The number of people has dropped to the level of a decade ago: Why are young people no longer enthusiastic about studying abroad?
Behind the decline in the number of Chinese students studying abroad lies the fact that students' access to international education is entering a new stage of greater maturity, diversity and pragmatism.
In the 2026 national college entrance examination, Li Haoxuan (a pseudonym), a candidate from Hunan Province, scored 642 points. This score falls into the high score range among physics-track examinees in Hunan, giving him the competitiveness to apply for most "985" universities. In the end, he set his application target at the Sino-French Future Technology College of Beihang University (hereinafter referred to as "Sino-French Future Technology College").
The Sino-French Future Technology College is a typical model of Sino-foreign cooperative education. It was jointly established by Beihang University and the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de France, approved by the Ministry of Education in May 2025, and is located on the Hangzhou International Campus of Beihang University.
What impressed Li Haoxuan most is that the Sino-French Future Technology College implements an integrated training model for undergraduate and master's programs. After students meet the requirements of the training plan, they can obtain both the master's graduation certificate and degree certificate of Beihang University, as well as the engineering diploma certified by the Commission des Titres d'Ingénieur (CTI) of France upon graduation from the master's program. They can connect to the international engineering education system without going abroad for the entire study period.
"We compared many traditional top '985' universities and finally made this choice. Our child can obtain dual diplomas from China and abroad when he graduates with a master's degree," Li Haoxuan's father told *Caijing*. "This way, we can access high-quality overseas engineering education resources, and also avoid the cost and risk of staying abroad for the whole study period."
Li Haoxuan's choice is not an isolated case.
In 2026, Sino-foreign cooperative education has become one of the most concerned fields in the education industry. According to previous reports from *Caijing*, on the eve of the 2026 national college entrance examination, the Ministry of Education newly approved 219 Sino-foreign cooperative education institutions and programs, including 86 newly established institutions and 133 cooperative programs, of which 100 are at the undergraduate level, 28 at the master's level, and 5 at the doctoral level. The most prominent highlight of these newly added programs is that more than 20 "985" universities have entered this field intensively, leading the establishment of 6 new institutions and participating in 15 cooperative programs in total. The focus of the industry is shifting toward the "high-precision, cutting-edge" direction.
For students like Li Haoxuan, such programs provide a new option of "studying without going abroad": they can access international education resources in China without staying abroad for the whole study period (some programs have short-term exchange requirements).
Behind this choice is the profound adjustment that the overseas study market is undergoing. According to the data previously released by the Ministry of Education, the number of Chinese students studying abroad in 2025 was 570,600, a decrease of more than 130,000 from the historical peak of 703,500 in 2019, falling back to the level around 2016.
Why are young Chinese people increasingly reluctant to study abroad?
The answer is not simple. The tightening geopolitics, rising cost of studying abroad, higher employment thresholds overseas, and the change of values of the new generation are intertwined, pushing the overseas study market into a period of in-depth adjustment.
Chen Zhiwen, a member of the Academic Committee of the Chinese Society of Educational Development Strategy, emphasized to *Caijing* that the downward trend of the number of students studying abroad will not change. As early as 2019, he predicted that the scale of Chinese students studying abroad was about to reach the "peak" and the inflection point would appear.
"It is certain that the number of Chinese students studying abroad will decline in the future," Chen Zhiwen said. "The possible scenario is that after falling to a certain level, there will be a plateau period, and then it will drop another step along with the change of China's population structure. The overall decline is inevitable, but it is not an absolute, cliff-like drop."
The number of students studying abroad has dropped to the level of a decade ago
Data previously released by the Ministry of Education shows that the number of Chinese students studying abroad in 2025 was 570,600, and the number of students returning from studying abroad was 535,600. The two sets of figures together convey a clear signal: the number of people going abroad is decreasing, the number of people returning is increasing, and the two curves are approaching the intersection point.
In terms of cumulative scale, from 1978 to 2025, the total number of Chinese students studying abroad of all types reached 9.46 million, of whom 8.01 million completed their studies, and 6.98 million chose to return to China for development after finishing their studies, with the return proportion exceeding 87%. The decade from 2015 to 2025 was the peak period of return, with a total of 5.2 million overseas students returning to China for development. The direction of cross-border flow of talents is undergoing a historic transformation.
Looking back at the growth curve, the period from 2008 to 2019 was the "golden decade" for the scale of Chinese overseas students. Data from the Ministry of Education shows that the number of Chinese students studying abroad increased from 179,800 in 2008 to 703,500 in 2019, expanding nearly four times in 11 years. This rapid growth not only benefited from the sustained development of the domestic economy and the improvement of residents' income levels, but also was closely related to the national overseas study policy of "supporting studying abroad, encouraging returning to China, ensuring freedom of movement, and giving full play to the role of overseas students".
