Chinese students study ‘abroad’ in China this fall semester
When Lily Huang received an offer from Connell university, the 18-year-old from Shanghai thought she was about to begin a new life as a freshman studying a fiber science major at her dream school.
However, when classes started in September, she didn’t travel to the US but instead registered as an exchange student at the International Campus, Zhejiang University (ZJU) together with more than 300 students who’ve already enrolled at US colleges but were either unable or unwilling to travel to the US amid rising numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and visa restrictions.
The US has now surpassed 6.62 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 196,000 deaths as of Thursday.
The International Campus, Zhejiang University in Haining, East China’s Zhejiang Province has an ongoing collaboration program with other world-class universities and is one of the universities in China that will accommodate thousands of local students looking to continue their studies at home.
So far, more than 320 undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Campus (UIUC) as well as more than 30 freshmen undergraduates from Cornell University have started taking courses at the International Campus, Zhejiang University as exchange students.
Over 120 kilometers away from Haining, in Kunshan, East China’s Jiangsu Province, 120 Duke students — roughly 50 undergraduates and 70 graduate students — have been enrolled at Duke Kunshan this fall where they will participate in at least one in-person class, with the option of attending remote courses offered at Duke.
Other universities, including NYU, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), Syracuse University and the University of Pittsburgh have reportedly set up similar programs for Chinese students.
As one of the measures employed to deal with the difficulty of studying abroad during the pandemic, the Ministry of Education announced on Wednesday that it would allow Chinese-foreign cooperative education institutions to enroll students who have been admitted to foreign universities but blocked from studying abroad due to the coronavirus pandemic as well as restrictions on entry, visas and flights.
Most of the students said they were unable to travel to the US due to delayed visa processing. Huang said she had applied for her student visa at the Consulate General of the United States in Shenyang, Northeast China’s Liaoning Province in July but the application was canceled without giving specific reasons.
“It is difficult for us to obtain visas. There is no way for us [Chinese students] to go to the US to study,” Huang said.
Huang was not alone.
The latest statistics from US authorities showed that only 145 US student visas (F-1) were issued to Chinese mainland residents in July this year. In contrast, it approved more than 20,000 visas for mainland students last July.
