International Education Matters

A Forum for Issues Pertaining to
Intensive English Programs

Jinghua Shi has no choice but to wait. She was accepted into the University of Georgia's Ph.D. program in plant biology last spring, and sat for her visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on July 8. Two months later she still does not know whether her visa will be granted.

Ms. Shi, who holds a master's degree in botany from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, is running out of time. Classes at Georgia have already started, so she will have to delay her academic plans until the spring -- if, in fact, she is allowed to study in the United States at all. "I am very, very worried and cannot understand the whole process," she writes by e-mail from Beijing. "The long delay has made me miss many classes and brings huge trouble for my further research career."

Fewer Foreigners?

Ms. Shi's case is not unusual. Although aggregate numbers are not yet available, anecdotal evidence suggests that tighter visa regulations, in addition to growing competition from universities in other English-speaking countries, may lead to a decline in foreign-student enrollment in the United States this fall. Ten large research universities contacted by The Chronicle report either a significant drop in foreign-student enrollment or no increase after several years of growth.

University administrators say that some students' visa applications have been denied or delayed because of stricter security measures enacted after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Other potential students chose to avoid the process altogether and applied to universities in Australia, Britain, or Canada, which have been recruiting foreign students more aggressively, and where visa requirements are perceived as less onerous.

Statistics from the U.S. Department of State bear out this anecdotal evidence. Since the terrorist attacks, the government has received fewer applications and granted fewer student visas. From October 1, 2002, to August 1, 2003, the State Department received 270,405 applications for student visas and issued nearly 175,000. That is roughly 57,000 fewer applications received and 65,000 fewer visas issued compared with the same period two years earlier.

If the number of foreign students studying in the United States does, in fact, drop this fall, it will mark a significant shift in enrollment trends. According to the Institute of International Education, which tracks such figures, foreign students have been studying in the United States in steadily increasing numbers since 1948.

While educators understand the need for tighter security measures, they worry that many students are being denied the chance to study in the United States.

"We're very concerned that the cumulative effect of a lot of the actions we're taking after 9/11 may well have the effect of hampering educational exchange," says Victor C. Johnson, associate executive director for public policy at Nafsa: Association of International Educators. Such exchange "has itself been an important part of our national-security strategy for over 50 years. Foreign-policy leaders have long recognized that we gain a huge benefit as a country from being the place where successive generations of world leaders come for their higher education. They leave and go back home with an understanding of this country they wouldn't have had before."

In the 2001-2 academic year, the most recent for which data are available, 582,996 international students studied in the United States and contributed, along with their families, more than $11.95-billion to the U.S. economy, according to Nafsa.

Heightened Scrutiny

Several new security measures have complicated the visa process. A new policy established this summer by the State Department requires U.S. embassies and consulates to greatly increase the percentage of applicants who must complete face-to-face interviews before being issued a visa. (Officials have declined to say what percentage they have set.)

The Student Exchange Visitor Information System, a computerized tracking system of foreign students and scholars known as Sevis, is also causing headaches.

Embassy officials use Sevis data when making decisions during visa interviews. College officials say that the State Department has experienced delays in uploading Sevis information into its database, which has, in turn, led to visa delays

"The image of the U.S. as a place to study has been tarnished because of the reaction to 9/11 and the fact that we now have this Sevis that tracks every move of the students," says Dennis C. Jett, dean of the International Center at the University of Florida.

College officials say the new emphasis on in-person interviews is unfair to students, who need to enter this country by a specific date if they want to enroll in an academic program.

A spokeswoman for the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, Kelly G. Shannon, says that the new regulations are designed to protect the country, not discourage foreign students from coming to the United States. "We certainly continue to facilitate international travel by legitimate travelers," she says.

But university officials say that the visa regulations have, in fact, discouraged students from applying to American colleges. Mr. Jett says he sees evidence of this in the University of Florida's stagnant foreign-student enrollment this fall. The institution enrolled 594 new foreign students last year compared to 582 this year, he says. Between 1997 and 2002, the number of foreign students at the university had grown by an average of 200 a year.

Having spent 28 years at the State Department, Mr. Jett sympathizes with the enormous task that the consulates have been given. "A consular official has to decide whether that person has the economic means and the intent to go to the States and study and then leave the country," he says. "That's always a challenge when you see 200 people a day, three minutes at a time."

Before September 11, he says, officials were more willing to give a person with a marginal case the chance to come to the United States. But "now, of course, nobody wants to be the one that issued a visa to somebody who flew an airplane into a building," he adds.

'Frantic Students'

At the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the number of foreign students enrolled has declined. Rodolfo R. Altamirano, director of the university's International Center, says that about 3,985 international students have enrolled so far this fall compared with 4,100 last year. Like his colleagues across country, he attributes the drop to stiffer security, and is trying to calm students who are frustrated with the process.

"I've encountered a lot of frantic students," he says. "They realize, 'Wow ... I'm almost at the finish line.. ..I'm just renewing my visa, and I was denied. What happened? I'm already a student at your university.'"

