Insight into the decline of America’s heartland in the Atlantic by Stephen Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa:

An interesting sidelight to the outflow problem is the rapid influx of Chinese students at the University of Iowa. The university vigorously recruits Chinese undergraduates, and has even set up an office in Beijing with the express purpose of attracting Chinese to study in Iowa (no other recruiting office exists anywhere else). Almost all come from well-heeled families, who pay full tuition for their children to attend college. Few speak passable English, almost all congregate in majors that require little English (math, biology and actuarial science), and many drive around town in brand-new sports cars. It’s a strange sight to see in Flyover County — dozens of Chinese students moving together en masse, the girls chattering away in Mandarin, always holding each others’ hands. These wealthy, ill-prepared bonus babies are seen as the future of the University. If Iowa has fewer and fewer young people each year to fill the University’s cavernous lecture halls, and the state is still a tough sell to coastal American kids, then it’s China that’s the next frontier as state support for higher education dwindles.