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Mr. L
EHMAN
. NYU New York. I mean, we have local staff. 
Mr. S
MITH
. But my question is about the vetting before. Who are 
the local staff? I mean, how do you know they are not clandestinely 
part of the government apparatus? 
Mr. L
EHMAN
. Well, I could be wrong, I suppose. I mean, I am not 
experienced at spotting——
Mr. S
MITH
. I mean, to shell out $28,000, you would think the 
government would want to have a main say in who it is that gets 
admitted. 
Mr. L
EHMAN
. I don’t believe so. The mission here is for us to 
have the best and the brightest in China studying with us. So we 
have students who turned down Peking University, turned down 
Tsinghua University, turned down Fudan, turned down Berkeley, 
turned down Cornell for the opportunity to be a part of this very 
special academic experience. 
The concern both at NYU and, honestly, by the city of Shanghai, 
was that at $45,000 a year it would simply be a playground for 
children of the rich and that would not be acceptable. So it was 
necessary from the beginning to structure this to make NYU 
Shanghai affordable. Now, some students can’t afford 100,000 
Renminbi either, and so we have need-based financial aid as well, 
in addition to sort of the flat reduction to 100,000 RMB. 
The process, we have thousands and thousands of applicants 
from all across China for these 150 seats. And so the process that 
is followed is they send us their high school grades, their letters 
of recommendations from principals, their essays. And that written 
portfolio is reviewed first by our staff in Shanghai, then by our 
staff in New York, and a group of about 500, the top 500, are in-
vited to come to our campus for what we call Candidate Day. 
And in Candidate Day, they are in batches of 125. They have 
one-on-one interviews with us. They have sample classes. They 
write essays. We want to be sure that they are ready to study in 
the kind of academic environment that we provide, that their 
English is good enough. And after that Candidate Day process, we 
then identify the top 150 or so, to whom we extend conditional of-
fers of admission. 
Now, the condition is that they then have to take this Chinese 
examination known as the gaokao, which I am sure you are famil-
iar with, which is the national admissions exam in China. They 
then have to score in the top tier on the gaokao in order for their 
offer of admission actually to be effective. Almost all of them do, 
but every year, unfortunately, some of them do not. 
This process, I will say, Chairman Smith, I have complete con-
fidence in. It is not an ideological screen. It is not controlled by the 
government. You asked me to speculate why the government would 
give us money to subsidize this if they don’t get to control admis-
sions. 
Mr. S
MITH
. Or even influence. 
Mr. L
EHMAN
. Or even influence admissions. I will give two par-
tial answers to that. 
Most of our financial aid in the United States in American uni-
versities is underwritten by donors, by private philanthropists who 
make gifts, and that accounts for the ability to give financial aid. 
And the question is, why do they make these gifts if they don’t get 
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77
to influence who they are supporting? And the idea is there is a 
sense that you are doing good if you are opening up access on the 
basis of merit rather than on the basis of financial capacity. And 
I honestly believe that that is a big part of the motivation here. 
Separately, I would say, because we are so small, if there were 
ways for the government to influence who came, to say, okay, there 
is a special side door for children of privilege, that would destroy 
our reputation in China immediately. I mean, word would get 
around in a flash. The social media in China today are an unbeliev-
ably powerful force. Mr. Daly spoke about the comments, about 
Minister Yuan’s comment, alleged comment. And I think everyone 
in China knows that this is all very, very visible. 
And so, again, we haven’t received that kind of effort to influence 
yet, but if it were to come, we will be vigilant. 
Mr. S
MITH
. Can I ask you, Dr. Martin, did you receive that kind 
of subsidy or anything close to it? 
Ms. M
ARTIN
. No, sir. Our program is a little bit different, obvi-
ously, because it is an undergraduate program conducted at two 
universities. Sias University, as I shared earlier, is a private uni-
versity, whereas SNU is a public university. Normally students 
who come to the campuses pay for their degree. 
As you know, there are two types of students in China: Those 
who are termed planned, which as was stated earlier, achieve a 
certain high percentage in the gaokao examination, and then those 
who are unplanned, which means that they did not fall within the 
auspices of those examinations. 
The planned students are subsidized normally by the govern-
ment, whereas the unplanned are not. And so for many who are 
unplanned students at the private universities, the education and 
the degree that they obtain through the courses and the program 
at Fort Hays State University is their only chance to have access 
to an education in China. 
Mr. S
MITH
. Any of our distinguished witnesses, if you want to 
chime in or speak out on anything you hear, please. 
Yes, Ms. Cao. 
Ms. C
AO
. I just want to add a few points, because I was the one 
who did this research on ‘‘NYU Shanghai: What’s the Deal,’’ in Feb-
ruary. So I know a few things from—almost all my sources are 
from the Chinese language sources when I posted this, and several 
NYU faculties wrote me thinking it is very, very helpful, and the 
fact that they knew it is a joint venture, but what it means really 
was lost to most of the faculty members at the NYU here. 
Now, just pick Professor Lehman’s comments. I want to point 
out, at least at the early stage, at least that, that may or may not 
be the case now, that at least at the very early stage, NPR, when 
the Shanghai campus opened in 2013, right, NPR had the article, 
interviewed a half-dozen also American students, all of them re-
ceived generous tuition from NYU Shanghai. And some were even 
paid with their plane tickets. 
So where does that money come from? All of them were given 
huge tuition fees that cost—let me read from the original NPR re-
port—that one of the students was offered a deal worth $228,000. 
That is huge. And, quote from the NPR report, ‘‘The half dozen oth-
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