<p>President Harker appears to have a major interest (almost an apparent obsession) with China. UD has been establishing multiple various connections with Chinese Universites and other instituitions over the last 4 years. This certainly is understandable (to a degree) as China is becoming one of the major players in international economics, industry, business and commerce. I don’t believe tuition income is really a factor in bringing in a large number of Chinese students to UD as UD could easily fill up its student body with qualified US students who would also be paying full tuition. So is this due just to the larger number of applications from Chinese students or is there some other reason? I suspect so. The NY Times article does seem to infer that there are concerns about the credibility of admission data from at least some Chinese students. This certainly is a concern. The cheating/plagiarism issue reported in the article is also another concern. The success rate of the Chinese students at UD does seem to mitigate against these concerns to a degree, however.</p>
<p>I certainly don’t have any problem with qualified Chinese students attending UD. Pres. Harker appears to justify the numbers based upon an interest in increasing diversity at UD; again an admirable goal. However, trying to solve this issue by just admitting a large number of students from one specific nationality/ethic origin seems to me to be a little suspect. So there probably is some other reason as well. Its unfortunate that Pres. Harker does not appear to be willing to be more specific about what it is. I suspect it has something to do with the affiliations UD has been trying to set up with Chinese Educational and Business Institutions to promote both educational and business opportunities for all involved. I don’t believe most people would have a problem with this, so why not just admit it also is part of the reason for accepting so many Chinese students to UD.</p>
<p>Finally if you are going to admit so many students with significant cultural differences from a majority of the student population it would seem to be appropriate to initiate a comprehensive orientation (well beyond just language education)to help integrate these students into the rest of the student body. I agree with mch48 that the rest of the student body would also benefit from these types of programs. With this being said I would guess UD has attempted thru various means to do this but has met with limited apparent success so far, probaly due to the fact it is new to them, especially with the rapid increase in numbers in the last several years. Actually you see this problem at many major universities, not just at UD. Hopefully we can all work together to address this issue with benefits resulting to all concerned (thats what a top notch university needs to do). Just my thoughts.</p>