Neal McCluskey and Kayla Susalla
In maybe a surprise move, President Donald Trump on August 25 said he would allow 600,000 Chinese students to enter the country to attend college. It is “maybe” a surprise because a basic Trump negotiating strategy seems to be unpredictability. Regardless, such openness would be a good thing for the country, both for its direct financial impacts and long-term economic growth.
For a rough estimate of what 600,000 Chinese students would contribute directly to the economy, we assume that these students will pay the full cost of tuition, fees, room, and board themselves, or someone else outside of the country will, most likely their government. We also assume they will attend public 4‑year and private, non-profit 4‑year institutions—we assume they would be unlikely to travel for community colleges or for-profit schools—and attend such schools in the same shares as all college students currently matriculate, according to the most recent year with federal data. This matters because the cost of attendance is different in each sector. Finally, we use undergraduate budgets for such students that reflect out-of-state costs for public institutions, which would presumably be the typical price tag for international students. Grad students would likely have higher budgets because of greater tuition, but expenses such as housing should be the same, so for the sake of simplicity, we do not separate grad and undergrad student budgets.
This produces a direct financial impact of $32.1 billion, with an estimated 186,600 students going to private institutions at a mean total budget of $62,990 and 413,400 going to public institutions at a mean total budget of $49,080.
Of course, this mix could be off, especially since in-state prices make public institutions relatively less attractive compared to private, which would drive private attendance up and public down from the shares we used. This also does not look at shares that might go to graduate school and, again, grad school costs. Finally, 600,000 might never actually come—there are approximately 270,000 Chinese students in the country right now. But even an additional $5 billion or $10 billion in revenue would be nothing to sneeze at.
Going beyond direct spending, as we noted recently in Inside Higher Ed, being a top destination for international talent is great for the country in the long term, helping especially to fuel cutting-edge innovation. Meanwhile, the primary concern about admitting Chinese students—espionage—seems to be overstated. And in cases in which securing research is a major concern, such as undertakings with clear military applications, the projects themselves could be classified.
Attracting a large number of students from abroad is a sign of American greatness. It is also a boon to the country that we should expand, as Trump now seems willing to do.