MCLC: lure of Chinese tuition

Denton, Kirk denton.2 at osu.edu
Fri Dec 30 09:51:13 EST 2011


MCLC LIST
From: matthew robertson <mprobertson11 at gmail.com>
Subject: lure of Chinese tuition
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Source: Bloomberg (12/28/11):
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/lure-of-chinese-tuition-squeezes-o
ut-asian-americans-at-california-schools.html

Lure of Chinese Tuition Squeezes Out Asian-Americans at California Schools
By Oliver Staley 

Kwanhyun Park, the 18-year-old son of Korean immigrants, spent four
years at Beverly Hills High School earning the straight As and high test
scores he thought would get him into the University of California, San
Diego. They weren¹t enough.

The sought-after school, half a mile from the Pacific Ocean, admitted
1,460 fewer California residents this year to accept higher-paying
students from out-of-state, many from China.

³I was shocked,² said Park, who also was rejected from four other UC
schools, including the top-ranked campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles,
even with a 4.0 grade-point average and an SAT score above the UC San
Diego average. ³I took it terribly. I felt like I was doing well and I
failed.²

The University of California system, rocked by budget cuts, is enrolling
record numbers of out-of-state and international students, who pay
almost twice that of in-state residents. Among those being squeezed out:
high-achieving Asian-Americans, many of them children of immigrants, who
for decades flocked to the state¹s elite public colleges to move up the
economic ladder.

In 2009, University of California administrators told the San Diego
campus to reduce its number of in-state freshmen by 500 to about 3,400
and fill the spots with out-of-state and international students, said
Mae Brown, the school¹s admissions director. California residents pay
$13,234 in annual tuition while nonresidents pay $22,878.

12-Fold Surge

As a result, almost 200 freshmen from China enrolled in 2011, up from 16
in 2009, a 12-fold increase. At the same time, the number of
Asian-American Californians enrolled fell 29 percent to 1,230, from
1,723 in 2009. The 2009 figure is from the UC system¹s office because
San Diego didn¹t have it available.

While the San Diego campus is accepting more Chinese students, the
decline in Asian-American enrollment may be a result of the total drop
in California resident admissions, and two years¹ data doesn¹t reflect a
trend, said Christine Clark, a university spokeswoman.

³UC San Diego is committed to admitting and enrolling talented students
from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds,² Clark said in an e-mailed
statement.

Asian-American students fighting to distinguish themselves to college
admissions officers now have to go up against Asians from overseas, said
Casey Chang, a Chinese-American senior at Claremont High School in
Claremont, California, east of Los Angeles. He said he has a 4.7
grade-point average and is applying to the San Diego campus for a joint
undergraduate/medical-school program.

One in Five

³We¹re all competing for the same goal, and the fact that they¹re
international makes them that much more interesting to the UCs,² Chang
said.

One in five international students nationwide, or 57,000 undergraduates,
came from China in 2010-11, a 43 percent increase over the previous
year, according to the Institute of International Education in
Washington. Colleges are more frequently tapping this pool as the surge
in middle-class incomes in China coincides with steep budget cuts at
U.S. state universities.

UC San Diego received $227 million from the state in the 2011-12
academic year, down from $301 million in 2007-08. Funding for the nine
other University of California campuses dropped as well.

Helping to Pay

³The state is not a fully reliable partner in funding anymore,² said
Scott Waugh, the provost at UCLA, where foreign enrollments have
quadrupled since 2009. ³If we¹re going to give California residents the
education they want and deserve, we need non-Californians to help pay
for it.²

UCLA is increasing the size of its student body to accommodate more
nonresidents, said Janina Montero, vice chancellor for student affairs.
Asian-Americans already are being displaced by University of California
admissions policies that give preference to first- generation college
students. The guidelines benefit low-income Latino and African-American
students over middle-income Asian- Americans whose parents went to
college, said Mitchell Chang, an education professor at UCLA.

³When you add this new trend on top of the political shifts, you might
have a double whammy that tends to disadvantage Asian-Americans,² Chang
said.

California students and their parents, Asian-Americans and others, say
they¹re fighting an uphill battle to enter schools that were established
to provide them with an affordable education.

ŒTaken Away¹

Veronica Zavala¹s son Brandon is a senior at Diamond Bar High School,
about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. As an A student and the son of
taxpayers and a state employee -- Brandon¹s father is a prison guard --
he should be able to attend a University of California school, she said.
³There¹s no reason why someone from another country should come and take
my son¹s spot,² Zavala said.

U.S. universities are expanding their ties to China and increasingly
looking to China for financial support. At least a dozen private and
public colleges are opening Chinese campuses with funding from Chinese
municipalities. A Chinese government affiliate has spent millions of
dollars to establish Confucius Institutes for Chinese language and
culture at 75 American schools, including UCLA.

