Ann Arbor — Five Chinese U-M grad students were charged with conspiracy this month. Espionage, by another name. They were caught surveilling a National Guard training exercise at Camp Grayling, taking photographs of military vehicles. Notably, Taiwanese military officers publicly participated in this exercise—and China has a particularly vested interest in any military cooperation between the U.S. and Taiwan, of course.

U-M’s increased admission of international students isn’t just a threat to the vibes on campus, it’s a threat to national security.

The increasingly outsized presence of Chinese grad students in Michigan is no surprise to anyone who’s stepped foot in Ann Arbor recently. My recent visits to the U-M campus left me with one distinct impression—they remind me of this TikTok: A guy has died and gone to heaven and proclaims, “No it’s fine, I just didn’t think it would be Chinese!” as a Chinese harp plays for a pagoda-filled heavenly background.

Before you accuse me of failing to “Stop Asian Hate”—I have data! Turns out the university publishes it every year. In fact, it even celebrates this achievement as a real win for diversity on campus. 

U-M’s total international student percentage increased from 13.73% to 16.92% this past decade. Three percent may not sound like all that much, but that amounts to nearly 3,000 more international students on campus. Breaking it down further, most of these students are enrolled in graduate programs, with the jump in numbers coming from roughly 2,000 more foreign grad students and 1,000 more undergrads. The majority of these are Chinese, with a jump of nearly 2,000 more total foreign Chinese students, almost double what it was in 2014. 

Surely this is a win for the university, right? It’s a testament to the quality of their educational programs that so many students from across the globe would come all this way to study there (and spend money). Yet, one gets the distinct impression that these Chinese students don’t much care for the education. Purely anecdotal, of course, but my Chinese buddy told me flat out he came here to study at an American university because it’s a status symbol back in China. Sure enough, he was on a plane the second he graduated, headed to a nice managerial job at his dad’s factory in Guangzhou. Perhaps the grad students are a bit more serious, but still, the Chinese nationals aren’t likely to stick around.

I don’t blame foreign students for wanting to attend U-M, hell I had a fun time there myself and don’t mind the (constantly plummeting) level of status the name on my degree lends me. Turns out, they’re not just in it for the parties though, or even the lofty name on their degree. Some of them are spies, sent here on purpose to surveil academic research and technological development. Military exercises too, apparently—don’t get it twisted, this wasn’t a simple field trip. That, in particular, is a new and deeply concerning development.

Let’s put this all in context. U-M now admits half the percentage of applicants that it did in 2014. Meanwhile, overall test scores and high school GPAs for applicants increased. They’ve gotten ruthlessly selective, despite these kids scoring higher on every metric. The bar gets higher every year, and the odds of admission for domestic applicants grow slimmer. Pressure from out-of-state and international applicants narrows the field more and more. And, as we see here, some of them are bad actors, sent here for nefarious purposes.

Disturbingly, the university enacted this policy deliberately, despite knowing all the while that at least a portion of the Chinese students in particular would be, quite literally, communist spies. This isn’t the first such scandal, with numerous Chinese grad students and academics, some with decades of history in American academia, caught spying on the payroll of the Communist Party of China in recent years. If the college bureaucrats were too naive to realize this would happen, then they’re incompetent. If they simply ignored it, then they’re willfully self-interested to the point of malevolence.

Spying aside, it is nevertheless deeply unconscionable for university systems to deliberately increase their international student bodies at the expense of local applicants. Michiganders are the backbone of U-M and have been for generations, and now they’re forced to compete not just with out-of-staters (who have eclipsed local Michiganders a U-M for the past decade) but the entire globe.

You simply can’t tell me more foreign students are admitted now based on merit alone, either. Chinese students don’t have to take the SAT, and they’re not writing great essays about woke struggle sessions either. Sure they may do well on CCP math tests, maybe they’re highly observant (great quality for spies), maybe they even learned a thing or two from their dad who sits on the Central Committee. But they’re not exceeding the same admissions metrics American students are subjected to.

What’s the rationale, then? Money, of course. It all boils down to the higher tuition rate for out-of-state and international students. Not to mention the “gifts” from rich Chinese parents who own factories in Shenzhen or Guangzhou, with anti-suicide nets hanging off the roofs. U-M has increased that overall percentage, the non-Michigan originated student body (including international students), from one-third to one-half over the past decade.

The university does it because it can, and because it makes more money. Over the past decade, tuition for out-of-state and international students has also gone up $16k, standing now at more than $55k per year. 

Some will claim it’s a demographic necessity—the number of 18-22 year olds in Michigan has decreased, they’ll tell you. Indeed, that overall population group has shrunk across the country, provoking a real crisis across higher education. They need to make up those numbers somehow. It’s the same argument politicians make when they push for free trade and unrestricted immigration. We need more migrants to boost our GDP! The increased numbers of international students paying high tuition allows us to subsidize tuition for poor Michiganders! They even tout the economic impact on their statistical documents—claiming “international students added $500 million to the local economy” in 2022.

But what happens as these effects play out generationally, as fewer Michiganders have access to the university systems their ancestors built? How do these changes affect the culture on campus, for better or worse? What makes the University of Michigan the state’s flagship university? Can we expect international students to support the universities after they leave with the same fervor as domestic alumni? Even the international students who aren’t actively spying for a foreign power, can we really expect them to bleed Maize & Blue after graduation?

There’s more than just money at stake here. College culture and American culture are inseparably intertwined, especially here. The university has made a decision to sell that off, a few percent at a time, just like the industrial system did a generation ago. Before long, U-M becomes nothing more than a faceless institution, wearing a skinsuit of its former self. Even worse, it’s risking our national security in the process.

Bobby Mars is an artist, alter ego, and former art professor. Follow him on X @bobby_on_mars.