Chinese students such as Zhang help make higher education of international students a $30 billion-a-year American business. Nearly a million such students attended U.S. universities and colleges last year, according to the Institute of International Education.
Almost a third of those were from China — which means that China’s economic slump could hit U.S. institutions hard. China’s economy, the world’s second largest, is slowing, and exports and share prices in the stock market there are down. And while the numbers of Chinese undergraduate and graduate students in the U.S. increased last year by 13 and 4 percent, respectively, that pace was down considerably from the 18 and 12 percent growth of 2013-14.