亿万富翁为到华留学生提供奖学金

Chinese students have long been pouring into US colleges. Almost 200,000 Chinese students were enrolled in US colleges in 2011-2012 academic year, up 23 percent from the year before. The number of Americans studying in China is also rising, but still pales in comparison. One US billionaire wants that to change and is using his own money.

Stephen Schwarzman - founder of private equity giant Blackstone Group - has pledged 100 million dollars of his own money to send 200 students to Tsinghua University for a year to earn a Master’s degree.

Forty-five percent of the scholarship winners will be from the United States, 20 percent from China and the remaining 35 percent will be from the rest of the world.

Students will be chosen based on academic merit and their leadership potential-much like Rhodes scholars who are sent to Oxford.

Joanna Waley Cohen, Dean of NYU Shanghai, said, "I think it’s a wonderful thing to make possible and not only possible but to make it a privilege for American students to be able to go and study in China and really get to know China from the vantage points of one of its best Universities."

According to these three NYU students, China has become a hotspot to study-thanks in part because of its growing economy. All of them will be studying or working in China in the fall.

Maria Curiel, NYU Student, said, "I think people are more open to exploring China and exploring Asia in general, but especially I think Shanghai has become a new ’go to’ point for students."

They say scholarship programs will likely help them make the transition to a culture that is different from their own.

" China is a crazy, new, exciting, but wildly different sort of place; and so it’s nice to have that base so that you can have that language instruction and the cultural immersion with the help of some sort of established program, I think." Said Charlotte Evans, NYU Student.

Waley-Cohen thinks the scholarships will be beneficial for the China-US relationship, too.

"We all have our stereotypes about China and chinese people have stereotypes about us. But for them to live together and study together and work together will make a huge difference because they’ll see that they’re just people with different practices but they’re not that different." Joanna Waley Cohen said.

All classes will be taught in English and the curriculum was created by academic leaders at Harvard, Yale, Oxford and other prestigious Universities. The first class will begin in 2016.