“No one knows why an international student was admitted over an American student with the same test scores and GPA except for that university’s admissions officers.”
We may not know for sure, but given that most colleges, even selective ones are need aware for international students should be a good clue. And the uproar over this is more on the economic side than the need for differing viewpoints.
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, your child just simply isn’t who that university is looking for.”
Yes a kid whose parents have money. I’m not saying that these international kids should be deported if they take only online classes.
“I do think international students add to the culture of a university and is generally a good thing.”
They don’t add much diversity, you basically have wealthy international kids interacting with wealthy kids from NY or Boston or bay area. This kids get in not because they’re full pay but also because their families roll in wealth that they can be counted on alumni payments.
“The international student population make up 5.5% of the entire student population of the USA, so it is difficult to make a case that they are driving tuition increase.”
Exactly - so not sure why we’re bemoaning this loss of diverse views of a small percentage. Yes, the economic impact is real no doubt,
I’m not even understanding how you think this is going to happen. It’s not like Harvard admissions is running across the quads right now screaming “Get me the waitlist, we’ve got to admit hundreds of thousands of Americans to replace the foreign students who might not enroll!!” Most of the affected students will not be freshmen, obviously, and some might enroll from wherever they are in the hopes of getting here when this all shakes out. So I’m confused.
It’s a slippery slope to argue about American kids with same stats got their spots taken by international students simply because of money or novelty. What’s next? Why URM with same stats took non-URM’s spots, or non-Asian Americans with lower stats took Asian Americans spots? The Harvard lawsuit by Asian Americans argued exactly that. Instead of 20-25% Asian Americans, Harvard should have accepted 33-38% Asian Americans with the same or better stats. But there are only 6% of Asian Americans in US population… Fairness and equality are never the same. Our founding fathers understood that 244 years ago.
Forcing schools to re-open with hybrid or in-person classes even if the faculty and staff are 60+ is just harmful to real American talents - professors, lab techs and experienced grounds keepers. Before we get hyped up defending or attacking the international students, what about American students who make up 85%-90% of each campus? We already know COVID-19 can cause irreversible lung damages even in Olympians. Now scientists find out that it can cause serious brain damage. (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/08/scientists-warn-of-potential-wave-of-brain-damage-linked-to-covid-19.html) It’s ironic that we focus on the low death rate but not high potential of lung and brain damages to aging professors and students alike, domestic or international.
Let’s hear from actual international students what they want. Maybe we will see while some will not or cannot go home because of violence, bad wi-fi, famine etc.; some did leave our great country of the brave and the free to return to Canada, Asia and Europe as soon as the schools shut down. Why? Because they saw how freely not taking it seriously we were in the month prior compared to their families and friends in Germany or Korea or Australia or Canada. Yes, America is still greatly wealthy and powerful. But this pandemic does NOT fear the grandeur or wealth of the world’s largest economy. Reports from YouTube or FB say some American students in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, France, Spain and Austria do not want to come home. Their parents don’t want them to come home either. They are happy to take full online fall courses in relative safety.
Maybe it is a little presumptuous of us Americans, out of love and compassion, always believe our views are correct, even when it’s about students from 100 to 200 countries different from us. Mexican students are different in their views than Brazilians or Venezuelans. And Africa is not a continent with only one culture or religion. At UN, not every African Union member supported BLM as their slogan against racism. Many woke nations didn’t understand why…
Yes, the law suit from elite schools is great but what if the government stalls, and the Congress and the courts disappear into summer vacations the entire August? Maybe these elite schools ought to devise a Plan B by first finding out what % internationals want or need to stay here and what % are happy to go home before acting like all 9,000 or 10,000 internationals think and act alike. I grew up learning American Exceptionalism to be always keeping an open mind without force-feeding our views upon others, especially those from lands foreign to us.
If you are an international student reading this, please share your thoughts! No matter what politicians or lawyers or bureaucrats say or do, we love you and welcome to USA!
