White House looks into reducing Chinese student visas

The Trump administration is considering restrictions on the number of Chinese student visas. The restriction was not included in the recent tariff announcement, but could come later.

Education experts warn that the potential move would be bad for US higher education and the economy overall.

Right now, there are more than one million international students enrolled in US colleges. One-third of them are from China.

The US president has long lamented the trade deficit with China, but when it comes to higher education, the US runs a large surplus with the rest of the world; not a deficit.

“A modest number of Americans spend a little bit of time at universities in China, in Europe and other places. But many international students, and China is far and away the biggest source, basically get their entire higher education in the United States,” explained Dick Startz, Economics Professor at the University California Santa Barbara.

Students on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“If those students were suddenly to disappear, or we would see a serious decline, I think there would be very unfortunate consequences just for the quality of instruction for everyone along with the loss of tuition revenue,” warned Bradley Farnsworth, Vice President of the American Council on Education.

Tuition at Columbia University and many other colleges in the United States run upwards of 50,000 US dollars a year.

Many American students don’t pay that much because they get scholarships and financial aid.

International students, on the other hand, usually pay full price.

Students sit around the Bruin Bear statue during lunchtime on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles, California.

“Chinese students come here and buy pizza and they rent apartments and they buy cars and all of that goes into the local economy and makes jobs and helps support the local economy,” said Startz.

Students from China spend at least 12 billion US dollars a year in the US on tuition and living expenses.

“A loss of international students for the United States is bad public policy. It’s bad for higher education and it’s bad for the country,” added Startz.

(CGTN)