From a global perspective, the flow of international students as a whole showed an upward trend in this period. Data from UNESCO shows that the global scale of international students increased from about 2.11 million in 2000 to 6.86 million in 2022, growing by more than two times. China has gradually become one of the largest sources of international students in this process.
However, the number of Chinese students studying abroad has not been growing continuously.
Chen Zhiwen emphasized in an interview with *Caijing* that as early as November 2019, he gave a report titled "Studying Abroad: The Peak Is Approaching, The Inflection Point Will Appear" at a forum, predicting that the scale of overseas study was about to reach a plateau period. His judgment drew on Japan's experience: Japan's overseas study boom was about 20 years earlier than China's, which followed the track of rapid growth, a plateau period of about ten years, and then a slow decline. "If we put our trajectory on it, it is basically the same," Chen Zhiwen said.
The data from the *Open Doors Report* released by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in the United States confirms this judgment: the net growth of Chinese students studying in the United States reached its peak in the 2013-2014 academic year, with a net increase of nearly 39,000 in one year; then it declined continuously, and the net growth in 2019 was only about 2,000, which was almost stagnant.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this process. Affected by the impact of the epidemic and multiple factors such as the downward pressure on the global macroeconomy, the scale of Chinese students studying abroad changed its continuous expansion trend. According to the *Blue Book of China Overseas Study Development Report (2023-2024)* (hereinafter referred to as "Blue Book of Overseas Study Development") released by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), based on non-public data, the number of people studying abroad in 2020 dropped to 450,900, rebounded to 523,700 in 2021, further rose to 661,200 in 2022, and reached 570,600 in 2025, still lower than the peak of 703,500 in 2019.
In sharp contrast to the decline in the number of people going abroad, the number of students returning from studying abroad has continued to rise. In 2020, the number of people returning to China for development exceeded the number of people studying abroad in that year for the first time, and this trend has continued ever since. In 2023, 2024 and 2025, the number of overseas students returning to China was 415,600, 495,000 and 535,600 respectively, showing a year-by-year growth trend. The gap between the number of people going abroad and returning to China in 2025 has narrowed to 35,000.
While the number of returning overseas students is increasing, the participation of returnees in the domestic job market is also deepening. The *2025 Survey Report on Employment of Chinese Returnees* released by Zhaopin shows that the number of returnees seeking jobs in China in 2025 increased by 5% year-on-year, of which the number of fresh graduate overseas students increased by 12%, hitting a new high in nearly eight years. Among the overseas students returning to China for job hunting, 80.9% have master's degrees and 3.1% have doctoral degrees, and the return rhythm of high-level talents continues to accelerate.
At the same time, the landscape of overseas study destinations is also reshuffled. According to the *2025 Review of China's Overseas Study Market and 2026 Outlook* released by EIC Education, the United Kingdom has ranked first in the list of intended overseas study destinations for seven consecutive years, Hong Kong, China has ranked second for the first time, and the United States has slipped to third.
In April 2026, the *Overseas Study Environment Evaluation* released by the Service Center for Scholarly Exchange of the Ministry of Education at the China Overseas Study Forum shows that the current international situation is undergoing profound changes, the complexity and uncertainty of the overseas study environment continue to rise, and the relative ranking of more than 80% of countries has been adjusted. In the dimension of "safety and cost", Finland ranks among the top for the first time, followed by Singapore and Switzerland; in the dimension of "trust and openness", Ireland, Uzbekistan and New Zealand rank the top three. Traditional major overseas study destinations still have advantages in quality and employment, but face challenges in dimensions such as safety and trust. This report provides a new reference frame for decision-making for families that plan to send their children to study abroad.
Why is the number of overseas students declining?
The decline in the number of overseas students is not caused by a single factor. Chen Zhiwen divides it into two categories: explicit factors and implicit factors. The former refers to the containment and visa restrictions imposed by Western countries on China, while the latter includes the development of domestic higher education, the change of overseas study cost-performance ratio, and the change of intergenerational values. He specially emphasized that to understand this trend, we need to examine it from the perspective of macro education development and social background, rather than attributing it only to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic or a single policy.
