200 Chinese students have no material financial impact in a body of 35,000 students. I'm inclined to take the statement at face value, and won't be surprised if more actions come as they work out the facts.
Universities compete for the out-of-state and foreign students that pay their bills, they are not trivially replaceable. And if you exclude Chinese students from the replacement pool, it's even smaller.
200 were enrolled this fall. The article says elsewhere that "Of the over 45,000 students enrolled at campus, 5,196 are of Asian ethnicity", though it's not clear how many of them are from China.
Keep in mind that 7.2% of the total population of the United States identifies as Asian ethnicity. There's no reason to expect that most of Purdue's Asian students are from China.
I found a Purdue pdf that states international students comprised of 20% of Purdue's student body in 2019. "China ranks first (3250) in total enrollment while India (2156) is second." Source: https://www.purdue.edu/IPPU/ISS/_Documents/EnrollmentReport/...
Public universities make their tuition money on the out-of-state and foreign students, so your denominator here is an order of magnitude too big. Every marginal out-of-state or foreign student lost, is one or more in-state students whose tuition cannot be subsidized.
Please respond to my points. Prices are discovered on the margin, so losing a significant chunk of the students that pay full tuition, could certainly destabilize the market and cause challenges for university administrators.
Ok, say Purdue eats the acquisition cost to replace the 200 students. Those new students now need to be replaced by whatever school they would have otherwise attended, they have to come from somewhere. There exists some tipping point at which the system could unravel, maybe not 200 students but some number of students.
Acquisition cost is zero at this point - there are wait lists and no shortage of talented people from other countries that would love to go to Purdue or any other comparable school. They can also easily pull from the out of state basket. Also, you have to account for financial repercussions if they do nothing.
> There exists some tipping point at which the system could unravel, maybe not 200 students but some number of students.
Perhaps, but again 200 students is inconsequential to Purdue as I stated. They have the ability to replace instantly and they have a > $2.5 billion endowment.
The system would unravel due to overextension of loans and people deciding it's not worth it to take the debt on that they have been doing. That's the unravel risk. And it would hit the low tier schools anyway.
What Purdue or others with similar challenges cannot do, is nothing. Not everyone gives a shit about appeasing China. Maybe LeBron, the NBA and some other organizations care because it has been all about the $ for them. But things are changing. Women's Tennis is standing up. Biden making a statement regarding Olympics. Not many examples out there but they're becoming more frequent.
