Purdue University is allegedly rejecting large numbers of Chinese graduate student applicants.
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Current and prospective Purdue University graduate students say the institution rejected a slew of Chinese applicants from its grad programs for this academic year. Also, one grad student says the university told grad admissions committees in the past couple of months that it’s highly unlikely to accept students from any “adversary nation” for next year.
Faculty were told those countries are China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, said Kieran Hilmer, a teaching assistant on the leadership committee of Graduate Rights and Our Wellbeing (GROW), a group trying to unionize Purdue grad workers. That list broadly matches the commerce secretary’s catalog of foreign adversaries.
Hilmer said the university conveyed this prohibition verbally. “They didn’t write any of this down,” he said.
Purdue isn’t commenting on the allegations. The university has faced scrutiny from members of Congress about its ties to China. In May, the Trump administration briefly said it would revoke Chinese students’ visas nationwide. The president has since changed his tune and said he would welcome more students from China.
A Chinese student who wished to remain anonymous because he’s still trying to get into Purdue told Inside Higher Ed he received an offer to be a research assistant last February, meaning his funding was secure to become a Purdue grad student this academic year. But, in April or May, he said, the Office of Graduate Admissions told him that his application was denied.
The redacted two-paragraph letter that he provided to Inside Higher Ed said admission “is competitive and many factors are carefully considered,” but “we are not able to provide specific feedback.”
The student, who said he got his master’s degree in the U.S. and wishes to remain here, said he had already moved to West Lafayette, where Purdue’s flagship campus is, signed a lease and turned down other institutions’ offers. He said the rejection could impact his visa.
“I may get deported,” he said.
He said he learned through social media that at least 100 other Chinese students were similarly rejected.
Purdue spokespeople also didn’t provide a response to the LafayetteJournal & Courier and the Exponentstudent newspaper when asked about this issue. The Journal & Courier, which first reported the story, cited four faculty members from “a wide range of departments” who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the university.
Multiple heads of graduate admissions committees didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Thursday; one who answered the phone referred a reporter to the press office, which didn’t respond. Emails sent to Office of Graduate Admissions employees went unanswered.
While Purdue won’t explain what actions it’s taking or why, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said in a September report that it’s been investigating Purdue and five other universities—Stanford and Carnegie Mellon Universities and the Universities of Maryland, Southern California and Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—all year “regarding the presence and research activities of Chinese national students on their campuses.”
Hilmer said Purdue is rejecting Chinese applicants in “a specific attempt to comply with the U.S. Select Committee.” (The committee didn’t comment Thursday on whether it pressured Purdue to go as far as it allegedly has.) But Hilmer also said the “hostility and malice” the university is showing these students goes further than what the committee requested.
“As Purdue said in its response to the House Select Committee, international students are fully vetted by the United States government when they apply for their visas,” Hilmer said. “And, on top of that, in order to work on projects related to national security, they need to get further security clearance. So there’s no reason for Purdue to make this unilateral extralegal decision to ban all of these students.”
He said many of these students were already in the U.S.
“This policy is obviously discriminatory and immoral, and, on top of that, it violates Purdue’s policy on nondiscrimination,” he said. The Chinese student told Inside Higher Ed that he doesn’t accept the committee pressure rationale, because Purdue wasn’t the only university under investigation.
If Purdue is responding to the committee’s pressure, it’s another example of a selective American institution bending to the federal government’s efforts to reduce international enrollment and to particularly target Chinese students and scholars. During President Trump’s first term in office, the Justice Department launched the controversial China Initiative, which investigated faculty ties to China.
Republicans said the initiative sought to counter espionage, but Democrats, education lobbyists and Asian American advocates argued it was ineffective and instead justified racial profiling and discrimination. A study suggested the initiative’s investigations may have caused valuable researchers of Chinese descent to leave the U.S. for China.
Hilmer said Purdue’s rejection of Chinese students will harm its reputation and ability to recruit the best students and workers.
“Even if they’re not international students, they’re going to say, ‘Why would I ever accept an offer from Purdue if there’s no guarantee that it’s actually an offer?’” he said. “Why would they ever feel comfortable accepting an offer from Purdue if they could go anywhere else?”
The University of Arizona is quietly shutting down its four microcampuses in China at the end of this semester, in response to a government report released earlier this month that criticizes branch campuses of U.S. institutions in China.