UCLA has received Chinese funding for its Confucius Institute since
2007, with the most recent grant of $320,000 for teacher training in
Mandarin and for studying ways to integrate Eastern and Western
medicine, according to the university.

The University of California¹s state appropriation has been cut 28
percent -- almost $1 billion -- since 2007-08 and faces a midyear $100
million cut this year.

Enrollment of Chinese and other international students are surging at
state universities across the U.S.

Washington, Michigan State

At the University of Washington in Seattle, the number of in-state
students in the freshman class declined by almost 500 between 2007 and
2011, even as the school enrolled more total students. The percentage of
out-of-state students surged to 34 percent of the freshman class from 19
percent over that same period, with more than half from overseas. Almost
two-thirds of the international students are from China.

Washington residents pay $10,346 in tuition and fees while nonresidents
pay $27,830.

At Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Chinese undergraduate
enrollment soared 23-fold in five years, to 2,217 in 2011 from 94 in
2006. Total international enrollment almost tripled to 3,402 in the
period and now makes up close to 10 percent of undergraduates.

Office in Beijing

Michigan State opened an office in Beijing in 2008 to improve recruiting
efforts, said James Cotter, director of admissions. Student applications
are vetted by the staff in Beijing, he said.

The increase in nonresident students comes as Michigan¹s high-school
population is expected to decrease 20 percent over two decades, so local
students aren¹t being squeezed out, Cotter said.

Park, who graduated from Beverly Hills High School in June, thinks he
would have been admitted to UC San Diego if it hadn¹t reduced the number
of slots for California residents. His combined math and verbal SAT
score of 1340 exceeded the university¹s average of 1233. His older
brother was admitted to the school in 2009 with lower test scores, Park
said.

³It¹s kind of unfair,² said Park, who played volleyball and basketball
in high school and took eight advanced placement classes, all with the
aim of getting into an elite university. While he dreamed of attending
Berkeley, his guidance counselor told him that San Diego was a realistic
goal.

³I feel I met the university¹s standards to get in,² he said. ³I
expected to get in.²

Œ13th Grade¹

Instead, Park is taking classes at Santa Monica College, a two-year
community college he once mocked as ³13th grade.² He¹s reapplying to the
UCs this fall as a transfer student.

While it cut in-state freshman enrollment, UC San Diego increased the
number of resident transfer students from California community colleges
to 2,340 from 1,624 over two years, said Brown, the admissions director.
³The University of California has been the major vehicle for social
mobility for the Asian-American community,² said Don Nakanishi, a
retired UCLA professor who ran the school¹s Asian American Studies
Center for 20 years. The campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego
are among the most selective public colleges in the U.S., admitting less
than 40 percent of all undergraduate applicants.

About 43 percent of all undergraduates at Berkeley are Asian-American,
compared with 16 percent at Harvard University and Yale University and
23 percent at Stanford University.

Nonresident Plans

To boost revenue, the University of California system plans to increase
nonresident enrollment to 10 percent from 6.6 percent of all
undergraduates, said Nathan Brostrom, the University of California¹s
executive vice president of business operations. Much of that increase
will be at Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego, the campuses with the greatest
appeal to out-of-state students, he said.

Berkeley enrolled 96 Chinese students in 2010, up from 55 in 2009. In
the same period, the number of Asian-American freshmen who enrolled at
Berkeley dropped 22 percent to 1,116, the lowest since 1995. Enrollment
of white students at Berkeley also fell 29 percent as total admissions
of state residents dropped.

While California and other state universities admit foreign students for
legitimate educational reasons, some may be abdicating their
responsibility to educate their own citizens, said Patrick Callan,
president of the Higher Education Policy Institute.

ŒRevenue Chasing¹

³At what point is this not diversifying the student population and just
becomes another form of revenue chasing?² said Callan, who is based in
San Jose, California. ³We¹re in some danger of simply taking whoever can
pay the most.²

At UC San Diego, Chinese students say they are viewed skeptically by
other students who think they¹re only there because they pay more, said
Zijin Xiao, 20, a freshman from Shenzhen, China.

³They think ŒThe foreign students, they admit some who are not fit,
maybe they¹re not good at academics,¹² Xiao said. ³It makes me upset.²
She and fellow Chinese students say they are comforted by the large
number of their compatriots at the university, which makes the
transition to a new country easier.

Xiaojing Pang, 22, a communications major from Guangdong province who
goes by Celia, said the cost of San Diego¹s tuition is a burden, though
she understands the tradeoff.

³I need the education and they need my money,² she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Staley in New York at
ostaley at bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Kaufman at
jkaufman17 at bloomberg.net









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