The Chinese Market for US Higher Ed

Excellent overview of Chinese student demand for US universities, from Justin Fox of BloombergView.  Key quote: "when it comes to American colleges and universities, I really don’t know how many of them could survive without foreign students in general and Chinese students in particular. The flow of money from foreign students has become so big that it even has some impact on the overall economy".  

The Chinese demand for US higher education is certainly understandable in light of such observations as this:

Ms. Wang wound up enrolled at Yangzhou University, where she sat through mandatory classes on Marxist and military theory, the latter which involved studying the various components of machine guns. “It felt like they really wanted you to know how strong the country was,” she said. Students didn’t pay much attention, she said, relying on notes from upperclassmen to cram for tests.

While the number and kind of general education requirements are a perennial topic of debate in American higher education, it's safe to say that machine gun assembly is relatively rare as a required course in U.S. universities.