The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Karin Fischer

International graduate-student trends appear to have hit a reset.

For the second year in a row, applications to American graduate schools from India skyrocketed, while those from prospective Chinese students fell.

The findings, from a report released on Thursday by the Council of Graduate Schools, turn the trend line of recent years on its head. For the better part of a decade, Chinese graduate applications—and enrollments—have climbed upward, regularly and robustly. With double-digit annual growth, Chinese students have come to account for fully one-third of all foreign graduate students on American campuses, and their presence has helped offset flat—or in some disciplines, even declining--interest in graduate education among domestic students.

Dismissed by some observers a year ago as an aberration, the cooling of the Chinese market no longer can be written off as a one-year blip. Applications from prospective Chinese students for this fall dipped 1 percent, following a 3-percent drop a year earlier. (The data are preliminary, but final enrollments tend to closely track application trends.)

Indeed, the number of overall international applications, up 7 percent, probably would have declined, too, except for eye-popping growth, of 32 percent, from India.


Read the entire article at http://chronicle.com/article/US-Graduate-Schools-Wonder/145997/?cid=gs&utm_source=gs&utm_medium=en  

The number of Christians in Communist China is growing so steadily that it by 2030 it could have more churchgoers than America

Read the article at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10776023/China-on-course-to-become-worlds-most-Christian-nation-within-15-years.html

April 17, 2014
By Elizabeth Redden

The number of applications to U.S. graduate schools from prospective international students climbed by 7 percent this year, but shifts in the countries from which applicants are coming raise questions about the stability of international enrollments.

These were key takeaways from the Council of Graduate Schools’ annual survey of international student applications, which recorded a modest drop in the number of applications from China, the largest country of origin for international graduate students, for the second straight year. After years of double-digit gains, the number of graduate applications from China fell by 3 percent in 2013, and another 1 percent in 2014.

At the same time, applications from the second-largest country of origin, India, increased by 22 percent in 2013 and an even more dramatic 32 percent in 2014.

Chinese nationals make up about 33 percent of all international students in the United States, while Indian nationals are another 18 percent. Rounding out the top five countries of origin, applications from South Korea and Taiwan decreased by 5 and 4 percent, respectively, while applications from Canada were flat.

Other notable figures included a 33 percent increase in applications from Brazil, which is attributable at least in part to the Brazilian government’s massive scholarship program. The survey also includes data for three world regions, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, all of which showed increases in the numbers of graduate applications. All figures for the current year are preliminary and subject to revision in a subsequent report planned for August.

“In the case of both India and China, what we’re seeing are numbers that are counter to historic trends,” said Debra W. Stewart, CGS’s president.


Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/17/survey-shows-increase-international-applications-us-grad-schools-mix-applicants#ixzz2zADJfGjh 
Inside Higher Ed 

April 9, 2014
By Elizabeth Redden

Chinese undergraduate students face challenges in adapting to American classroom practices and expectations but draw on personal, social, institutional and technological resources to respond to these challenges, according to articles presented by Tang T. Heng, a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University, at last week’s American Educational Research Association annual meeting.

In her research, Heng seeks to move beyond what she describes as a discourse of “deficit” surrounding international students to one of “difference.” In other words, she argues that much of the rhetoric surrounding Chinese international students focuses myopically on challenges – such as low critical thinking skills, poor classroom participation, or inadequate English proficiency -- without adequately contextualizing the cultural reasons for those challenges and examining how students respond to them and, over time, change their attitudes and behaviors.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/new-research-examines-how-chinese-students-respond-challenges-classroom#ixzz2yPwiFfZl