Yingyi Ma, "Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education" (Columbia UP, 2020)

New Books in Sociology · Apr 15, 2026 · 51m

In Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education (Columbia UP, 2020), sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of a new wave of international Chinese students—mostly self-funded—who have transformed American higher education over the past decade. This privileged yet diverse group of young people, emerging from a rapidly changing China, must navigate the complications and confusions of their formative years while bridging the world’s two most powerful countries. How do these students come to study in the United States? What…