Justin Fox, Columnist

How Chinese Students Saved America's Colleges

Cash-strapped institutions have reaped billions from an influx of foreign students.

China's campus exports.

Photographer: MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)
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There’s a long tunnel connecting the Haidianhuangzhuang subway station in northwest Beijing with the Gate City Mall, and it’s plastered with advertising displays. I was about halfway through it Wednesday when I noticed that every last one of the ads was for classes to prepare students for the ACT or SAT, the two main U.S. college entrance tests.

EF English Schools has classrooms in the mall, so that’s a partial explanation. But EF has 24 such outposts just in Beijing; in Shanghai there are 27, in Guangzhou, 17, and so on. I’m guessing there are a lot of subway corridors in China like the one I saw.