China has abruptly withdrawn its Covid-era endorsement of remotely delivered tertiary education. This order is likely to galvanise international enrolments in Western countries while straining university admissions services, visa processing and flight and housing availability. Beijing authorities have reversed a 2020 rule change that allowed for the local accreditation of degrees and higher education diplomas taught online by universities and colleges in other parts of the world. The new arrangements, revealed in a “special announcement” posted in late January on the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange (CSCSE) website, apply from the main autumn semester to institutions based in the southern hemisphere and affect both new and continuing enrolments. “Students should return to school as soon as possible,” advises an attached document. This gives Chinese students enrolled at Australian universities between two and four weeks to relocate Down Under in time to start or resume face-to-face classes. Phil Honeywood, chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia, says that while China has “never been comfortable with online learning”, educators had expected a transition period before reversion to usual arrangements. “Such a rapid pivot back to regulated face-to-face learning requirements will definitely create challenges for our education providers and our visa processing. Nonetheless, it will be welcomed by most stakeholders.” Federal government statistics say that as many as 40,000 of some 119,000 Chinese student visa holders were located outside Australia in mid-November. Chinese citizens account for the bulk of the 62,000 foreign higher ed students currently based elsewhere. Their ready embrace of online education surprised many, and it cushioned Covid’s impact on Australian universities’ bottom lines. Diplomats had warned that Beijing’s endorsement of online degrees wouldn’t last forever, but the rapid reversal reflects speedy dismantling of China’s pandemic regime. Australian universities have until mid-2023 to meet rules requiring them to deliver at least two-thirds of foreign students’ degrees conventionally. YTT programme failing China’s most prominent talent recruitment programme is still failing to lure ‘top’ global scientists back to the country, a study has found. Established in 2010 as a key pillar of Beijing’s Thousand Talents Programme, the Young Thousand Talents (YTT) initiative seeks to recruit science and technology experts from abroad, especially Chinese expatriates. In the West, the initiative has come under scrutiny from lawmakers, who fear espionage and intellectual property theft amid rising geopolitical tensions. But research suggests that YTT is not yet attracting cream of the crop. “Although designed to improve China’s prospect of becoming a global STEM leader, the programme’s effectiveness in attracting top talents and nurturing their productivity is unclear,” write academics in the journal Science. Yanbo Wang, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s business school, and Dongbo Shi, assistant professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, examined researchers’ motives for turning down the invitation, which includes a one-off, tax-exempt income subsidy of 500,000 yuan (Rs.60 lakh) and start-up grants of 1 million yuan to 3 million yuan. Dr. Wang and his colleague surveyed more than 400 researchers who were approached for the programme’s…