The report, by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the Committee on Education and the Workforce, said American college and university branch campuses in China can “facilitate technology transfer and pose national security risks.” It follows a similar report from a year ago that the new report said led to the closure of eight U.S. branch campuses in China.
The report, “Joint Institutes, Divided Loyalties,” highlights programs at 13 institutions deemed to be “high risk”—including one UA microcampus, the Arizona College of Technology at Hebei University of Technology, which awards students a B.S. in applied physics—and calls on the universities to sever those partnerships. (It also highlights a former partnership between UA and the Harbin Institute of Technology, a Chinese university affiliated with the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, but the university told Inside Higher Ed that partnership ended in 2023.) It’s unclear if any of the other 12 institutions have taken steps toward ending their programs at Chinese institutions.
Though the report only referenced one current UA microcampus, the university said it will close all four of its campuses in China.
“Acknowledging a congressional directive, the University of Arizona immediately terminated its China-based microcampus agreements. We have communicated directly with those affected and are working with enrolled students to help them continue their education,” a university spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed via email.
In total, 2,200 students, 36 faculty and four staff will be impacted by the closures, the spokesperson said. UA will provide funds to help employees relocate back to the U.S.; the university is also working to help students figure out next steps.
The university has a total of 18 microcampuses across the globe—programs that are housed at another university, in which students are taught by a mix of professors from UA and the partner institution and earn degrees from both institutions. The first such program was a bachelor’s program in law at Ocean University of China, in which students study both Chinese and U.S. law.
University officials told Inside Higher Ed in 2017 that the main goals of the microcampuses were to increase the university’s internationalization, provide students with affordable international pathways and earn revenue. They also said they hoped to eventually launch 25 microcampuses worldwide and reach 25,000 students.
In a post on X, the Committee on Education and the Workforce lauded UA’s move.
“@uarizona is making the right decision to end its China-based campus agreements. The CCP uses these programs to steal cutting-edge research for its own military buildup and promote communist ideology,” the post reads. “These programs are a direct threat to U.S. national security. Every American school should follow suit and end agreements with the CCP.”
‘Boom, We Shut Down’
Ken Smith, who leads the environmental science dual-degree program at UA’s microcampus at the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University in China’s Shaanxi province, said he was informed the program would be shuttering just a week ago.
Now in its fifth year, the program has been incredibly successful, Smith said. It had recently completed a yearlong federal and provincial review process and had received exceptional marks. Student outcomes were also strong, with many going on to top-tier graduate programs in the U.S. and Europe. Others were able to find careers in China, despite environmental science being a low-demand degree in the country, because they held degrees from a well-regarded U.S. university.
“Things were really going super well, and, boom, we shut down,” he said.
Rong Qian, who graduated in the program’s second class this past spring, told Inside Higher Ed he was “shocked” to hear the program was ending. He credited the UA professors for boosting his confidence and inspiring him to apply to graduate school in the U.K., where he is now studying at Imperial College London. He also noted that UA’s reputation has helped him and his classmates get into such good programs.
“I want to express my gratitude for those professors, especially those from [UA] … not only for their patience and time [with] me and my studies, but also for their encouragement, their support and their easygoing characteristics,” he said.
Smith said that current seniors in the program will still be able to graduate with their UA degrees, and he’s working with both UA and NWAFU to try to find a way for the third-year students to finish out their programs as well. However, he’s doubtful that newer students will be able to get a degree from UA; they could study online or come to the U.S. to finish, but he doesn’t think the former option will hold much appeal, while the latter is prohibitively expensive for most.
In the university’s email to students at the affected campuses sent earlier this week, which the university shared with Inside Higher Ed, Jenny Lee, dean of international education, wrote, “The U of A is committed to supporting you in the completion of your degree. We welcome you to join us at our main campus, in Tucson, Arizona, under an extended Study Arizona Program for up to 4 semesters (usually during the junior and senior years). The U of A will follow up soon with further guidance regarding Study Arizona and other possible options for your degree completion pathway.”
The closure of the program is not just a loss for UA, Smith said, but also for the nation as a whole.
