China’s top universities are providing new academic avenues as the US reduces funding and stops accepting graduate students.
As the US reduces financing for graduate courses and geopolitical tensions increase, China’s best universities are actively encouraging Chinese undergraduates to enroll straight in PhD programs, bypassing traditional academic channels.
Analysts claim that this action demonstrates Beijing’s efforts to entice young scholars from the US.
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Since 2022, Fudan University, a prominent public university in Shanghai, has covertly admitted Chinese undergraduates from abroad for straight PhD admissions. However, as American institutions reduce their graduate programs due to political and financial demands, its most recent hiring campaign, which was unveiled this month for the 2025 academic year, has generated intense discussion.
The program targets students enrolled in the top 100 universities or elite programs worldwide, avoiding China’s customary requirement of a master’s degree or endorsement from a domestic university. It is available to 18 disciplines, including certain humanities courses and cutting-edge sciences like computer science, biomedical engineering, and clinical medicine.
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Since entrance to PhD programs in China often needed a master’s degree or a recommendation from a local university, one Fudan faculty member, whose last name is Wang, claimed that the university’s endeavor was “not common in China.”
Nonetheless, he firmly backed the action, claiming the university was carrying out its social obligation.
“The US is widely known to be cutting a lot of funding and becoming more unfriendly to the Chinese,” he said, so it is “certainly one of the best options” for Chinese-born students to return to the country’s top universities and continue their studies.
“As an excellent research university, Fudan University naturally has to shoulder this social responsibility,” he said.
Fudan’s action was simply the most recent instance of elite Chinese institutions leveraging the political unrest in America to expand their talent pool.
A “temporary pause” on all federally financed grants and loans was called for in a memo issued by the US Office of Management and Budget at the end of January. This action had already produced great uncertainty and alarm among the country’s universities and research organizations, despite the fact that it was temporarily suspended.
For instance, the head of the graduate school stated on February 15 that the university has temporarily halted fresh offers of admission to potential graduate students, according to the Vanderbilt Hustler, the student newspaper of Vanderbilt University. A spokesperson for graduate students at the university added that professors in a number of departments had been requested to reduce the number of students they admitted this cycle.
Citing faculty sources, the Student Workers of Columbia union declared on February 1 that Columbia University has suggested reducing by up to 65% the incoming PhD cohort for the fall of 2025 in the graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Cai Sanfa, head of the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai’s Tongji University, said Fudan’s approach was “worth promoting” because US universities were halting or cutting graduate admissions.
He said that the development of China’s top-tier institutions has improved the country’s capacity to produce creative scholars independently.
Such a measure “not only provides opportunities for outstanding students who want to advance their studies in their home countries but also broadens the channels of talent selection for these universities”.
However, this may have broader political ramifications, Chen Zhiwen, an education researcher and member of the Chinese Society of Educational Development Strategy, recently told Jiupai News.
He claimed that in order to impede China’s advancement in science and technology, the US and other Western nations had implemented a number of containment measures, such as talent training. Many Chinese students who had finished their undergraduate degrees were consequently unable to pursue further education abroad.
In light of this, Chen stated that China needs to develop its own elite scientific and technology talent in order to overcome the scientific and technological blockade imposed by the West.
“Fudan University’s policy is an important initiative to attract the return of outstanding overseas talents,” Chen said.
However, Fudan is not alone. Similar measures are being taken by some prominent Chinese colleges.
For instance, in its announcement of PhD admissions last August, Tsinghua University stated that some of its majors have started to attract exceptional Chinese students from foreign colleges to pursue PhDs.
In October, Westlake University in Hangzhou declared that exceptional Chinese undergraduates from foreign universities were welcome to pursue PhDs in four areas: environmental science, computer science, materials science and engineering, and mathematics.
Beijing has promised to establish a “stable support system” of political and financial assistance to expand PhD programs in important professions including engineering, medicine, and new fields.
In October of last year, the State Council, China’s cabinet, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued guidelines urging universities and education authorities to “deepen the comprehensive reform of doctoral education” and establish themselves as “an important hub of doctoral education in the world” as the nation continues its push to become more self-reliant in cutting-edge fields like high-tech.
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