“Can studying in the US survive geopolitics?” written by Professor of Sociology Yingyi Ma, was published by the Brookings Institution. Following is an excerpt:

Visa revocations affect international students from many countries, but Chinese students are particularly vulnerable. As China remains one of the largest sources of international students in the United States, ongoing bilateral tensions and trade restrictions—such as tariffs—have heightened anxiety among students and their families. Chinese student numbers in the United States have declined steadily since their peak of about 372,000 in 2019 to about 278,000 now—a greater than 20% decline, reflecting the impact of pandemic disruptions and bilateral tensions....

The consequences extend far beyond diplomacy. The Institute of International Education estimates that U.S. colleges enrolled about 1.1 million overseas students in 2023‑2024, injecting roughly $43.8 billion into the economy and supporting 378,175 jobs. Nearly 25% of those students were from China, whose families spent about $14.3 billion on tuition and living costs in the United States in 2023 alone.

The nearly 100,000-student decline in Chinese enrollment in the United States since 2019 translates into billions in lost tuition revenue. Universities in states like California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts—top destinations for Chinese students—have felt the financial strain acutely. Compounding the challenge, recent cuts to federal research funding have further destabilized academic departments that rely on both tuition and grant support. In engineering and computer science—fields especially popular among Chinese graduate students—colleges are struggling to fill seats, while also contending with shrinking research budgets. The combined effect is a growing crisis in departmental sustainability.