I goggled this issue for my alma mater.
Internationals make up 12.1% of the undergrads.
And an astounding 39.5% of the graduate student population.
https://oiss.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/About_OISS/StatReport2015%20-Final.Public.pdf
^^ Large percentages of international graduate students in technical fields are nothing new. That’s because many American kids prefer to major in fields where they can get a good job right after graduation, instead of pursuing masters/PhDs. If American kids were knocking on grad schools’ doors to pursue higher degrees in engineering or the natural sciences, you’d have fewer international students admitted. But that’s not the case, and hasn’t been for at least decades.
Putting aside revenue concerns…
I think most folks agree that some % of international students is a huge positive.
However, at what point does the growing number of international students become a problem, not only for domestic students and faculty, but also for the international students themselves?
Define what you consider “a problem”.
My last year of undergrad, I lived in a dorm with mostly grad students (need to be 21 to live there) and it was about half international students. I loved it, too. I enjoyed the experience of meeting students from different parts of the world (most from western Europe in this dorm, but another bigger graduate dorm had a lot of Asian students as well), especially since I was unable to study abroad during college.
The big state university I attended was still mostly white Americans.
I’ve just always assumed that well-known and popular colleges and universities always had a sizable contingent of international students…
As in the article…a problem for faculty, due to language issues and a lack of critical thinking skills; for domestic students, as they find it harder to interact with international students who want to stay segregated, and a problem for international students, as in the example above.
It’s much easier to interact with students from your own country when studying abroad. I’ve seen plenty of Americans hangout together when studying in Spain or France or wherever. And I’ve heard them criticized for it by the locals. (The Americans would shrug off the criticism, saying, well, the Spanish/French aren’t all that friendly so what are we to do? It’s a two-way street, often.)
It takes a lot of courage and persistence to forge real relationships with “the other.” Anyone who thinks they’re going to be automatically welcomed into the fold is a bit naive. I still believe Americans tend to be more open to foreigners and more likely to accept/befriend them. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, especially if there may be a perception that as a foreigner you prefer to hang out with other foreigners.
Is the language barrier a self-solving problem, though? If they can’t speak or comprehend at a high enough level to participate in a graduate-level class, then they’ll wash out. Problem solved. It may be that there need to be some reading/writing requirements in place before acceptance (if there aren’t already).
For me, not interacting with certain groups of students is not a tragedy. Hipsters, for instance. If I never have to hear them berate a barista for their soy latte half caf being at the improper temperature, it would not be a bad thing. I use comedy to illustrate a point. Sort of. Hipsters really do annoy me, but I"m not going to tell them their culture, language or values are not allowed in my world.
I submit that many institutions, especially in the Northeast, would have to close their doors or drastically shrink their faculties and programs if it were not for international students. The international students greatly increase the number of seats available to American applicants. Without international students, Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke might no longer be options for women who want a high-quality single-sex college, but the issue applies at a number of public colleges as well.
What in the world are you talking about? I have never seen anything remotely resembling a hipster berating a barista. Most of the hipsters I know have done time as baristas . . . if they aren’t still pulling shifts at a coffee shop or restaurant. They don’t berate their servers, ever.
My sister, the investment manager, who is a lovely person – she will give very precise instructions for her favorite drinks at Starbucks. She doesn’t berate anyone, ever, but she will nicely but firmly point out glaring mistakes if they are made. She is most definitely NOT a hipster. She has hips; that’s about the extent of the similarity.
It was an exemplum. Sorry if it went over your head.
I studied abroad in high school, junior year. There were no Americans to be seen, anywhere, in my school or the town it was in. So I learned a lot of French and made some friends, though frankly didn’t become very close to any. It was a kind of isolating experience, to be the “other” (though I’d had experience with that growing up in a different foreign country so it was OK). As it was if my French friends weren’t around, I took the train into the city alone, strolled, sat at a sidewalk cafe with a coffee, wrote in my journal…wore a beret.
I didn’t really wear a beret.
I imagine it would have been very different if there’d been any Americans around for me to hang out with. That would have been an easy thing to fall into.
The surge in international students from Asia has been a terrific boon to local luxury car dealers as well as landlords of more upscale residences. It’s also leading to new restaurants in the university areas. Yes, there are some drawbacks. One of them is that the local streets have a lot of inexperienced drivers at the beginning fo the year – both inexperienced as drivers and inexperienced at understanding traffic flows. But on the whole it’s a positive development because it adds diversity.
Is there fear that the American college experience is not longer “American?” I grew up in Southern California so going to college with people who didn’t speak English as a first language did not phase me in college. I realize this is not the experience of many people in America - and encountering it for the first time at college would be a huge culture shock. I agree, as parents, we don’t want to pay for an experience that is vastly different than what we imagined the ideal American college experience should be.
But if the worse thing to happen is that a number of colleges can no longer provide an “American College Experience” (whatever that is), what is truly lost? Is it exclusively cultural? Is it economic? Is it both? Aside from the totally predictable culture clash, I don’t think the article articulates what is lost and why American colleges are less because of it.
If the loss is a cultural asset, we’d have to evaluate the value of preserving this asset against the elimination of revenue from foreign families. If these schools can’t survive without the foreign money, it seems preserving a diminished cultural asset is better than losing that asset completely to bankruptcy.