“Living in China for the past four years and watching the U.S. news, I think a lot of political figures don’t know much about China … It’s a major modern economic power, a major military power,” he said. “I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that people in the U.S. and people in China understand each other. The kind of program I was involved with was a major educational success, but it was also a diplomatic success. It got the University of Arizona’s name out there. People wanted us there. They enjoyed learning about the American education system, and, unfortunately, now, that’s all over.”
Last year, FIRE launched the Free Speech Dispatch, a regular series covering new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.
Exhibit on authoritarianism censored by authoritarians
These days, repressive regimes are not content with just censoring their critics within their own borders. They also think they have the authority to determine what the rest of the world can see, hear, and say, which is how we wind up with news like the latest out of Thailand.
In late July, staff from China’s embassy visited the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Centre, along with local city officials to demand the censorship of the exhibition “Constellation of Complicity: Visualising the Global Machinery of Authoritarian Solidarity.” The gallery granted their demands and “removed pieces included Tibetan and Uyghur flags and postcards featuring Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as a postcard depicting links between China and Israel.” Words including “Hong Kong,” “Tibet,” and “Uyghur” were redacted. But even this was not enough for the Chinese embassy, whose staff returned to seek further redactions and “reminded the gallery to comply with the One China policy.”
In a statement, China’s foreign ministry said Thailand’s quick action to pressure the gallery to censor “shows that the promotion of the fallacies of ‘Tibetan independence,’ ‘East Turkestan Islamic Movement,’ and ‘Hong Kong independence’ has no market internationally and is unpopular.” What it actually shows, though, is that the Chinese government often throws its weight around on the global scale — and gets its way. Authoritarians in the Academy, my new book out this month, documents precisely how China has attempted to enforce this kind of censorship in global higher education.
The co-curators of the show, a married couple, have since fled Thailand, citing fears of retaliation by Thai authorities. They plan to seek asylum in the UK.
Palestine Action, internet speech, and the disastrous Online Safety Act rollout
As I explained in the last Dispatch, UK police are enacting a widespread crackdown on protests surrounding Palestine Action, a group banned under anti-terrorism legislation for damaging military planes in a protest. They’re not just arresting the group’s activists, but also any and all members of the public who express “support” for the group. That even includes a man who held up a sign of a political cartoon — one legally printed and available for sale in a Private Eye edition — that criticized the ban on Palestine Action, as well as an 80-year-old woman who was held for 27 hours for attending a protest.
Pro-Palestinian activists protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice as a judge hears a challenge to the proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act. (Pete Speller / Shutterstock.com)
These arrests were just drops in the bucket. Police arrested 532 protesters over one weekend this month, with all but 10 being arrested for words or signs “supporting” the banned group. “We have significant resources deployed to this operation,” Metropolitan Police posted on X. “It will take time but we will arrest anyone expressing support for Palestine Action.” Northern Ireland police also warned protesters that they could face prosecution.
That’s not even the only troubling free speech scandal from UK police these past weeks.
Carmen Lau, a Hong Kong activist now living in the UK and still a target of censorship from the Chinese government, says Thames Valley police asked her to sign an agreement that she would “cease any activity that is likely to put you at risk” and “avoid attending” protests to limit the likelihood of overseas repression. Then a magistrate court overturned a gag order placed on a firefighter, suggesting that police officers were attempting to enforce a “police state.” Police raided the home of Robert Moss, a firefighter who won a wrongful termination challenge in 2023, over Facebook comments he’d posted about Staffordshire’s fire department, and then told him he must not only stay silent about leadership of the fire department, but was also not permitted to even discuss the investigation itself.
Meanwhile, overzealous police are far from the only problems facing internet speech in the UK. Looming even larger is the Online Safety Act, now in effect and wreaking havoc on the UK’s internet users and the companies and platforms they engage with online. A useful collection from Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown shows how requirements that sites verify age for material “harmful to children” created some absurd fallout. Age-gated content has included an X post with the famous painting Saturn Devouring His Son, news about Ukraine and Gaza, and a thread about material being restricted under the act.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s challenge to certain regulations of the law failed this month, meaning many of its concerns about the act’s threats to the privacy of Wikipedia’s anonymous editors remain. But now, the message board site 4chan is pushing back, refusing to pay a fine already doled out for its noncompliance with the law. “American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an email,” the site’s lawyers wrote in a statement.
