1.Not going to mount a big defense for export education. Aspects of it are a problem; especially when when it’s a substitution for local investment and when international students are treated as cash cows ... but I’m not sure it should be our top source of higher ed indignation.

2. In the US, the University of Illinois is an example of a place that ramped international undergraduate (mostly Chinese) enrollments and will suffer from the likely precipitous drop that’s coming.

3. These enrollments that came at a time when the state dramatically divested. https://budgetblog.ctbaonline.org/illinois-public-universities-have-taken-a-48-percent-funding-cut-since-2000-9ee47ac271b2

4. The need to generate revenue (or offer cheaper education, because that is an alternative) was crucial for Illinois. Chinese students helped in this regard.

5. Someone correct me but I don’t know if any good evidence that international students displace local ones. State flagships (I hate that term) often enroll too few Pell students, but we’d be hard pressed to say international students cause that.

6. And if we think student interactions contribute to education, that it’s at least reasonable to speculate that export education might improve the educational experience of all students.

End. Yes, losing international enrollment and revenue is gonna hurt. But that does not necessarily mean that enrolling international students, even when partly to generate revenue, is itself wrong.