There was an article this morning that included the experience of a Chinese national who left USCal in the spring, paid $5000 for a plane ticket home and took everything as ‘she knew she might not get back.’ She’s finishing her degree online.
Service academy students had to take classes at 3 am if they lived in Hawaii last spring. They made it work. I’ve been thinking what my oldest sister would have done if she’d been sent home from school as a freshman. Of course this was way before the days of computers and multiple phones for the house, but it would have been her, sharing a bedroom with me, 4 brothers, 3 dogs, my grandfather who whistled as he read 3 newspapers cover to cover all day, 2 parents, one central TV that was on for 18 hours a day and one central phone that was in constant use. I think she would have welcomed a class at 3 am!
@LimboKid , I am a US citizen parent of a dual-citizenship kid living in Asia (not China or India). This is a very complicated situation. My son is a sophomore at a Midwest LAC who is currently planning to be back on campus this fall. Looking at what is going on in the US with respect to the coronavirus relative to the levels we have here, I would be perfectly happy if he had decided to take a leave year or continue with remote learning, but it will be his decision, and the school’s. (Remote classes at 3 a.m. were a novelty for a month or so, but at this point, after continuing with a remote summer internship, his entire body clock has been thrown off.) We aren’t directly affected by the ICE decision, as my son has US citizenship, but many of his friends do not, and they do have a problem. In many cases, they attended international schools from kindergarten on, with the expectation that they would attend college in the US. In many cases, their parents also studied in the US. People believe that studying in the US will make their kids more thoughtful, innovative and open-minded people. My husband is a foreign national who obtained his Ph.D. in the US and taught at Ivy-level universities for a number of years before returning home. He has always encouraged his graduate students to go to the US, and he has always wished that our own kids will study there. For us, this is a very personal matter, and we feel incredibly shocked and sad that international students are being used as a political football by this administration. I am sure the kids I know would all prefer to be back at their schools this fall, but as a practical matter, many of them may pivot in another direction. From both a health perspective and an immigration perspective, the US looks scary and unreliable now, in a way it has not in the past. For the first-year incoming international students, I don’t think they will have the option of going to the US, even if their schools are offering in-person classes. The US embassies have been closed for visa applications and interviews for months, so they will not have been able to obtain the necessary visas. For upperclassmen who are here, I don’t know any who have made a final decision to go back - everyone knows it is possible the schools may close again mid-semester, and then what happens. I expect the kids who stayed in the US last spring and are still there will try to stay and continue - they have made a huge investment in the US and leaving now would put that at risk. The situation these kids all face was complicated even before the ICE decision.
@califmom23 there is no privilege to anyone in this mess. I have two kids in the US and not enjoying the fact I can not have them come him right not. Hopefully someone with common sense can fix this
This should have been done already. As soon as school administrators thought they could possibly be online for the fall they should’ve been in contact with ICE and international students to work through this. They knew that the spring extension was temporary based on some loose definition of an emergency. The spirit of the extension was to let international students finish the spring.
These school administrators are smart people who run Billion $ businesses and know the immigration laws. They had no clue this could happen? Their grads probably wrote the laws. They either failed miserably at their jobs or had other motivations…possibly just like the current administration. Political pawns.
One of my family members is teaching at university, using Zoom and Canvas. Classes can be taken live, but they can also be taken asynchronously. The professor can meet online with students who are missing the live, interactive portion. Noone should be taking classes at 3 am. I don’t understand why this is happening.
Many international students live here, have apartments, and a life, for however long they are here, and some settle permanently. They are not all 18 and living in their home countries waiting to enter.
Again, the suspension of rules on online study happened because of COVID. COVID is not resolved.
Trump wants it to LOOK like it’s resolved so he can stay in office. His pathological denial is affecting policy here.
With a pandemic still raging in many parts of the world, especially here in the US, shouldn’t we have more empathy and sympathy for everyone, including the international students, many of whom just want to finish their education in the US they started before the pandemic? They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. A lot fewer international students are likely to choose to apply to study in the US this year if they have other good options.