And to the UK citizens who understandably are uncomfortable with the burdensome and privacy-threatening process of age-verification just to use the internet, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle warns: Don’t look for a workaround. Bizarrely, Kyle claimed adults verifying their age “keeps a child safe,” as if an adult’s VPN use somehow poses a risk to some child, somewhere.
Two women sentenced to a decade for printing anti-Hugo Chávez shirts
In what certainly looks like a case of entrapment, two Venezuelan women who run a T-shirt printing business were recently sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of incitement to hatred, treason, and terrorism. They had accepted an order to print shirts featuring a photo of a protester destroying a statue of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The women were initially wary of taking the order — apparently, for good reason — but eventually accepted it from the insistent customer. While delivering the order, they were arrested by police, who also confiscated their equipment and inventory.
It’s not just in Venezuela. More censorship of political speech, protest, and journalism globally:
Ugandan authorities disappeared a student for weeks, and when public outcry finally forced them to explain his whereabouts, he “resurfaced” at a police station and was charged with “offensive communication” for intent “to ridicule, demean and incite hostility against the president” on TikTok.
Moroccan feminist activist Ibtissam Lachgar was arrested this month for posting a photo of herself wearing a shirt with the message, “Allah is Lesbian.” A public prosecutor cited her “offensive expressions towards God” and post “containing an offense to the Islamic religion.”
An Argentine legislator is being prosecuted for social media posts comparing Israel to the Nazi regime and calling it a “genocide state.” In 2020, Argentina adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. (FIRE has repeatedlyexpressedconcerns about codification of the IHRA definition and the likelihood it will censor or chill protected political speech.)
Belarusian authorities arrested dozens of activists and critics who took part in anti-government protests outside Belarus, in countries including the U.S. and UK.
Russian journalist Olga Komleva was sentenced to 12 years on “extremism” charges for her ties to the late Alexei Navalny and for spreading alleged fake news about the Ukraine invasion.
Cities across Canada have withdrawn permits for performances by Sean Feucht, a right-wing Christian singer and vocal supporter of President Trump, with one Montreal church facing a $2,500 fine for going forward with his concert. Montreal mayor Valérie Plante said, “This show runs counter to the values of inclusion, solidarity, and respect that are championed in Montreal. Freedom of expression is one of our fundamental values, but hateful and discriminatory speech is not acceptable in Montreal.”
Indonesian authorities are warning about the country’s regulations on flag desecration and respect for state symbols in response to a trend of citizens posting the Jolly Roger flag from the manga One Piece as a form of protest.
Six journalists, including four with Al Jazeera, were killed by an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli military accused one of the journalists, Anas al-Sharif, of being a Hamas cell leader, but the Committee to Protect Journalists says it “has made no claims that any of the other journalists were terrorists.”
A 34-year-old Thai security guard, originally sentenced to 15 years, will spend seven years in prison for Computer Crimes Act and lese-majeste violations for insulting the monarchy on social media.
A statement from the U.S. and a number of European nations accused Iranian intelligence authorities of widespread plots “to kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of our sovereignty.”
Chinese officials in eastern Zhejiang province issued warnings to performers about material on gender relations in response to a comedian’s viral set about her abusive husband. “Criticism is obviously fine, but it should be … constructive rather than revolve around gender opposition for the sake of being funny,” the warning read.
Book banning abroad
Arundhati Roy walking on village the road at Dwaraka, Kerala, India (Paulose NK / Shutterstock.com)
Under the criminal code of 2023, Indian authorities in Kashmir banned over two dozen books, including those by novelist Arundhati Roy and historian Sumantra Bose. The books allegedly promote “false narratives” and “secessionism.” Selling or even just owning these books can result in prison time.
This ban follows raids by Russian authorities of bookshops carrying titles from a list of 48 banned books, often those with LGBT themes.
Tech and the law
In enforcing its under-16 ban for social media, Australia reversed course and now will include YouTube in the group of platforms subject to the country’s age-gate ban.
French prosecutors are investigating Elon Musk’s X to see if the platform’s algorithm or data extraction policies violated the country’s laws.
Indian media outlets are disappearing past reporting amid “growing pressure from the Indian government to limit reporting critical of its policies.” One journalist told Index on Censorship that “404 journalism” is “becoming a new genre of journalism in India — stories that once were, but are now memory.”
