Dr Leibold also fears the commercial dependence on China is clouding the judgement of university administrators.

“What is at stake is no less than the future of our universities: their purpose and image,” he says.

“An obsession with growing the international student market risks turning our universities into diploma mills that are not only highly vulnerable to any fluctuation in international demand, but can also distract us from improving the quality and efficacy of our core teaching and research mission. If we are going to take the money of Chinese international students, we must find new and creative ways to not only engage with them but also challenge them, ensuring that they leave our university with not only a diploma but also new ways of thinking and a wider, more critically oriented horizon.”

What’s certain is that any slump in international student numbers would have economic implications way beyond campus gates.

“The growth has been quite incredible and fluctuations in student numbers could have a significant flow-on effect,” says Leibold. “Chinese students are not just important to the universities but to the whole economy. I think we often forget about that.”

- with Pallavi Singhal