I hope they get to stay, and I think the ICE decision was a very bad idea. Nevertheless, I think it will withstand legal challenge, and colleges need to act accordingly.
Purdue has joined the amicus brief as did the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (of which Purdue is a member).
“Our nation’s universities need maximum flexibility as they continue to work tirelessly to develop plans and contingencies that will make their campuses as safe as possible for students, faculty, and staff. They were given that flexibility for international students when the pandemic forced classes online this spring and they continue to need it now with such great uncertainty ahead."
I understand the law and the reasons for it, but I think refusing to extend the temporary exemption of this policy has very little to do with the intent of the law. ALL schools are being pressured to reopen in person. I think the ICE ruling and the threat to withhold money from our children’s schools if they don’t reopen in person are both motivated by the administration’s desire for things to look normal.
But the administration can’t really force schools to reopen in person. School governance is a power held by the states. The only real power the administration has is to refuse to allow international students to stay unless some classes are in person, so they use bullying and threats of budget cuts to try to force the rest to ignore CDC health and safety guidelines. The feds only contribute ~8% to local school budgets so they could help districts fund the measures the CDC says they need to keep our children safe, and they could temporarily extend the exemption for international students. Instead, the administration says they disagree with the CDC and colleges should open in person if they don’t want to lose their international cohort. It’s unconscionable for the administration to ignore the safety of our children and intentionally risk the lives of tens of thousands of American educators and staff for their own gain.
They are being pressured to open but don’t think it’s all external forces. The higher ed business model expects kids to be on-campus for F2F classes. That’s how they make money and pay salaries. School administrators want the schools to open because their jobs and salaries depend on it. Also include all the teaching jobs, research money, room and board, and peripheral jobs and it’s clear why they want to open.
There are only a handful of schools that can withstand not having F2F classes this year and I think we see who they are. Sure, some jobs can be done remotely but not all. Does anyone really think we can keep paying people not to work? Eventually that will go away unless we go to UBI which is probably what happens next.
I wish ICE would extend the exemption, but it is undoubtedly within its discretion whether to do so, and all the arguments that it is impossible to open f2f fall flat when most colleges, including Harvard and MIT, are opening for at least some selected subpopulations of students. Colleges could devote more time to ensuring their foreign students can study in their home countries, perhaps through formal agreements with local universities.
I always find it funny that people that argue “only merit should matter “ use as one of their first criteria what side of an imaginary line you were born. What does that have to do with merit?
I think all of this is creating a huge distraction for colleges and universities to get going with the upcoming year. They should figure out quickly who can attend, and offer waitlist spots to cover any shortfall for institutional needs. Everyone is affected severely by this pandemic. All students are having there plans turned upside down. It sucks for everyone. I think Harvard and MIT are doing a disservice to the people who can get here by making this the focus of everything right now. International students will return when this calms down. Not having as many on campus for a year is not harming anyone more than any other aspect of a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. Really tired of everyone fighting everything. I’m scheduled to start school in a hotspot state. Im worried. My parents are worried. Everyone should be worried and concerned for everyone involved. But making the cause of the international student the main focus right now is not reasonable.
People are incredibly entitled. And the fancier the institution, the greater the sense of entitlement. So tired of it. Schools need to get it together and lead. This is all bs. All of the people here pleading and wagging a finger and feeling their cause or their gifted kid should get more than anyone else should just stop the nonsense.
Granted. However, I find it incredible that so many parents here are whining about lack of empathy for international students, when many in this site are students whose lives are upside down right now, including being pushed to go to unsafe campuses, not being allowed in school, losing internships, family financial problems, still sitting on open waitlists and on and on. I am simply expressing my perspective in this robust discussion. People are ridiculous sometimes. That is my opinion.
It’s hardly the MAIN focus right now, but it is A focus. Should they just say “Hey, too bad, so sad, got bigger fish to fry”? Or can people/institutions have concern for more than one issue at a time?