Chinese Graduate Students' Experience of U.S. Higher Education Through Covid and U.S.-China Tensions

Abstract

About 300,000 students from the People’s Republic of China study in the United States. This population of students lay the base for academic ties between the U.S. and China. Today, university relations are near the heart of U.S.-China relations—encapsulating issues of intellectual property, national security, cultural exchange, and scientific and economic progress. At a time when many Chinese STEM graduate students are under great stress–from job markets, geopolitics, and lingering effects of the pandemic–we sought to shine light on how Chinese graduate students, primarily in STEM fields, think about their time in American higher education. Over the last three years, we conducted multi-hour interviews with roughly 45 Chinese doctoral or postdoctoral students at universities across the United States. This paper offers an outline, based on comments from our sample, of how U.S. universities could better serve and attract Chinese students and researchers.