The number of foreign student applications is falling almost everywhere – except that Britain is the only western country where the number of Chinese students continues to grow. CGTN’s Michael Voss speaks to Chinese students in London.
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00:00Sinyong Mo is from Hainan and has been studying in the UK for the past five years.
00:07He's just started a master's degree in robotics and artificial intelligence at University College London.
00:15There are more foreign students than British on his course, with Chinese nationals the largest group.
00:22So what's the attraction?
00:24I think in the UK they have a short degree programme, so the undergrad only takes three years,
00:32and master's only one year if you do full-time master's.
00:35However, in China we have to do four years for our undergrad,
00:39and then it used to be two years for master's, but now we're doing three years.
00:44I like the more friendly education system, and I think that in the UK,
00:49the teachers and students, we treat each other more like friends.
00:55There's long been a strong demand to study in English-speaking countries with prestigious universities.
01:01One appeal of the UK is that graduate students can live and work here for two years after graduating.
01:08This at a time when the United States is cracking down on Chinese student visas.
01:14The UK is the only Western country where the number of Chinese students has increased in recent years,
01:20with more than 154,000 students based in the UK in the past academic year.
01:27The most recent figures from the British Council suggest that in 2021,
01:32Chinese students spent around $7 billion on tuition and expenses.
01:38Overseas students are a lifeline for UK universities,
01:42where domestic tuition fees have been frozen at around $12,000 since 2016,
01:48while international students pay more than four times as much.
01:53These students are just one month into their master's programme, but already making future plans.
02:00I'm thinking to work for a few years here to try to learn new things,
02:07and then I feel like there's no more I can learn,
02:11and maybe eventually I'll go back to my home place, Hainan.
02:17I may come back to China, and I'm very interested in cars, vehicles,
02:26and I want to apply my knowledge learned here to build more advanced cars.
02:32Despite recent strains in relations between the UK and China,
02:36universities here are hoping that this will not deter future applications
02:41for what's become an important financial lifeline for Britain's academic institutions.
02:48Michael Voss, CGTN.