More Study Abroad in the News

Federal Panel Urges Study-Abroad Bill and Recruiting Strategy for Foreign Students

January 24, 2008 (Bloomberg)-- A new report by an advisory panel convened by the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security backs arguments that many academics have been making for years: The federal government must improve how it treats international visitors and must encourage more American students to study overseas.

The report, “Secure Borders and Open Doors: Preserving Our Welcome to the World in an Age of Terrorism,” was written by a committee of academic and industry representatives. Appointed in late 2006, it was charged with advising the two departments on how to maintain secure borders while ensuring that the country remains open to international visitors.

A number of the committee’s recommendations concern higher education. The report argues that the United States needs “a national policy for attracting international students” and should place “a White House official in charge of coordinating implementation of the policy.” International-education groups have been lobbying for those goals for several years now.

America’s share of the international-student market is shrinking, the report notes, “because our competitors have — and America lacks — a proactive national strategy that enables us to mobilize all the tools and assets at our disposal, and that enables the federal bureaucracy to work together in a coherent fashion, to attract international students.”

The report also urges the passage of the Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act, which aims to send one million students abroad — about five times as many as now study abroad. The House passed a version of the bill several months ago, but the Senate has yet to act on its version.

Among other things, the report also recommends that:

  • The State Department improve visa processing so that people wait no longer than 30 days for a visa interview.
  • The State Department add new positions for consular officers in countries with high demand for visas.
  • Border and immigration officials receive training in cross-cultural sensitivity from universities and other organizations that offer such programs.

Bush Says Foreign-Language Study Key to Spreading Democracy

January 5, 2008 (The Chronicle of Higher Ed) -- President George W. Bush said the U.S. must promote the study of foreign cultures and languages and encourage students from overseas to attend colleges and universities here as part of the strategy against terrorism.

The U.S. government needs diplomats, soldiers and intelligence
officers who are fluent in the languages of the Muslim world in order to promote the spread of freedom and fight the battle against terrorists, he said.

Language skills are ``part of the strategic goals to protect this
country,' Bush said today at an international education event at the State Department in Washington that brought together university presidents from around the country.

Bush also told the education leaders that he wants to adjust visa
policies to allow more students from overseas to study in the U.S. He said he understood the ``frustration' of higher education leaders with the visa restrictions imposed by the federal government after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We want young kids coming from around the world coming to our universities,' he said.

There were 565,039 students from overseas at U.S. colleges in the 2004-2005 academic year, a drop of 1.3 percent from the year before, according to the Institute of International Education in New York. In 2003-2004 the number declined 2.4 percent from the previous year.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in introducing Bush at the
gathering, said the U.S. needs to give as much attention to the study of Arabic culture and language now as it did to Eastern European and Russian culture during the Cold War.

Investment

``This country made a huge intellectual investment in winning the Cold War,' said Rice, who holds a doctorate in international studies and is a specialist on Russia. The nation hasn't made a similar investment in the current struggle, she said.

Bush is planning to ask Congress for $114 million in fiscal year 2007 to help U.S. grade schools increase the number of students learning "critical' foreign languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi and Farsi.

The plan would build upon existing efforts, including a Pentagon-funded program, and create a new National Language Service Corps through which volunteers would promise to work for the federal government in exchange for language training.

Language skills will help U.S. representatives ``convince people of the benefits of a free society,' Bush said. ``You can't convince people unless you can talk to them.'

Education Group Calls for National Foreign-Student Recruitment Strategy

June 23, 2006 (The Chronicle of Higher Ed) -- The United States is losing its position as the destination of choice for international students and must take determined action to reverse the trend, according to a new report by Nafsa: Association of International Educators.

The report, "Restoring U.S. Competitiveness for International Students and Scholars," released this week, says visa restrictions set after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the lack of a national strategy are causing the United States to lose out to growing global competition for international students.

The report calls on the government to develop a strategy to attract foreign students and scholars, coordinate the actions of its various departments, and remove barriers that keep foreign students out. The report follows one from Nafsa on the same issue published in 2003.

"From today's perspective," Nafsa states, "we can see that by the time the report was released three years ago, the era of robust growth in international student enrollments in the United States was already over. There are now fewer international students enrolled in U.S. higher-education institutions than there were in the fall of 2001."

During the 2003-4 academic year, the number of foreign students in the United States dropped for the first time in three decades — by 2.4 percent. Foreign enrollments continued declining the following year. According to the report, preliminary data for 2005-6 suggest that foreign enrollments were flat.

In the meantime, the report says, some countries, such as Britain, have seen their foreign-student enrollments grow steadily, the result of energetic recruiting campaigns that began years ago.

Positive Steps

Nafsa praises the State Department for reducing the visa delays and other obstacles foreign students and scholars face, but says more needs to be done. In a well-publicized incident last February, for example, a prominent Indian scientist, Goverdhan Mehta, dropped his plans to attend an academic conference at the University of Florida in protest over what he called "humiliating" treatment by U.S. officials during his initially unsuccessful request for a visa.

The Nafsa report says that unlike its competitors, the United States has no national strategy to attract foreign students, and the report calls on President Bush to appoint a "senior White House official" to oversee policy in this area. One urgent task for the official, the report says, would be to coordinate policy among the departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Education, and State.

Nafsa calls DHS "the 800-pound gorilla" and says that the department is under no mandate to work with other agencies toward helping to recruit foreign students. As a result, the report states, "the United States government is in worse disarray on this matter than it was before 9/11."

Also among Nafsa's recommendations were: Eliminate the requirement that visa applicants prove they do not intend to immigrate, remove or adjust caps on the number of work visas granted to foreign students who wish to stay on after graduation, allow more flexibility in the visa-application review process, and allow short-term study on tourist visas.

Congress is already working on some of these issues through major new legislation in the politically charged area of immigration. While the bill adopted by the House late last year contains no changes in student-visa regulations, the recently passed Senate bill contains changes that would ease restrictions on foreign students in science, technology, or mathematics specialties, according to higher-education officials monitoring the legislation.

Key Exemptions

The Senate bill would exempt students who seek to enroll in graduate programs in those fields from the need to demonstrate that they do not intend to stay in the United States after their studies. (Those seeking visas for graduate programs in other fields, however, would continue to have to prove they intend to return home.)

The bill would increase from one year to two years the length of time that a student who completes a graduate degree in those fields can work in the United States under a provision known as "optional practical training."

The bill would exempt such students from limits on the number of H-1B classifications issued annually. This classification status allows graduates to work temporarily — for up to several years — in a professional field. For students with a bachelor's or higher degree in other fields, the cap on the number of such classifications would be raised from 65,000 to 115,000 annually and could continue rising each year.

Students graduating with advanced degrees in science, technology, or mathematics would be exempt from limits on the number of green cards issued, which allow holders to become permanent immigrants.

Not all the changes Nafsa has proposed in recent years are contained in the bill. For example, most of the rule relaxations apply only to graduates in science, technology, and mathematics, fields in which employers have been loudly appealing for the right to hire more foreign graduates.

"It's rather narrow," said Victor C. Johnson, Nafsa's associate executive director for public policy. "But it's a start." He said he worried, however, that many of the changes would be lost when the House and Senate reconcile their respective bills.

Amy M. Scott, senior federal relations officer of the Association of American Universities, said that after lobbying the House in recent months, she and other supporters "are hopeful that many of the provisions will end up in the final legislation."

The report is available online (http://www.nafsa.org/Compete Report).