Yingyi Ma, "Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education" (Columbia UP, 2020)

Apr 15, 2026

Yingyi Ma, sociologist at Syracuse University who studies Chinese students in U.S. higher education. She discusses how a new wave of self-funded Chinese undergraduates navigate ambition and anxiety. Short vignettes contrast diverse pathways, classroom participation, major choices, family tensions, post-graduation mobility, and implications for American colleges.

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INSIGHT

Rapid Rise And Recent Decline Of Chinese Undergraduates

Chinese undergraduate enrollment in the US exploded from under 10,000 in 2005 to ~150,000 by 2015, becoming the majority of Chinese students by 2014.
Growth peaked ~2019 (~330,000) then fell ~30% after the pandemic and policy shifts, with Indian students overtaking China by 2024.

ANECDOTE

Contrasting Cases Show Diverse Motivations

Ma contrasts Lady Joy (Shanghai, wealthy, private boarding school) with Samantha (middle-class, first-generation college parents) to show diversity among Chinese students.
Both are ambitious but their aims differ: fashion entrepreneurship versus quick labor-market returns.

INSIGHT

Studying Abroad As A New Education Gospel

Ma coins the “new education gospel”: studying abroad (especially in the US) is seen as an alternative to Gaokao and a route to better, less test-driven education and status.
Even Chinese college professors send children abroad, showing insiders’ belief in overseas education’s superiority.

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In Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education (Columbia UP, 2020), sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of a new wave of international Chinese students—mostly self-funded—who have transformed American higher education over the past decade. This privileged yet diverse group of young people, emerging from a rapidly changing China, must navigate the complications and confusions of their formative years while bridging the world’s two most powerful countries. How do these students come to study in the United States? What does that experience mean to them? And what does American higher education need to know—and do—in order to continue attracting these students and supporting them adequately?

Drawing on research conducted in both Chinese high schools and American colleges and universities, Ma’s book offers illuminating insights into the experiences that define this new wave of students: above all, a duality of ambition and anxiety rooted in the transformative social changes of contemporary China. These students and their families are ambitious in seeking to navigate two very different educational systems and societies. Yet, at the same time, the complexity and pressure of these systems generate profound anxiety—from the challenges of applying to colleges, to studying and socializing on campus, to deciding what comes next after graduation. Ambitious and Anxious also offers valuable policy implications for American colleges and universities, touching on recruitment, student life, faculty support, and career services.

About the Author

Yingyi Ma is Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where she also serves as Director of the Asian/Asian American Studies Program. She is a Fellow of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on United States–China Relations.

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