A new law in Kyrgyzstan bans online porn to “protect moral and ethical values” in the country and “requires internet providers to block websites based on decisions by the ministry of culture”
Starting this autumn, Meta will no longer allow political or social issue ads on its apps within the EU, citing “significant operational challenges and legal uncertainties” from the forthcoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising rules.
Qatar approved an amendment to a cybercrime law that criminalizes publishing or circulating images or videos of people in public places without their consent, raising an outcry from press freedom advocates. Offenders can face up to one year in prison and/or a fine of up to 100,000 Qatari riyals (about $27,500).
More suppression in and outside Hong Kong, as Jimmy Lai’s trial nears its end
Readers of the Free Speech Dispatch are likely aware of how grim the situation for free expression in Hong Kong has become in the past few years, and there are no improvements in sight. It even reaches globally. Late last month, officials issued arrest warrants for overseas activists, including those based in the U.S., for alleged national security law violations.
In recent weeks within the city, eight of Hong Kong’s public universities signed an agreement announcing their intent to comply with Xi Jinping’s and mainland China’s governance, another conspicuous sign of academic freedom’s decline in the city. The Hong Kong International Film Festival cut a Taiwanese film from its schedule for failing to receive a “certificate of approval” from the city’s film censors. Then a teenager was arrested by national security police for writing “seditious” words in a public toilet. Police said the messages “provoked hatred, contempt or disaffection against” Hong Kong’s government.
And the trial of Jimmy Lai, the 77-year-old media tycoon and founder of dissenting newspaper Apple Daily, is now reaching its conclusion. Lai, who is in poor health, has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious material in Apple Daily.
In a troubling incident in an already disturbing case, a judge overseeing the case cited speech suppression in the U.S. to justify the prosecution of Lai. “People who were freely expressing their views on Palestine, they were arrested in England… [and] in the US,” Judge Esther Toh said in court last week. “It’s easy to say ‘la-di-da, it’s not illegal,’ but it’s not an absolute. Each country’s government has a different limit on freedom of expression.”
It should be a warning sign to Americans when our government’s actions are cited abroad in favor of, not against, censorship.
According to UCAS data released today to coincide with A-level results day, the number of international students accepted to UK institutions has risen to 52,640 – up 2.9% on 2024 when this figure stood at 51,170.
In just a year, the number of students from China accepted into university via the UCAS system went up a whopping 13% – with a total of 12,380 acceptances.
Meanwhile, 2025 has proven to be a year of success for domestic students in the UK – with 28.3% of all grades being A or A* for students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, according to the BBC.
Commenting on the numbers, UCAS chief executive Jo Saxton pointed out the huge achievement of this year’s students, whose education was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This year’s students were just thirteen when the pandemic hit, and their secondary schooling was turned upside down,” she said. “It’s great to see these applicants securing a university place in record numbers, seeking more education and investing in their futures. I am equally delighted to see how universities across the country have responded to their ambition.”
Undergraduate international students have also found success this year despite some universities prioritising domestic students due to a focus on financial stability.
According to a recent BBC article, Saxton explained that some UK universities were focussing on enrolling domestic undergraduates because of “uncertainty” around international students.
She also pointed out that some institutions could accept a greater number of domestic students this year even if they did not meet the exact conditions of their offer because offering places to UK students, as opposed to international students, was more likely to result in financial stability for the institution.
It’s great to see these applicants securing a university place in record numbers, seeking more education and investing in their futures Jo Saxton, UCAS
It comes amid a turbulent time for the international education sector in the UK – with upcoming compliance changes forcing some universities to stop recruiting for certain courses or from some countries rather than risk falling foul of tightened BCA metrics.
Many UK universities are currently facing financial difficulties, with around four in 10 universities currently at a deficit, according to a report by the Office for Students.
Of the courses chosen by students, the most popular in the UK this year were Engineering and Technology, up 12.5% from last year at 30,020 acceptances, Mathematics with 9,220 acceptances and Law with 27,150.
Once the world’s largest source of international students, China is no longer expected to fuel further student growth in the ‘big four’ destinations, according to predictions from Bonard Education shared in a recent webinar.
“China is no longer the easy goldmine it once was”, Bonard senior research consultant, Su Su, told attendees, highlighting the “visible trend” of Chinese students choosing alternative options closer to home.
