Wanted: Foreign Students

Troubled by a precipitous decline in applications, U.S. colleges wonder if they are being shunned for good.

By BURTON BOLLAG

Web Link: http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i07/07a03701.htm

Colleges have started the fall term amid widely shared concerns that more-restrictive visa policies, adopted in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, may be dissuading talented foreign students from applying to study in the United States.

Although colleges say delays in visa issuance have lessened somewhat since last year, they report continuing problems, including foreign students and professors unable to arrive on time for the start of classes, delayed research projects, and foreign scholars working at American institutions being stuck outside the United States for long periods when they travel to attend an academic conference or visit family.

While the first national figures on foreign enrollments will not be available for weeks -- a limited enrollment survey by Nafsa: Association of International Educators and two other groups will be released in November -- many institutions say recruitment of foreign students for the current academic year is weak, especially from countries that send the largest numbers of students.

The limited data already available support these concerns. In a survey of 126 institutions released last month, the Council of Graduate Schools found an 18-percent decrease in admissions of foreign graduate students this fall compared with the fall of 2003. The largest drops in admissions were 34 percent from China, 19 percent from India, and 12 percent from South Korea, the three countries that have sent the most students to the United States in recent years. After being admitted, foreign students must obtain a U.S. visa before traveling to the United States to enroll in their studies.

About half of the 586,323 foreign students in the United States during the 2002-3 academic year -- the most recent one for which overall figures are available -- were enrolled in graduate programs.

The graduate-school council says it expects actual enrollments of new foreign graduate students to be down by a similar amount to the 18-percent fall in admissions.

Some college officials consider that expectation overly pessimistic. With more than 6,000 foreign students, most of them in graduate programs, the University of Southern California has the largest international enrollment of any American institution. This year applications by foreign students were down 30 percent compared with last year.

But the university says the quality of those applying was good, so admissions were down only 6.7 percent. And since a larger portion of admitted students than usual turned up for the start of classes this fall, new international enrollments dropped only 1.7 percent.

In fact, officials at universities, community colleges, and business schools say that up to now they have not suffered financially, since it has generally been possible to offset any projected lower foreign enrollments by accepting more American students. Dixon C. Johnson, executive director of USC's Office of International Services, says that, scared off by word of the visa problems, "a lot of people who are not really serious" did not apply this year.

Yet like many other officials dealing with international students he worries there is "a worldwide perception that the United States is a less welcoming place than it was before."

And that, say many educators, could have serious long-term implications. The new visa restrictions come on top of other developments -- aggressive recruiting by other developed nations and the recent expansion of graduate programs in China and other countries -- that together may be diminishing the attractiveness of the United States as the first choice for foreign students seeking a quality higher education.

"The problem is not this fall," says Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. "There certainly will be some institutions that will be underenrolled. But the real problem is the long term."

'Irreparable Harm'

This issue is felt most acutely in science and engineering programs, which get many of their teaching and research assistants from Asian countries. In May more than 20 major science, higher-education, and engineering groups, representing 95 percent of the American research community, issued a statement urging the government to improve the "U.S. visa-processing quagmire."

Albert H. Teich, director of science and public policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which signed the statement, wrote that not improving the visa situation "will do irreparable harm to scientific progress as well as U.S. competitiveness."

Foreign-student enrollments first took a hit after the September 2001 terrorist attacks. The following academic year, starting in the fall of 2002, international enrollments grew by only 0.6 percent, after having increased by 6.4 percent for each of the two previous years.

Definitive data for the 2003-4 year will be available in November when the Institute of International Education publishes its yearly statistical report, known as "Open Doors." But a smaller survey by Nafsa and two other groups last fall indicated that foreign enrollment was unchanged.

Spotty initial data for the current academic year suggest that international enrollment will again be flat and could even fall.

Despite the complaints about overly strict visa practices, college officials who deal with foreign students credit the U.S. authorities with having made improvements in recent months. In July Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cabled U.S. consulates abroad instructing them to handle student visa requests "in the most expeditious way." Institutions say there have been fewer delays this year compared with last.

Yet problems persist due to the more-stringent procedures put in place after the 2001 attacks, including a requirement that anyone seeking a student visa must be interviewed in person by a U.S. consular official. Students must often wait weeks for such interviews, which typically last only three minutes. Students who don't live in major cities frequently have to travel great distances to get to a U.S. consulate.

In response, many American institutions with large foreign enrollments have made changes designed to give new students more time to obtain their visas. Above all they have moved up admissions decisions on international students -- by a full two months at New York University, for example.

Stuck Overseas

Institutions also continue to report cases of foreign students or scholars in the United States being stranded abroad when they travel for academic conferences or home visits. That is a particular problem for Chinese citizens because they are given only six-month visas by the United States. The visas can be renewed only once the holder is outside the United States.

