Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.LINCOLN — Chinese international student Wen Guo finished the first week of her accounting class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with no clue what her instructor said.
She came to UNL as an exchange student with about 30 others from China's Xi'an Jiaotong University. Her parents hoped it would broaden her perspective. But her transition from classrooms full of Mandarin-speakers to lectures in English was rocky. Wen's grades suffered.
"In China, I'm not studying very hard," the senior finance major said, "but here, I have to, because I have to spend two hours a day to translate a lot of words that I didn't know before."
Adjustments like Wen's are becoming more common at American universities, and administrators at UNL, Iowa State University and the University of Iowa see surging Chinese student populations.
The number of Chinese international students studying in the United States during the last school year jumped 23.5 percent to 157,558 — up roughly 30,000 from the 2009-2010 academic year, according to Institute of International Education data.
Historically, American universities educated a steady stream of graduate students from China but had few undergraduates. Over the past five years, however, undergraduate numbers have jumped.
UNL's Chinese undergraduate population has gone from 24 to 415 over the past five years. Last fall, a total of 809 Chinese students enrolled in UNL undergraduate and graduate programs — nearly three times more than attended in the fall of 2006, according to university data.
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Iowa State's Chinese undergraduate enrollment jumped over the same period to 1,212 from 61. The University of Iowa enrolled more than 1,200 Chinese undergraduates, five years after hosting a total of 537 Chinese undergraduate and graduate students.
Driving that growth is a perfect storm of economics, politics, education and perception.
Too little space in China's public colleges, the country's economic rise and its one-child policy have spurred the Chinese desire to study abroad, several China experts said.
The status afforded to U.S. college degrees also attracts many Chinese, though the costs are higher and financial aid is not always available.
Wen earned a scholarship from her Chinese university that covers almost half of the annual $20,000 cost of nonresident tuition at UNL. Nebraska residents pay about $7,000.
Wen said students like her — and even those without scholarships — believe an American education is worth the price.
"In China, better education is the shortcut for class improvement," UNL economist Benjamin Kim explained.
Firms there equate an education abroad with higher fluency in English and the ability to network globally, he said.
The attraction is mutual.
American universities have been recruiting Chinese and other international students more aggressively, in no small part to buttress the bottom line.
From university administrators' perspectives, the increase in students from abroad diversifies the student body, boosts enrollment and brings in more money during tight economic times.
In 2009, UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman told USA Today that international students could become a significant source of university revenue. But Perlman told The World-Herald that the university would pursue international students only as long as their numbers wouldn't crowd out qualified Nebraskans.
"China has been a particularly good source for students because of their developing middle class, which has an interest and the means to send their children to the U.S. for college," he said.
UNL and the University of Nebraska at Omaha have goals to increase overall enrollment to 30,000 and 20,000, respectively. Reaching those goals depends largely on boosting out-of-state and international student enrollment, as the number of Nebraska's high school graduates stays steady or declines.
At Midlands colleges, the competition for international students is fierce, said Tom Gouttierre, dean of International Studies and Programs at UNO. But current ties to Chinese universities should aid future recruiting efforts, he said.
UNO, UNL, the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Creighton University have made efforts to establish and nurture relationships with universities in China.
UNL recently hired an international recruiting counselor, who attends college and career fairs and visits high schools in countries such as China, Brazil and Turkey.
Amber Hunter, UNL's admissions director, said she hopes the new position will enhance the university's international recruiting efforts.
Kim said U.S. universities will have plenty of Chinese students to pursue because he doesn't see China's economy slowing over the next 70 to 80 years.
Maorong Jiang, an assistant professor of political science at Creighton, noted the recent visit to Iowa of a man many expect to be China's next leader.
Part of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's visit involved thanking the family with whom he stayed while on a study tour in 1985. Jiang said the visit should remind Chinese international students of their cultural tradition not to take the people who help them for granted.
"They should never forget those who helped them in the past," he said.
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