Duke faces obstacles in attracting Chinese students

Xing Zong had a clear goal when he lived in China.

Zong, a second-year physics graduate student at Duke, wanted to attend school in the United States where he could explore a new culture and gain an expansive global perspective.

"I spent one month in Seattle, and that really broadened my horizons," he said. "I thought I should definitely go back for higher education."

Zong is only one of the thousands of students from China who come to the U.S. with similar ambitions.

Last year, more than 200 graduate and undergraduates from China matriculated to the University, according to statistics from the International House at Duke.

But despite the number of students from China, many citizens of the Asian giant are unfamiliar with Duke. "When I was in China, the most famous U.S. universities I heard about were Harvard and Stanford," Zong said. "I did not hear too much about Duke."

Administrators are currently exploring ways to develop a "China strategy" that outlines specific steps to improve Duke's reputation in China.

Gilbert Merkx, vice provost for international affairs, said raising the University's profile will involve preparing more information about Duke in the Chinese language, sending representatives to more Chinese recruitment fairs and finding ways to attract better media coverage.

Including undergraduate and graduate students, international matriculation from China has grown from 15 in Fall 1983 to a record high of 345 in Fall 2003.

Although Chinese students still make up the greatest percentage of international students at Duke, the total number has been generally declining over the past five years for a variety of reasons, officials said.

Duke graduate schools received approximately 2,000 Chinese applications in 2003. In 2004 the applications declined to only 967.

University officials primarily cite visa constraints as the cause for the drop. Also, schools in more nations are offering international studies programs to Chinese students, increasing competition for U.S. universities.

"That was a national phenomenon that had to do with visa issues and general feeling of the welcoming of this country [of] internationals," said Lewis Siegel, dean of the graduate school.

He added that the major drop, which occurred sometime before the Class of 2004 arrived, also occurred when the State Department was struggling to handle new visa regulations.

Zong, who applied for his visa in 2003, said he waited a month while his visa background was checked. "I was very calm during that period. I believed I was not a terrorist so I was not worried," he said. "But my father lost 15 pounds during that month."

 

Denied access

One setback in the University's recent push for stronger Duke-China relations came in 2003, when the Chinese government blocked access to Duke's website.

Although administrators are still unable to pinpoint the causes for the block or its removal in January 2004, some see it as a symbol of the sometimes challenging relationship with the Asian country.

"We don't know for sure why it got blocked, and we also don't know how it got unblocked," Merkx explained in a January 2004 interview.

Some administrators said the immediate result of the block was a drop in the number of applications from Chinese students.

For example, as of Jan. 5, 2004, the Graduate School had received 900 applications from China for the upcoming fall semester-a 53-percent decrease from the 1,934 applications it received by the same day in 2003. Because many international students cannot travel to the U.S. to visit Duke, they depend on the Internet as a primary means of learning about the University.

Other officials dispute if the block was to blame for the decrease of applications.

"We have no evidence that it seriously impacted applications to Duke from Chinese students, since the large drop in applicants that year was about the same as at other institutions that did not experience the block," Siegel said. He added that applications from China in 2005 did increase and still appear to be recovering.

"I don't know what we might do if such a block occurs again other than to work with the national organization of graduate schools in D.C. to get the State Department to work on our behalf to get it lifted," Siegel said.

 

Other roadblocks

Although officials have been working to make the University more accessible to students in China, several obstacles remain.

"In the past, private universities have not attracted very many undergraduate students from China," said Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions. "I expect that that will change over the next five to 10 years."

In recent years, Duke has attempted to reach out more through university fairs. It sends several Chinese faculty, who have ties to the country, to market Duke to students at their home schools, Siegel said.

The Office of Undergraduate Admissions sent representatives to mainland China to high schools in Beijing and Shanghai in April 2004.

"We've only had international financial aid available in the last four years," said Phyllis Supple, an undergraduate admissions officer. "We've only been recruiting internationally in a real planned way since 1991."

Chinese students often battle financial problems in order to come to the U.S. Many require some sort of financial aid package to attend the University.

Officials said the University meets the full demonstrated financial need of its students once they are accepted to Duke.

Tong Ren, a third-year electrical engineering graduate student from China, said many of her peers' decisions to come to the U.S. depend on financial costs that are beyond Duke's scope.

"I have a friend who decided not to come to the U.S. because her family was poor," Ren said. "They could not even support her $100 visa application fee."