In regard to risk of domestic jobs going to international students, I’ll say this - most companies I’ve worked for prefer domestic job candidates because sponsoring a work Visa for a foreigner is a bureaucratic nightmare and potentially costly – not only legal fees but potential down-time. I had to deal with this for two colleagues over the course of my career (one Canadian, the other French) and both were well-placed executives whom no one suspected were not American so I have to say that we have been losing jobs to western (white) foreigners for quite some time. In any case, if an employer has a domestic candidate readily available to fill the vacancy, I seriously doubt the employer would go out of their way to babysit someone who isn’t a westerner, barely speaks English and needs legal resources to secure a visa.
If anything, having a foreign classmate would expand the job opportunities of fellow alumni – particularly those who aspire to work overseas. If you think your child may work for a multi-national (nearly every major American consumer brand is multi-national these days), having a network of alumni friends overseas would be an advantage.
The article quite clearly states that seats for more qualified American students are lost to Chinese students who arrive woefully unprepared for American college academic success. Additionally it seems as this is a no-win except for the bursars office, in the form of full tuition payments. The Chinese students cluster together and based on the comments in the article, seem rather unhappy with the experience. American students find themselves in classrooms with Chinese students who require the professor to other dumb down or alter the curriculum. additionally it doesn’t seem quite productive to be in a discussion class when your classmates refused to speak because they can’t speak English. There’s going to be quite little networking or expansion for job opportunities with classmates who not only don’t speak English, but who routinely avoid participating in class or taking any class which requires discussion and or reading a text written in English.
I am all for an international experience. I’m a full supporter of having international presence on campus as well as participating in a study abroad. I truly believe a myopic focus on America first is detrimental to everyone. However I do feel very strongly, that this is all about the money. Having these full pay students on campus is what the school wants. To be damned with a holistic admissions policy.
My daughter attends a school that is 30% international (I’ve read it is 2nd highest percentage of international undergrads in the US). There is not a lot of interaction except on sports teams. There are 3-4 international dorms where they like to make international foods and share culture. D has a few internationals in her sorority, so some are looking for the American College experience, but most are just going to class. There are international culture days with food booths and craft activities, but very much segregated social groups.
She call just today and was complaining about a student in her group (assigned by the professor) who can’t carry his weight. He doesn’t write, he doesn’t understand the assignments and who is responsible for which sections of the reports. My D is NOT a patient person and would never choose this student to work with in a class. She doesn’t see the benefit of foreign students on her campus. She is racially Chinese, ethnically as American as can be, and wouldn’t care if she were the only Chinese person on her campus. She does not speak Chinese so never interacts with the Chinese students on campus (most are Taiwanese, so even if she did speak Mandarin, they wouldn’t interact). When we were visiting for a day on campus, we were standing in the lobby of a physics building. First there were two Chinese students talking, and withing a few minutes a large group had formed, all chatting away in Taiwanese. It was clear that this group was together for socializing (probably lunch) and that no other students would feel welcomed because of the language barrier.
I don’t think the international students coming to the US is the same as studying abroad for a semester. The international students want the education, not necessarily the culture. I hope in a study abroad program it is the culture and language experience that is the primary focus, with a few college courses thrown in.
- Diversity is great. Isn't it?
- Athletes and many other US students need expensive remedial classes and special accommodations. IMHO, international students are the easiest and cheapest group of students to accommodate.
- Internationals are smart, academically prepared, eager to study, and they pay HIGH tuition - ideal students for any uni.
< American students find themselves in classrooms with Chinese students who require the professor to other dumb down or alter the curriculum.>
Typically, Asian students are better prepared in math and STEM than many holistic American students.
As an aside, it warms my heart that this generation of Taiwanese kids can speak Taiwanese freely. However, I wasn’t aware that any would be unable to speak Mandarin. Isn’t that still the language used in school?
USC has the highest international population at more than 30%, knocking out a lot of American and alumni (donating) kids, but they are private, they can do what they want. They get the full tuition now, but where do the donations/booster funds come from later? How many of those in the WSJ article will donate back to Urbana? The UC’s have written about this issue as they have seen donations dry up in last 5+ years, as some cultures do not give back, but rather it is about take take take. Short term fix, longer term problem.
Asians are actually quite generous to American universities, including USC:
Ronnie Chan and his wife donated $20 million to USC in 2014 (https://news.usc.edu/68517/occupational-therapy-program-receives-naming-gift-from-chans/)
Not that it needed the money but Gerald Chan (Ronnie’s brother) donated $350 million to Harvard’s school of public health, (http://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-gets-largest-ever-donation-1410148865)
The Fu School of Engineering of Columbia University was named after the Chinese businessman Z. Y. Fu, who had donated $26 million to the school.
NYU Engineering (formerly known as Polytechnic) was renamed the NYU Tandon School of Engineering after a $100 million gift from Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon.
Indian physician and entrepreneur couple Kiran and Pallavi Patel donated $17.5 million some years ago to the University of South Florida. The wife was born in India while the husband was born in Zambia.(http://news.usf.edu/article/templates/?a=4807)