"We've had some horrific cases," says Kay A. Thomas, director of international student and scholar services at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

One occurred this past spring when a Chinese graduate student at Minnesota was going to Canada to present a paper at a scientific conference. When the student checked in for his flight, says Ms. Thomas, an airline employee wrongly took his I-94 card, which confirmed his authorization to be in the United States. He was not allowed to re-enter the United States a few days later, and ended up going to China to wait for a new visa to be approved.

Last January, 11 Chinese doctoral students from the University of Minnesota's chemistry department, who had flown home for the holidays, were unable to return in time for the start of the spring term after U.S. officials insisted they wait for new security checks. "They trickled back over a six-month period," says Mark D. Distefano, director of graduate studies in chemistry. Most of the students were teaching or research assistants, so the department had to scramble to find replacements.

The security clearances were required under the so-called Visas Mantis program. That program requires checks on students and scholars in some 200 scientific specialties cited on the government's Technology Alert List that are deemed to have potential military applications.

However, Mr. Distefano says, the department does no classified or weapons research, and all 11 graduate students were in their first year and had passed security checks only months earlier. "Since we couldn't really understand the problem in January," he says, "we have no way of telling other students whether they will be subject to such problems."

In the meantime Minnesota and many other institutions are simply advising many of their foreign students not to travel abroad.

"There is frustration," says Richard B. Tudisco, associate provost of Columbia University and director of its International Students and Scholars Office. "Students come for a Ph.D. program that may take five years and feel they can't travel home during the whole period. That may discourage applicants."

A survey this past spring of 1,700 foreign students and scholars at the University of California at Berkeley found "a general climate of anxiety and alarm at what international students felt was a very unfriendly attitude of the U.S. government," says the graduate dean, Mary Ann Mason, who directed the survey.

Sixty percent felt they had had to endure "unreasonable delays" in obtaining their visas. Other common complaints included the near impossibility of travel abroad, denial of visas to parents who wanted to visit the student or scholar, and the "humiliation" of being fingerprinted and photographed upon entry to the United States.

Easier Elsewhere

Ms. Mason says that while institutions should continue pressing the government to ease the restrictions, "there are things we can do at our campuses to reassure international students and make them feel more comfortable."

Berkeley has made funds available to help families of international scholars who get stuck outside the country. And the university recently ended a policy under which students could not register for a new semester if they owed any money to the institution, even, say, because they had not returned a library book. The change was made to benefit foreign students, who are in violation of their visa if not registered for each term, and consequently liable for deportation.

Still, college officials say, after three years of a considerably stricter visa regime meant to protect the country from terrorists, the United States is getting a reputation as unwelcoming to foreign students.

"Students know they can go to Australia," says Lisa A. Krieg, director of the Office of International Education at Carnegie Mellon University, which has the highest portion of foreign students -- more than a quarter -- of any research university. "And if there are enough burdens and barriers -- guess what, people are doing just that."

Thomas E. Gouttierre, dean of international studies and programs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, is frustrated after getting pleas for help over the past weeks from 41 foreign graduate students who were admitted for the fall term but could not enroll because they were still waiting for their visas.

He says the current situation is discouraging foreign students from coming to American institutions at a time when other English-speaking countries are attracting growing numbers of foreign students.

American institutions may now face an uphill battle for international recruitment. "We'll have to woo back the foreign students," he says. "The word is out: It's easier and less demeaning to apply in Canada or the U.K."

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FOREIGN-STUDENT ENROLLMENT

As enrollments in the United States have flattened out in recent years, they have grown steadily in other English-speaking countries. The figures below are the most recent available.

U.S. 2000 2001 2002 Chinese students 59,939 63,211 64,757 Indian students 54,664 66,836 74,603 All foreign students 547,867 582,996 586,323

Australia 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Chinese students 3,712 6,535 16,311 22,394 26,400 Indian students 4,374 5,923 8,884 12,340 14,870 All foreign students 71,098 83,038 96,034 115,365 130,006

Britain 2000 2001 2002 Chinese students 12,095 20,710 35,155 Indian students 4,875 7,570 12,465 All foreign students 230,870 242,755 275,265

Canada 2000 2001 2002 2003 Chinese students 6,302 11,138 11,380 9,820 Indian students 828 1,229 2,034 2,309 All foreign students 68,000 82,653 95,043 105,598

1 Australia's academic year starts in March; all others start in the fall. 2 Canada does not count students who are in vocational schools or taking short-term English-as-a-second-language classes. That could add another 150,000 or 200,000 to the numbers. All other countries include ESL students who are taking courses at a college or university. Figure for Canada in 2000 is an estimate.

SOURCES: Citizenship and Immigration Canada; IDP Education Australia; Higher Education Statistics Agency; Institute of International Education; Chronicle Reporting

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