China’s Ministry of Education earlier this week warned students and instructors to “step up risk assessment and prepare accordingly” in light of  restrictions on U.S. visas.

More than 80 percent of colleges and universities with declines in new international-student enrollments said last year that the visa-application process had helped deter foreign students, up from 34 percent in the fall of 2016, according to an annual survey by the Institute of International Education.

It’s still too soon to anticipate all the consequences of the Chinese government’s announcement, or of the Trump administration’s reported actions and discussions that preceded it, but the fallout is likely to take many dimensions. Colleges, states, and the federal government see Chinese students in all sorts of ways: as cultural ambassadors, as critical research partners, as enrollment drivers and revenue sources, and as boons to state and local economies.   But some U.S. colleges have begun limiting their collaborations with and work in China. Still others have stressed the importance of international professors and students, signaling that they welcome Chinese students and professors. 

In recent years, American colleges and associations have feared potential impact as the increase in international-student enrollment has slowed. Double-digit-percentage enrollment growth from China buoyed international enrollment from 2007 to 2014, according to the Institute for International Education. In the past three years, however, the year-over-year increase from China has slowed from 8.1 percent to 3.6 percent.  And the numbers of new international enrollment declined each year from fall 2015 to fall 2017, according to the institute’s 2018 annual census.

Jeffrey R. Brown, dean of the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, sees reason for concern in China’s Ministry’s announcement, “although it’s not a three-alarm fire.”

Urbana-Champaign, whose population of roughly 5,700 Chinese undergraduate and graduate students is by one measure the largest in the country, in many ways tells the story of American international education in the past decade. Its international-student body has swelled in that time, but — in line with colleges at large — enrollments since 2017 have dropped. How will it prepare for any continued slide?

The university has taken steps to cushion the financial blow. In November it made headlines after its business and engineering colleges — divisions with especially high numbers of Chinese students — bought a three-year insurance policy that would take effect if events like visa bans or a trade war caused a year-over-year decline of at least 18.5 percent in Chinese enrollments.”

This is an interesting issue and can have significant ramifications for American universities that have come to depend upon Chinese students and collaborations.

Tony