The US has seen the most noticeable decline in Chinese enrolments, which broadly started across traditional destinations in 2020/21 and has continued in the US over the past five years, according to Bonard data.
Amid the downturn in Chinese mobility to the US, India surpassed China as America’s largest sending country in 2023 and new government data has shown this gap continue to widen.
Source: BONARD
The UK, however, is bucking the trend and has witnessed continued modest growth in Chinese students since 2020, though this cohort’s visa approval rate saw a 6% year-on-year decline in 2024.
Elsewhere, Canada experienced a 21% drop in Chinese visa approvals last year as the impact of the government’s study permit caps took hold, but university enrolment nevertheless remains stable, signalling the visa decline is concentrated in non-university level students.
Meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand saw a modest rebound in Chinese enrolment in 2023/24, with Su maintaining that China was still a “pivotal” source market despite fluctuations.
The waning dominance of China as a source market can partly be attributed to the state of the economy, with financial pressure becoming the most cited factor impacting study decisions, according to Bonard’s agent network.
“Middle class families are experiencing slower financial growth, and, as a result, are more economically conscious,” explained Su, fuelling a rise in shorter term English language courses as well as impacting the post-secondary sector.
What’s more, China’s urban unemployment rate among 16-24-year-olds jumped to an all-time high of 19% last year, pushing career outcomes up the priority list for students and their families, said Su.
Given the financial context, “families are determined to make every RMB count”, said Su, with more affordable Asian destinations becoming increasingly attractive in China.
The PIE News has previously reported on the rise of intra-Asian mobility, with countries in the region increasingly seeing internationalisation as critical to sustaining economic growth, plugging workforce gaps and driving innovation.
In particular, the National Universities of Singapore and Hong Kong were highlighted as hitting the sweet spot by offering highly regarded international degrees at a lower price than traditional destinations – catering to families who still value prestige and the merits of an international education, but who are shopping “smarter”.
Elsewhere, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia are on the rise, with the Japanese government pursuing an ambitious goal of attracting 400,000 international students by 2033 and Malaysia streamlining international admissions through a new centralised system.
But it’s not just affordability that is changing the landscape: perceived policy volatility “can shape perspective just as much as the price”, said Su, highlighting the damaging impact of Donald Trump’s erratic policy announcements in the US.
“Recent headlines in the US are raising serious concerns among families, whether or not the policies are enacted,” Su warned.
By comparison, despite some restrictions in the UK: “It feels more stable… agencies are describing the UK as the safest bet due to its clear communication of policies,” attendees heard.
That being said, political environments tend to have a temporary impact on student decision-making, with agencies and institutions advised that now is the time to “adapt and rethink” rather than turning away from the Chinese market.
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Dive Brief:
A Republican-led House committee is pushing seven research universities to cut ties with a scholarship programsponsored by the Chinese government.
In four-page letters Tuesday, Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, decried the China Scholarship Councilas “one of the nefarious mechanisms” the Chinese government uses to advance its technologies and urged each college involved with the council to “reconsider its participation.”
Moolenaarfurther set a July 22 deadline for college leaders to provide his committee with extensive documentation on their institutions’ work with the council from May 2020 to May 2025.
Dive Insight:
The China Scholarship Council, a program funded by the Chinese Communist Party, partners with colleges in other countries and sponsors both Chinese students studying abroad and international students studying at Chinese universities.
Participating Chinese students must return to China after graduating and work for at least two years.
In Moolenaar’s letters to college officials Tuesday, he announced that the House committee on the Chinese government is conducting a “systematic review” of “the China Scholarship Council’s infiltration of U.S. colleges.”
“CSC purports to be a joint scholarship program between U.S. and Chinese institutions,” he said. “However, in reality it is a CCP-managed technology transfer effort that exploits U.S. institutions and directly supports China’s military and scientific growth.”
About 7% of Chinese citizens studying abroad — some 65,000 students — are sponsored by the China Scholarship Council,according to a 2020 analysis by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
A relatively small minority of them end up in the U.S. In 2024, the council announced plans to sponsor up to 240 students to study at seven U.S. colleges this year, the South China Morning Post reported.
The seven participating institutions, all of which received a letter from Moolenaar on Tuesday, are Dartmouth College, Temple University, the University of Tennessee,the University of Notre Dame andthree campuses in the University of California system — Davis, Irvine and Riverside.
