My brother Rick, who works at Indiana University - South Bend, says their enrollment is doing great. That always happens in an economic downturn, as people lose their jobs and enroll in college to retool for a different career.

CNN has an article about the explosion in Chinese students attending US colleges. We have 4000 colleges and universities, far more than anywhere else in the world, and our schools are top-notch.

In the past year, the number of Chinese undergraduates has jumped at a number of schools:

• Kansas State: from 65 to 199.
• Ohio State: from 20 to 115.
• Purdue: from 127 to 290.
• Michigan State: from 95 to 327.

One Chinese student at Ohio State said Chinese universities offer solid academics but can't compete with the overall experience of higher education in America, including more opportunities for out-of-class activities, an open learning environment and diversity. And she added, "In China you can seldom find people from the U.S., but in the U.S. you find people from all over the world."

Duane Nellis, Kansas State provost, commented, "There is a whole emerging middle class of Chinese, well over 300 million, many of them with one-child families who are interested in sending their son or daughter abroad with higher educational experience."

Think of the opportunities for evangelizing China through these well-educated, leadership-calibre young people? We can't send missionaries to China, but they are coming to America for several years. At least some will return as Christians. Neat.

Interestingly, the number of Americans studying abroad reached an all-time high of 242,000 in 2007.

Also worth noting: India still leads the pack in sending students to the US. China is now second, followed by South Korea.