I have taught economics in large American universities for more than 40 years. I often taught very large classes and thus probably encountered several thousand Chinese students over the years. Some of the nicest students I have ever known were Chinese and so were some of the least nice.
The worrisome thing that I address here is that the proportions in these two categories in American universities appear to me to have changed over time, at least among the undergraduate population. Those super-polite Chinese students who came to campuses in the early days of the 1980s now seem to be a shrinking part of the ever-enlarging pool of Chinese undergraduates populating many college campuses.
Historians and sociologists can probably produce various explanations for this phenomenon—the remarkable economic success of China in recent years that enhances an aggressive ethnocentric and Chinese Communist Party-aligned attitude among Chinese, the outcomes of continuing political struggles that reward the children of top (and often corrupt) cadres of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and many other possible reasons. Here I will just describe what I witnessed in my experiences with undergraduate Chinese students and how I think it may be affecting some aspects of American higher education.
The early Chinese students were always very careful to obey all rules and regulations, lest they stepped out of line and jeopardized their standing as an international student or unwittingly offended some local. As that changed for many, one of the first places it showed up was in cheating. Cheating has increased across all groups in U.S. higher education, but it became a particular problem with the Chinese students in my classes and has been discussed elsewhere as a trend in colleges nationally (The Wall Street Journal in 2015 and 2016).
In the past decade of my active teaching, almost all of my cheating cases involved Chinese students. Chinese students even confided in me that they were very surprised to come to America and see how lax the monitoring of students was during exams. They said that in China, all students took exams under TV monitors, while in the United States, we relied on the casual roaming around of a few instructors or TAs to keep cheating in check.
Some Chinese undergraduates caught red-handed even displayed a privileged attitude that put them above “the law,” as is common with those who make it up the ranks of the CCP. With Confucius and Daoist Lao Zi long in the rearview mirror, it appeared that our “honor system” meant little to these young Chinese who have increasingly been raised to reject as superstition anything that smacks of religion, together with the moral values that usually accompany religious thought.
Eventually, stories surfaced about the Chinese students breaking other rules. To get around the requirement for freshmen to live in dorms, they would sign the dorm contract, pay the room and board, and then move out to a luxury apartment off campus. They sometimes got a parking space for their very expensive sports cars in garages reserved for faculty and staff by paying an eligible staff member to let them register the car under that person’s ID.
Worse yet were the politically motivated demands that the CCP-backed Chinese Student and Scholar Association began to make at some universities. At my university, this group tried to interrupt the normal activities of the Falun Gong and Taiwanese student groups, demanding that their access to university email be eliminated and that their right to display art in a library gallery be denied. On one occasion when I was marching in our homecoming parade with the Falun Gong student group for which I served as faculty advisor, a male Chinese student approached me, came within three inches of my face, and said “[expletive] you!”
I believe that these unfortunate behaviors by an increasing number of Chinese undergraduates have been widely recognized for some time, but everyone looked the other way because the Chinese paid full freight, and universities wanted their money. I was once asked by an administrator to stop signing American students into the scarce spots in one of my classes because those seats were being “reserved” for incoming Chinese. And I will never forget the American student in good standing who cried in my office because she could not get into the accounting program that was swamped with Chinese, while her accountant father was expecting her to join his business.
Higher education is one of the great success stories of American industry. By the latter half of the 20th century, every state had outstanding institutions that served the populations that had contributed to that greatness through their dedicated service, thoughtful public policy, and taxes. When any student, be they American or Chinese, pays the fees to attend a college, those fees cover a very small part of the human and financial resources that have over many years gone into making that college a place of true higher learning.
Part of the greatness of these institutions lies in the values—including moral and spiritual values—that their founders and sustainers incorporated into every aspect of the education they provide. It is no accident that six of the eight colleges in the Ivy League, considered by many to be the pinnacle of American higher education, were founded by religiously affiliated groups. To continue that tradition of greatness, we should insist that all our students act honestly, obey the rules, and treat all campus members respectfully, no matter how much money they may bring to the coffers.
When the United States opened its doors to the Chinese, the young people who began to trickle into our campuses would tell me that they had grandparents who still quoted Confucius to them or burned incense to the Buddha. They were sweet, lovely people who respected the American sense of morality and the code of ethics it brought to the educational process. Granny has long passed away, and the Chinese who come today know English better thanks to the internet, but they quote the wisdom of Confucius less well, if indeed they know of Confucian wisdom at all. Their CCP upbringing and attitude are often very apparent.
Critics of the current move to keep Chinese students out of American campuses usually focus on the harm that will be done to college budgets or the loss of talent if Chinese are denied admission, while supporters usually focus on spying and the theft of technology. I would say that the focus in these debates should actually be on the harm that might be done to ethics in higher education if the current pool of CCP-indoctrinated Chinese continues to pour into our colleges and universities.
Would that we could return to those innocent times when the sweet, shy Chinese with minds full of Confucius’s sayings sat in our classrooms and fit well with our own ethical understandings. I am sure many are still there. But as with all problematic situations like this, the guilty will inevitably inflict a penalty on the guiltless.