NYU, Duke Retain Lucrative Students With China-Based Campuses

Neveah Sun was looking forward to studying at New York University this fall, majoring in psychology and journalism while experiencing life in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Instead, the 19-year-old from the Chinese city of Suzhou spends her days at a WeWork office in Shanghai that NYU has converted into classrooms for a new program catering to students who can’t get U.S. visas because of Covid-19. “At first I thought it was a little weird, but I’m getting accustomed to it,” she says. “Also, we have a fantastic view.”

NYU can accommodate students in Shanghai thanks to a joint venture it formed there in 2012 with East China Normal University. A separate degree-granting institution with its own admissions procedures, administrators, and almost 2,000 students, NYU Shanghai shares some faculty members with the New York school and sends many of its undergraduates to study there as exchange students. Now, NYU Shanghai is temporarily home to more than 2,800 additional students, most of them Chinese enrolled at the New York campus but unable to travel.