The number of sponsored students and the length of their studies in the U.S. vary by college. For example, the University of California, Davis co-sponsors up to 10 Ph.D. candidates, while Temple co-sponsors up to 60 graduate students, according to Moolenaar’s letters.
However, a Dartmouth spokesperson said the college cut ties with China Scholarship Council well before receiving Moolenaar’s letter, making the decision last academic year,per the college’s student newspaper.The spokesperson told the publication that the college’s partnership with the council led to the enrollment of fewer than 10 participants over the last decade.
Likewise, the University of Notre Dame this week told The Associated Press that it began to cut ties with the council earlier this year.
Moolenaar noted that all the institutions rely on “significant federal funding” for their research, citing research funding levels from years before Trump retook office. And China has “a history of exploiting the openness of the American higher education and research system to enhance its technological competitiveness and military capabilities,” he said.
A 2020 proclamation from President Donald Trump, made during his first term, restricted certain Chinese researchers and graduate students from gaining visas to study in the U.S.The goal, Trump wrote at the time, was to prevent Chinese nationals from attempting to “acquire and divert foreign technologies.”
Several months after Trump issued the proclamation, the University of North Texas cut off ties with the China Scholarship Council, abruptly forcing more than a dozen Chinese researchers participating in the program to leave the country.
Former President Joe Biden continued to enforce the proclamation during his term.
“It is imperative to assess how the UCD-CSC joint scholarship program — explicitly designed to develop [Chinese] talent in cutting edge technology at graduate levels — serves U.S. interests,” Moolenaar said in his letter to the chancellor of the University of California, Davis. He echoed the line in his letters to the heads of the other six colleges.
Among his document requests, Moolenaar called for colleges to list if any Chinese students participating in the program switched to a STEM major after initially declaring a non-STEM major and if any participating students worked on federally funded research. Officials should also justify how supporting the development of participating students advances U.S. interests, he said.
President Trump said that Chinese international students would be welcome in the U.S. in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday announcing the terms of a pending trade agreement with China.
In exchange for shipments of rare earth metals, the U.S. “WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO, INCLUDING CHINESE STUDENTS USING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!),” Trump posted (capital letters his).
The about-face comes less than two weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised to “aggressively revoke” Chinese students’ visas and implement a much stricter review process for nonimmigrant visa applications from the country.
That announcement, an escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to decrease the number of foreign students at American universities, threw higher education into a panic. International enrollment has become a financial lifeline for many institutions, and Chinese students make up nearly a quarter of all international students in the U.S.—around 280,000 in 2023–24, according to the Institute of International Education, more than students from any other country. They make up 16 percent of graduate STEM programs and 2 percent of undergraduate programs.
Rubio’s visa-revocation announcement also led to distress among Chinese families, whose hopes of sending their children to a prestigious American university seemed to be fading. In May, the Chinese foreign minister called the policy “politically discriminatory” and “irrational.”
House Republicans passed — by one vote — a massive spending bill backed by President Donald Trump with heavy implications for higher education.Among other proposals, it would raise and expand the endowment tax, introduce a risk-sharing program that would put colleges on the hook for unpaid student debt, nix subsidized loans and narrow eligibility for Pell Grants. Many expect the Senate to make changes to the bill.
Number of the week
7
That’s how many regional branch campuses Pennsylvania State University is set to close after a 25-8 vote by its trustee board. The plan will pare down the university’s commonwealth campuses to 13 to cope with demographic declines and budget pressure. Detractors said the decision was made too hastily, ignored some campuses’ recent progress and could hurt the state’s rural areas.
Trump administration updates:
The Trump administration aims to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students” while ramping up scrutiny and changing criteria for student visa applications from China and Hong Kong, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday.With nearly 278,000 students from China studying in the U.S. during the 2023-24 academic year, the move could have a steep impact on U.S. colleges.
Sixteen states sued the National Science Foundation over the agency’s 15% cap on indirect research costs and its mass termination of grants related to diversity, equity and other topics. The states’ colleges “will not be able to maintain essential research infrastructure and will be forced to significantly scale back or halt research, abandon numerous projects, and lay off staff,” plaintiffs said in their complaint.