Geopolitics is the biggest external variable. Chen Zhiwen analyzed that the US strategy toward China includes three dimensions: trade war, science and technology war, and talent containment. "The United States is well aware that if it only launches a trade war, it will lose; if it only launches a science and technology war, as long as there are talents and enough time, the blockade is only temporary." He believes that when the trade war started in 2018, the United States simultaneously launched talent containment, tightening visas for high-level overseas students in science and engineering fields in China. The scope of restrictions gradually expanded from postgraduate students and visiting scholars in "sensitive majors" at the beginning to a wider range of science and engineering fields.
Chen Zhiwen also pointed out that the United States is fully aware of China's emphasis on education, and once used Chinese students in the United States as a bargaining chip in key games. "They think this move can 'hurt' China."
According to the data released by the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security in October 2025, the number of Chinese students in the United States dropped from 301,000 in September 2015 to 247,000 in September 2025, a decline of 18% in ten years. In addition, according to the statistics of multiple overseas study agencies in 2025, the probability of Chinese students majoring in sensitive fields such as electronic engineering facing administrative review has increased significantly, exceeding 40% in some majors.
In addition to geopolitical risks, the rising cost of studying abroad is increasingly becoming an important variable affecting Chinese students' decision-making on studying abroad. The *2026 Development Report on Chinese Students Studying Abroad* released by New Oriental in March 2026 shows that the average overseas study budget of Chinese students in 2026 reached 605,000 yuan, a new high in 12 years. With global inflation superimposed on the rigid rise of tuition fees and living expenses, "tuition fee" has surpassed "suitable major" and "post-graduation employment rate" and jumped to the second most important factor in school selection, second only to school ranking.
Chen Zhiwen said that the root cause of the decline in the cost-performance ratio of studying abroad lies not only in the rising cost, but also in the disappearance of the "scarcity" of overseas study. He pointed out that at the beginning of the reform and opening up, the number of Chinese students studying abroad in 1978 was only 860. In the following more than ten years, the average annual number of students studying abroad was only more than 8,000. Around 2000, the annual number of students studying abroad exceeded 30,000. But by 2019, this figure had soared to 703,500 - while before the large-scale enrollment expansion of universities in 1998, the total enrollment of undergraduate and junior college students across the country was only 1.08 million. "When something is rare, it is precious. Now overseas students are no longer rare, and their aura naturally fades away," Chen Zhiwen said.
In Chen Zhiwen's view, the more profound change than the external environment lies in the hearts of young people. He calls it the "essential general trend" - the post-2000 generation who grew up in the period of rapid economic development in China, especially children in first-tier cities, "they grew up in the period of rapid development of China, and believe that China is no worse than the West, even better". Chen Zhiwen pointed out that the national pride of this generation is endogenous, and this underlying identity will exist for a long time and even continue to strengthen.
He also observed that for many young people from well-off families, they grew up in a "6+1" upbringing environment (six adults including parents, grandparents and grandparents take care of one child) and are overprotected. To some extent, studying abroad is almost "suffering". They pay more attention to the quality of life and lack the motivation to travel across the ocean alone, overcome language barriers and adapt to cultural differences. "There is no right or wrong in this, it is just a different era and different motivation," Chen Zhiwen said.
The development of China's higher education has further reduced the attractiveness of studying abroad. Chen Zhiwen recalled to *Caijing* that when the ShanghaiRanking's Academic Ranking of World Universities was launched in 2003, the best Chinese universities ranked outside the top 200 in the world. He specially pointed out that the evaluation indicators of ShanghaiRanking have remained basically unchanged for more than 20 years, and it is the only one of the four major international rankings that has remained stable. According to this ranking, Chinese universities have made remarkable progress - Tsinghua University has ranked among the top 20 in the world (ranked 18th in 2026, ranking first in Asia), and Peking University has also risen to 22nd. In the CSRankings (ranked according to hard indicators of papers in the computer field), Tsinghua University ranked first in the world for the first time in 2025, ending Carnegie Mellon University's long-term leading position.
Ding Changfa, an associate professor at the School of Economics of Xiamen University, also analyzed to *Caijing* that the rising cost of international personnel flow and the complex and changeable external environment objectively enhance students' willingness to receive international education in their home country. Geopolitical factors such as Sino-US trade frictions and changes in China-EU relations have also led some families to have declining confidence in traditional overseas study destinations. The pressure of further education under the new normal of employment has further prompted students to find alternative channels for advanced study.
New pattern and new opportunities for overseas study
In June 2026, the *15th Five-Year Plan for Education Development* issued by the State Council proposed to "improve the full-chain overseas study service system, carry forward the tradition of serving the country through overseas study", and required to "carry out international training programs for outstanding talents"