When Yifei “Jerry” Hu arrived at Brown University last year, he knew he wasn’t going to return home – at least not for a long time.
“I know it’s hard for me to go back,” the Chinese student said recently. “I just try to avoid thinking about it.”
Hu, a second-year Ph.D. student studying cognitive science, is one of the many students whose plans were derailed in 2020 by the COVID-19 outbreak. The U.S.-bound student was forced to defer his first year at Brown when embassies in China closed indefinitely, preventing him from obtaining an F-1 student visa necessary to study abroad.
He is also one of the declining number of Chinese students who are continuing to choose to study in the U.S., despite knowing this would likely mean a lengthy stay in a foreign land.
Chinese students across the United States have grappled with a new set of challenges over the last two years, with travel restrictions and strict quarantine requirements that lingered in China long after other countries reopened. Geopolitical tensions between China and the U.S. haven’t helped.
These challenges have grown evident on many U.S. university campuses, where the number of enrolled Chinese students has dwindled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which in turn has cut into what had been a stable source of revenue for many schools that have seen a decline in domestic enrollment.
Beyond campuses, Chinese students contributed nearly $16 billion to the economy nationwide, according to data compiled in a November 2021 Institute of International Education Open Doors report.
“When we look at our international population overall, China used to be the top country,” said Abigail Borchert, international student services adviser at the University of Rhode Island. “Not anymore.”
There are currently five students from China on the URI campus, compared with 22 in 2019 and 36 in 2018, pre-pandemic.
These numbers mirror a nationwide trend indicating that many universities aren’t drawing Chinese students like they used to. According to data from the U.S. Department of State, the number of student visas issued to Chinese students in the first six months of 2022 is down to 31,055, about half of the 64,261 issued in the same period of 2019.
Closed embassies, travel restrictions and quarantine mandates were some of the causes of the first decline at the start of the pandemic. In the 2019-2020 academic year, there were 372,532 Chinese international students in the country, but the number dropped by 14.8% to 317,299 in the following academic year, according to the Open Doors report.
“We definitely had a dip in numbers in 2020, but we had a few students who made it,” Borchert said.
And while many countries, including the U.S., have moved toward a return to normalcy, some of these issues continue to persist for students. China, in particular, continues to operate with strict COVID-19 policies, which still call for the implementation of harsh lockdowns.
This is what deters students such as Hu from even attempting to visit their home country, despite being separated from family and friends.
But while the travel restrictions confining Chinese students abroad are unique, the Open Doors report, published in partnership with the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, shows the decline of international student enrollment is not a trend unique to China.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the overall number of international students coming to the U.S. has dropped by 15%, going from 1.1 million in the 2019-2020 academic year to 914,095 in 2020-2021.
But while the number of international students still seems to be low compared with pre-pandemic times, some schools are not seeing declines.
At Brown University, the Rhode Island school with historically the highest enrollment of international students, the number of F-1 students has been relatively constant, if not on the rise.
After Chinese student enrollment dipped from 146 in 2019 to 139 a year later, it edged upward again in 2021 to 147 students.
At the same time, the total number of international students at Brown has seen the same type of recovery, with the number dropping from 1,771 in 2019 to 1,655 in 2020 and then rising to 1,859 for the 2021-22 academic year.
Enrollment figures for this fall were not yet available.
Similarly, China remains the top source of international students at the Rhode Island School of Design, a school spokesperson said. RISD was unable to provide figures, however.
At Providence College, the number of international students this fall is 90, up slightly from last year’s 75, says Christian Wilwohl, dean of global education. But the school could not provide numbers prior to 2021.
It’s unclear what will happen if COVID-19 outbreaks are avoided on campuses and restrictions fade. For many universities, this fall will be the first full return to in-person classes since the pandemic began in March 2020. But some anxiety lingers among international students.
“I have no idea when I will be able to go back and I really wish everything could go back to normal, to pre-COVID, soon,” Hu said.