The Trump administration plans to cut Harvard University’s remaining federal contracts, amounting to about $100 million. An official with the U.S. General Services Administration cited what he alleged was “Harvard’s lack of commitment to nondiscrimination and our national values and priorities.” The salvo is the latest in the federal government’s escalating battle with the Ivy League institution.
Texas legislators look to tighten control of colleges:
The Texas House approved a bill that would give the state’s regents — who are appointed by the governor — the power to recommend required courses at public colleges and to reject courses deemed too biased or ideological. Regents would also gain approval authority over the hiring of administrators.
Another bill approved by the House would limit where and how students can protest on campuses. The Texas House and Senate are working to resolve their differences over the bill, according to The Texas Tribune.
Quote of the week:
“There’s a bit of anxiousness among accreditors and institutions and state legislators because of the uncertainty. Is it that they are intentionally being vague or general until they can work out all of the nuances of the policies that they want to implement? I can tell you, less is not more in this situation.”
That’s Cynthia Jackson Hammond, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, on the effects of Trump’s executive order on college accreditation.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Picture: Alex Wroblewski
The future of Australians studying at American universities is in limbo after the Trump administration ordered a pause on new student visa approvals and is actively cancelling Chinese student visas.
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Dive Brief:
Eastern Michigan Universityis ending engineering teaching partnerships with two Chinese universities after a pair of prominent Republican lawmakers raised national security concerns.
The university announced Wednesday it is terminating its partnership withGuangxi University and Beibu Gulf University. Eastern Michigan President James Smithsaid the university is working with Beibu Gulf to ensure affected students can complete their studies elsewhere.The Guangxi partnership did not enroll any students.
The move comes as Republican lawmakers increasingly raise research theft concerns about colleges’ partnerships with Chinese universities. The Trump administration is also moving to “aggressively revoke” the visas of international students from China, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week.
Dive Insight:
In February, two high-profile lawmakers from Michigan — Rep. Tim Walberg, the chair of the House’s education committee, and Rep. John Moolenaar, the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party — called on Eastern Michigan and two other universities in their state to end their partnerships with Chinese colleges.
“The university’s [People’s Republic of China] collaborations jeopardize the integrity of U.S. research, risk the exploitation of sensitive technologies, and undermine taxpayer investments intended to strengthen America’s technological and defense capabilities,” the letter stated.
Shortly afterward, Oakland University said it would end its partnerships with three Chinese universities. The University of Detroit Mercy, the third institution that received a letter in February, is likewise ending its teaching partnerships with Chinese universities.
University of Detroit MercyPresident Donald Taylorsaid in a Friday statement that the institution is working to ensure students can finish their studies.He also noted that the partnerships have not included any research or technology transfer.
“They are solely for undergraduate teaching programs only with course content that is available publicly,” Taylor said.
In Eastern Michigan’s Wednesday announcement, Smith stressed that both partnerships had been exclusively focused on teaching and did not involve research or the transfer of technology. He added that the programs did not encompass cybersecurity teaching.
“The course content for all offered classes is widely available in the public domain,” Smith said.
In October, Moolenaar also urged theUniversity of Michiganto end its two-decade partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong Universityon a joint institute.Moolenaar alleged the partnership had helped the Chinese government advance their defense technologies, from rocket fuel research to improving imaging to detect flaws in military equipment.
The University of Michigan announced in January it would end academic collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong and ensure students enrolled in the joint institute’s programs would be able to complete their degrees.
Last year, the Georgia Institute of Technology also announced it would pull out of a partnership that established an overseas campus in China, while the University of California, Berkeley recently severed ties with Tsinghua University following a House report raising concerns with colleges’ partnerships with Chinese institutions.
The Trump administration recently opened an investigation into UC Berkeley over its partnership with Tsinghua University,alleging that it failed to properly report its foreign gifts and contracts.
Earlier this month, two House committees set their sights on Harvard University’s ties with China, arguing that some of its partnerships “raise serious national security and ethnical concerns.” Lawmakers demanded the Ivy League institution hand over internal documents related to its partnerships with China and certain other countries by June 2.
The Trump administration is also planning a crackdown on international students from China, citing national security concerns. Rubio said Wednesday that the federal government will revoke visas from Chinese students “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” though he didn’t specify what those disciplines would be.
