order by President Donald Trump bars the entry of students and researchers from certain universities, even if there is no evidence that the students pose any national-security threat. It’s estimated that 3,000 to 5,000 students may have been affected by the proclamation, most at the graduate-student level.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Chronicle, but one told The Vanderbilt Hustler, Vanderbilt University’s student paper, that they had brought the lawsuit to press the Biden administration to act.

When I spoke with a number of students last year who were affected by the order, they said they were frustrated at losing educational and research opportunities in the United States. “There is a presumption of guilt based on where we go to school,” one student said. “As long as we study in those universities, we are guilty.”

Around the globe

Professors at Southern Illinois University are urging campus leaders to reinstate a faculty member caught up in the China Initiative. In May, Mingqing Xiao was found not guilty of lying about his ties to China, although he was convicted of a minor tax charge.

A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate would end an exemption for a handful of foreign medical schools from requirements for local enrollments and licensure exam pass rates to participate in U.S. federal student-aid programs. The three institutions, all in the Caribbean, account for three-quarters of the federal student aid going to foreign medical schools.

The U.S. government will offer special student relief to Venezuelan students on F-1 visas who are suffering economic hardship because of the humanitarian crisis in their country, allowing them to work an increased number of hours and to reduce their courseload.

NAFSA: Association of International Educators is asking the Biden administration to also approve special student relief to students from Pakistan because of catastrophic flooding there.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Middle Eastern Center has lost its long-term federal grant funding for area-studies research and foreign-language study, which could threaten Middle East studies on the campus.

Saudi Arabia has drafted regulations to allow foreign universities to open overseas branch campuses there, but critics said tough government oversight included in the proposed rules could put a damper on interest.

The European Union’s highest court has ruled that its member countries can require universities to teach only in their native language.

France saw the largest increase in the number of foreign students at its universities, 8 percent, in 15 years.

A leading Dutch university plans to impose a quota on the number of international students it enrolls to make sure local students have access to popular courses.

A British university will shut down two research centers sponsored by Chinese defense and aerospace companies as the U.K. limits academic collaborations with China.

A Fox News commentary argues that “federal and state legislatures should formulate laws to defend U.S. institutions of higher education from the influence of China and other foreign adversaries.”

A new investigation by my colleagues Emma Petit and Jack Stripling found that policies at the University of Florida drafted to prevent inappropriate relationships with China were used to quash faculty members’ speech on politically sensitive topics at home.

And finally …

A Harvard professor signed up to teach Frankenstein to Ukrainian students at an emergency virtual university. She ended up learning important lessons.

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line, at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.