HONG KONG - The Boston Marathon bombings last month hit America's education and research hub, a city that draws the best and the brightest from across the globe.
Its campuses were particularly affected by the violence. Lu Lingzi, a Chinese student at Boston University, was killed by the bombs. The suspects also killed an officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the suspects in the violence was a student at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, where he reportedly hung out after the attacks.
Worries about safety on American campuses long predate the Boston attack, because of numerous school shootings and other gun violence. D.D. Guttenplan, Lara Farrar and I reported from London, Shanghai and Hong Kong on whether that violence has actually had an impact on the decisions of foreign students shopping for schools. Our full article is here. For Chinese readers, the translated version is here.
On one hand, education experts and overseas education agents say that parents are worried. This is what David Qin, a co-founder of Paladin Learning in Shanghai, had to say:
“They are concerned about the safety level of universities. They don't want their kids to own guns. There are no gun shooting issues in Shanghai. They don't want their kids to buy guns in the future.â€
On the other hand, there are risks everywhere, said William Lawton, director of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education:
“There is anecdotal evidence that interest in studying in Britain dipped after the London riots. There is hard evidence that attacks on Indian kids in Melbourne in 2009 or 2010 hurt recruitment from India until just this year.â€
Meanwhile, the number of foreign students in America continues to rise, as does the number of young people crossing national borders all over the world for education.
What do you think? Would gun violence in the United States have an impact on your choice of school?
