There are currently only about 350 Americans studying in China, down from 15,000 a decade ago. Meanwhile, there are over 300,000 Chinese nationals studying in the U.S. The mismatch is due to growing mistrust in the U.S. of China’s government, as well as the impact of China’s "zero-COVID" strategy on foreign travel – and it has consequences for the future.

"It just seems like China is knowing much more about the rest of the world, but the U.S. is not getting to know much more about what’s going on outside of the states," said one student at New York University’s Shanghai campus. Hear from her and others in this piece from Janis Mackey Freyer and Jennifer Jett for NBC. (June 2023)

US News & World Report just released an updated guide to the process. It describes the types of visas, the typical processing time and what to bring to your visa interview. Read the explainer from Anayat Durrani. (June 2023)

Women make up 58% of American undergraduates, and many colleges are struggling to attract male applicants and get them to graduate on time. The gender gap is sharpest among minorities, rural communities and low-income students. Many men struggle to ask for help and believe they “do not belong” in college. Andrew Smith has more for VOA Learning English, based on reporting by Matt Krupnick of the Hechinger Report. (June 2023)

Jen Kebea, president of Campus Philly, a nonprofit focused on recruitment, engagement and retention of college talent in the Greater Philadelphia area, discussed a 2019 study with Technical.ly, an online news site for technologists and entrepreneurs.

Campus Philly completed a retention data study in 2019 that found the region was retaining 54% of its college students, Kebeba told Technical.ly. However, Kebaba said that within the pool of STEM graduates, some are highly retained, such as those in biology and other life sciences-related subjects; others, such as those in computer science and information technology majors, are less likely to stay in the area.

The more recent report also showed a high number of international students coming to the region to study computer science, Kebea told Technical.ly. Some factors that may draw more international students to Philadelphia, include the variety in higher learning institutions, from community college to the Ivy League, as well as a lower cost of living compared to other U.S. cities, she said.

Anca Scarlat from Romania and Vivek Khimani from India, both computer science majors graduating from Drexel this month, have jobs already lined up, according to the Technical.ly article. Scarlat will work for software engineer at Viasat in San Diego, while Khimani is going to be a software engineer at San Francisco-based security startup Semgrep, the report said.

The story in Technical.ly is written by Sarah Huffman. (June 2023)

Three international music students from Alabama State University traveled to Florida to attend the Southeast Horn Workshop (SEHW) at the University of Central Florida, according to the Alabama State University website. The three students -- seniors Vitalis Wagome and Wanja Nganga and freshman Shaka Marko Lwaki, all from Nairobi, Kenya – attended the conference, billed as one of the largest regional conferences in the country for French horn players, the website said. (June 2023)

In a recent survey of 12th-graders, about 40% said the COVID-19 pandemic made them rethink their choice of career or undergraduate degree, and about 10% said it made them doubt the value of college at all. Nirvi Shah of USA Today unpacks the findings. (June 2023)

The Keystone Education Group, based in Oslo, Norway, surveyed 23,800 prospective international students representing more than 195 countries and found that students are evolving in the way they approach decisions about study abroad. (June 2023)

Several highlights from the group’s 2023 State of Student Recruitment Report conducted from January-April 2023 include:

• A growing number of students are researching study abroad options less than six months before applying.
• Three-quarters of students are worried about the safety of studying abroad, particularly when it comes to racial discrimination.
• Among respondents, 52% were African students and 18% were Asian students.

Indian Eagle magazine takes a look at the U.S. student visa interview process, offering tips and success strategies.

Among them: organize your documents, be honest and concise, and demonstrate strong ties to your home country. Also: don't be nervous or defensive, and don't memorize responses.

Read the full story here. (June 2023)

The expiration of COVID-19 restrictions means that Seattle Colleges’ international students, who'd been permitted to take fully online classes from either their home countries or their U.S. residences, have to go back to the classroom.

And that, the student newspaper notes, is a problem. "This might leave international students in hot water because some classes are still only offered online, so they cannot enroll in classes they are required to take for their programs of study," The Seattle Collegian reports.

Seattle Colleges is a multicollege district serving the city of Seattle and surrounding communities in the U.S. state of Washington. It has three college campuses and five specialty training centers. (June 2023)

After the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, tens of thousands of girls were banned from attending school beyond sixth grade. Many found a way to continue their studies through informal tutoring centers, but those too have come under increased scrutiny as the government continues to crack down on women and girls’ access to education, according to The Hechinger Report.

As a group of girls in Kabul have been grappling with all this, they’ve formed a connection with some other teens half a world away in California. The two sets of students, through meetings on Zoom talking about their lives and goals, formed the Flowers for the Future club, now a branch of the Eileen Murphy Foundation, according to the report.

In this op-ed, the report includes two essays from members of the club: Mahsa Kosha in Afghanistan and Emily Khossaravi in California. (June 2023)

Two staff psychologists – one who grew up in South Korea and one in Kenya – with Virginia Commonwealth University’s counseling services specialize in intercultural issues, VCU News reports.

Mijin Kim and Abey Muthoni Wachira draw on personal experience in their work and have highlighted a range of issues that international students can face as part of the culture shock of living and studying in a host country, whose norms and values can vary from their native lands, the online news site reports. (June 2023)

Nearly 530 students from 27 countries will be spending the summer working and traveling in the U.S. state of Wisconsin thanks to a program known as the J-1 Student Visa. The program provides workers from area businesses, placing most of them in eight municipalities in Door County.

The Door County Daily News has the story. (June 2023)

The Graduate Records Exam, or GRE, is now less than two hours long and has no writing section. Scores will also be released faster. The changes come as many schools are making the test optional, in what the academic journal Science dubbed “GRExit.” Stephanie Saul of The New York Times describes the new format, and how admissions are changing as the pandemic eases and the Supreme Court reconsiders affirmative action. (June 2023)

After colleges went online during the pandemic, professors reported “stunning levels of student disengagement.” Now, many schools are walking back those policies and no longer offer coursework online. While this is welcome for many students, others with disabilities and chronic illnesses argue that Zoom is the only safe way for them to attend. Julian Roberts-Grmela of the Chronicle of Higher Education has more. (June 2023)

Imagine if your first-year biology class took place at an “Alien Zoo,” where you dissect animals and identify medical conditions. This is already happening at Arizona State University, where thousands of students pair their real-life lecture courses with virtual labs. Students in the virtual reality course were 1.7 times more likely to earn an A than those in the regular one, reports Olivia Sanchez of The Hechinger Report. (June 2023)