美国留学热在亚洲为何降温了？

　　导读:支暴力频发和特朗普反移民立场削弱了亚洲学子赴美留学的兴趣，而亚洲日益优质的高等教育资源也吸引他们就近求学。

For ambitious young Asians, studying in the US has long been a natural choice. They venture across the vast Pacific to pursue degrees with global cachet and, perhaps, take a shot at the American dream.

　　Increasingly, though, the region’s students are making a radical decision: they are staying close to home.

　　To understand why, start with the latest World University Rankings from Times Higher Education. Three Asian schools made the top 30 for the first time, along with several more in the top 100. More Asian colleges are offering internationally recognised degree programmes, often in English, at more affordable rates than schools across the Anglosphere.

　　This widens the options for students who yearn to study overseas but have limited means or are reluctant to travel far from their families. To some, it also means they can avoid the political maelstrom of Donald Trump’s America. Frequent gun violence and the president’s anti-immigration stance are two common reasons for steering clear of US shores.

　　“Students have numerous alternative study-abroad destinations beyond the US and UK,” said Stephanie Kim, assistant professor of education at Georgetown University. “The trend simply points to the diversification of mobility flows and the rise of new higher education hubs.”

　　Data on the movement of students within Asia show that the shift started before Mr Trump became president, with countries such as China and Japan becoming more popular places to study abroad. From 2014 to 2016, the number of students from other Asian countries in Japan rose 36 per cent, to 173,303, while the figure for China rose 18 per cent to 264,976, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Japan’s education ministry.

　　But the raging immigration debate in the US is only making more students think twice about going there.

　　The Trump administration has mounted an attack on the H-1B visa programme, which allows US companies to employ highly skilled foreign workers. The visas, Mr Trump said last year, “should never, ever be used to replace Americans”.

　　“No one can compete with American workers when they are given a fair and level playing field,” the president said. This populist message has been well-received by Mr Trump’s base and by some left-leaning labour unions, even as business groups voice concern about closing the door to international talent.

　　With so much uncertainty over job prospects, why take on the expense of studying stateside, or the burden of hefty student loans?

　　Whether the chief concern is guns, immigration policy or cost, this much is clear: the number of international college students in the US is in decline. For the 2016-2017 academic year, it dropped 3.3 per cent — its first fall in more than a decade. It is estimated to have fallen another 6.9 per cent in the current academic year, according to data from New York’s Institute of International Education.

　　Asian students are surely a key factor, as they make up two-thirds of international enrolment in the US. Overall, international students account for about 5 per cent of the 20 million college students in the country.