China now top producer of international students

China’s exports are not the only things that rebounded in 2010. This school year, China became the top country of origin for international students and scholars at Penn.

Out of this year’s 4752 international matriculants, 960 — over 20 percent — came from China, according to the Office of International Programs.

This trend is reflected at universities around the country.

During the 2009-2010 academic year, China accounted for 18 percent of all international students studying in the United States, making it the top country of origin for international students, according to the Institute of International Education’s 2010 report, Open Doors.

Anne Waters, executive director of Penn’s Office of International Programs, attributed the surge to China’s booming economy and an increased willingness to invest in higher education.

“The good thing with the economy picking up is more parents are willing to send their kids to overseas universities,” Wharton senior and Hong Kong native Ray Fung said. “Ivy League schools actually matter to them now.”

“Higher education is something that America does extremely well,” Waters added. “As the wealth in China increases, students who want to come here will increase accordingly.”

Wharton sophomore Tianpu Zhang waived the Chinese college entrance exam and resolved to attend an American university instead.

“My impression of Chinese higher education is that it is kind of a joke,” Zhang said. “You don’t really learn that much … and resources-wise, it’s just not as abundant as [it is] in America.”

College senior Xixi Chen began preparing to apply to American universities during her sophomore year of high school and reflected that pursing higher education in the States “has been a growing trend in China.”

Given recent economic developments, more and more families are now able to finance undergraduate educations in the United States, Chen said, adding that just a few years ago, most Chinese students depended on stipends for graduate-level research to study abroad.

Chen also cited integration into American culture as another key motivation to study abroad at the undergraduate level.

“My mother wanted me to come earlier because she was worried I would be too old to get into the American culture if I only came for graduate school,” she said.

However, even as an undergraduate, Chen said she faced a combination of language and cultural challenges.

“While I could talk to people about different things, whenever they mentioned more American stuff such as cartoons they watched when they were young or slang … I just couldn’t add a lot to the conversation,” Chen said.

Having attended a United World College in Hong Kong — a boarding school for students of diverse nationalities — Fung was less shocked by “a difference in terms of culture” than he was by the American fanaticism for sports.

“The biggest thing that shocked me more was the language in terms of when people talked about baseball, basketball and football,” Fung said. “I found it a little bit hard in that sense to establish a connection with Americans.”

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