China most common homeland of IU's international students
Editor's note: This story from The Bloomington Herald-Times is being published here as a courtesy for readers of IU in the News.
For the past five years, more international students on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus have come from China than any other country, and 2015 isn’t expected to be any different.
In 2010, China overtook South Korea as the most common country of origin for international students on the Bloomington campus. It has maintained that spot every year since. In 2014, Chinese students outnumbered South Korean students, the second largest group of international students, by 2,286.
It wasn’t always this way, though. A Herald-Times analysis of 20 years’ worth of data on international students found that from 1995 to 2009, South Koreans were the largest group of international students. The Chinese student population started to increase significantly after Michael McRobbie became president of the university on July 1, 2007. That year, the Chinese student population increased by more than 23 percent from the previous year.
In 2014, according to IU’s data, there were 3,100 Chinese students on the Bloomington campus, compared with 814 students from South Korea.
John Wilkerson, director of international admissions, said despite McRobbie’s emphasis on expanding IU’s international relations, the growth in the Chinese student population has more to do with economics than recruiting efforts.
The growth in the number of Chinese students at IU is a reflection of a national trend, Wilkerson said. About the same time that Chinese students became the largest group of international students at IU, they also became the largest group of international students nationwide. During the 2009-10 school year, China surpassed India with 127,628 students or 18.5 percent of the total international student population for the U.S., according to the Institute of International Education.
Wilkerson said this increase in Chinese students is primarily due to the growth of the Chinese economy. While Wilkerson acknowledged Chinese economic growth has slowed recently, the country’s economy is still projected to grow by about 7 percent this year, an enviable number for many nations.
China’s economic growth has resulted in a growing middle class and a whole generation of students who have the ability and means to attend top-tier universities. However, there aren’t enough spots in China’s top universities to accommodate all those students.
“That’s where the capacity glut happens,” Wilkerson said. “They want a top university, and they’re willing to travel.”
Education reform has also become a hot topic in China. People are questioning using an entrance exam called the gaokao as the main tool for determining who is accepted into what university.
“Placement in a top university in China is determined solely on their performance on the gaokao,” Wilkerson said. “There’s been some discussion of the efficacy of encapsulating an entire academic career to date on one exam.”
Families are becoming more familiar with U.S. exams like the SAT, and they’re often impressed by the diversity of classes at American universities.
Wilkerson also points to economics as the reason for the drop in South Korean students. IU’s South Korean student population has declined every year since 2011. Wilkerson said that’s about the same time South Korea’s economy started to decline.
In addition, expansion of South Korean industry into China has resulted in an increased demand for employees who can speak Mandarin Chinese. English is still important, but most South Korean students have at least a basic proficiency by the time they’re ready to enter college because they begin learning the language in primary school.
“Many have obtained a certain level of proficiency,” Wilkerson said. “At the university level, they’re looking to diversify.”
Despite the changes, Wilkerson said IU is in an enviable position because its South Korean student population has stayed steady, comparatively. In 2014, South Korean students made up about 8 percent of the total international student population nationally, but accounted for about 13 percent of IU’s international student population.
People outside the university have noticed this demographic shift. This year, Asian American Today launched a Chinese-language newspaper in Bloomington called Blooming Times. Mu Yu, president and editor in chief, said the creation of the biweekly newspaper, which will be published from August to May each year, is a direct result of IU’s growing Chinese student population.
Yu said the newspaper will help educate Chinese students about the local culture and provide them with a place to exchange information as well as offer support. That’s something he would have enjoyed when he came to Bloomington 26 years ago. For most of that time, the Chinese population was small. He said there were only about 200 Chinese students at IU when he got here in 1989, but he started to notice a change a few years ago.
In 2009, Yu said he went to the annual Chinese spring party at the IU Auditorium. At the time, the large venue seemed excessive for the small number of people who came, but two years later, it was a different story. Yu said he didn’t go that year, but friends told him the space was filled.
He’s also noticed a difference at the Kroger where he shops on the east side of town.
“In the past, I would not see many Chinese students,” he said. “A few years ago, no matter how late I went, even at midnight, I would see Chinese students.”
The city of Bloomington has noticed the difference, too. Jacqui Bauer, sustainability coordinator, said the city has started printing brochures for things like the Monroe County Energy Challenge and Hoosier to Hoosier Sale in Chinese.
“It helps catch the eye of a totally different group of people,” she said.
Bauer said the city prints materials in Spanish and Korean as well, but Chinese and Korean are great marketing tools because they look so different, people who don’t speak those languages often stop to look at them.
IU has offered support services for international students for years, but the university’s bicentennial plan called for strengthening international relations with such efforts as the Global Gateways Project. In 2013, IU established an office in Delhi, India, and it opened one in Beijing, China, in 2014.
Ally Batten, director of the project, said the university plans to open more offices in other countries, including Germany, in the future, but it didn’t want to be spread too thin in the beginning, so it had to prioritize. Starting with India and China was a “no-brainer,” Batten said, because of their huge populations and growing economies.
The offices help with recruitment, but they also help foster international research and maintain connections with peer universities. In addition, they serve as a home base for alumni, which is something that hasn’t always meant all that much in places like China. That’s changing, however.
“The concept is growing in China,” Batten said.
With this year’s freshman class expected to have even more Chinese students than last year’s, the number of IU alumni in China is also rising.