Texas A&M University at College Station also expects to see fewer foreign students on its campus this year. According to Suzanne M. Droleskey, executive director of international student services, 809 new foreign students have enrolled this fall. That is 107 fewer new students than last fall, and 151 fewer than the fall of 2001.

Particularly troubling, she says, is that students are being denied visas for reasons she has never heard before.

One of the more memorable examples, she says, involved a U.S. consular official -- she declines to say in which country -- who required a student to show evidence of having signed a year's lease in College Station. How the student would be able to do that prior to entering the country, Ms. Droleskey says, is beyond her. "We've never had anything like that happen," she says, adding that no federal regulation requires such proof.

Ms. Droleskey says students are also running into roadblocks because of a new State Department regulation preventing students and scholars who hold new visas from entering the country more than 30 days before their programs start. "Take that together with the difficulties in the airline industry and the decrease in the number of flights" and "you've got the same number of people as last year trying to get to the U.S. within a similar period of time," she says. Hence the mess.

Foreign-student enrollment at Pennsylvania State University at University Park has also dropped. Although he has not yet tallied the exact number, James F. Lynch Jr., director of the international students and scholars office, estimates that between 900 and 1,000 new international students enrolled this fall compared with slightly fewer than 1,100 last fall, and 1,300 in the fall of 2001.

The university, he says, has lost foreign students to other countries because of the more onerous visa regulations. Last fall a Middle Eastern company had planned to send six freshmen it was sponsoring to Penn State, but then decided to send them to Britain instead, Mr. Lynch says. This summer the company, which he declines to name, again sent 13 freshman it sponsored to universities outside the United States.

"When I called to ask if it had anything to do with the institution," Mr. Lynch says, "the sponsor said 'absolutely not.' It's because they're genuinely more worried about getting a visa on time. They just think the atmosphere is not as hospitable as it once was."

To help foreign students facing delays, Mr. Lynch says Penn State is holding space for them in residence halls and in courses, and is refunding all deposits and tuition checks to students who don't show up at all.

Fanta Aw, director of international-student services at American University, also expects to see fewer students from the Middle East enroll this fall. Before September 11, she says, about 250 Middle Eastern students attended the university. This fall she expects that number to drop below 200.

Based on conversations she has had with officials at embassies of several Middle Eastern countries, Ms. Aw believes that the decline is due to visa delays and the perception that these students will face additional security obstacles upon entering the United States. For example, when Middle Eastern students arrive at American airports, Ms. Aw says, immigration officials take their fingerprints and photographs and tell them they are expected to report back within 30 to 40 days of their arrival.

"Many students felt that people primarily from that part of the world were being asked to do this and that it was not a standard procedure for all groups," she says.

Garrison K. Courtney, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in the Department of Homeland Security, says that the U.S. government has identified 25 countries -- Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Somalia among them -- as having ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. All nonimmigrant males between the ages of 16 and 45 from those countries must go through the special registration process.

"There hasn't been in the past a standard to hold nonimmigrants accountable," he says, so "every single nonimmigrant [from these countries] is going to have to check in and check out."

Noida E. Ashton, academic adviser for the Embassy of Kuwait in Washington, confirms that fewer Kuwaiti students want to study at American universities since the September 11 attacks. About 220 new Kuwaiti students sponsored by the government or private agencies have come to the United States this fall, she says, down from 300 in the fall of 2001.

For the most part, there are fewer visa delays for Kuwaitis than last year, she notes, when the number of new sponsored students studying here dropped to 60. But she feels that young male students are still subject to extra scrutiny. As a result, the Kuwaiti government has begun offering scholarships for Kuwaiti students to attend universities in Canada, and is now exploring university options in other English-speaking countries, such as Australia and Britain, Ms. Ashton says. In addition, two or three private universities have opened in Kuwait this fall.

Drop in Language Enrollment

Programs that teach English as a second language have seen an especially sharp drop in enrollment this year. According to a survey that the American Association of Intensive English Programs conducted in late July, its members experienced a 15.7-percent drop in enrollment, on average, compared with July of last year, and a 28.9-percent drop from July 2001.

"One of our big problems is that the government regulations and new procedures have in mind the traditional college student, who is planning well ahead" to spend many months in this country, says Kelly Franklin, the association's president and the director of international services at Maryville College, in Tennessee.

"So a month or two delay in trying to get a visa is not a big deal," she says. "But for ESL programs that deal more with short-term students, a big part of our clientele," it is a serious problem.

According to Mr. Franklin, one program that responded to the survey said that a college in northern Japan planning to send students to a three-week intensive English course this winter opted not to. When the college officials in Japan learned that students would have to travel and spend the night in Tokyo to have visa interviews, pay for the visas, and return home, they figured it would add $800 per student to the cost of sending them to the ESL program. The Japanese college officials noted that the students could go to Canada and study full time for up to six months without needing to get a visa.

Alexandra J. Rowe, director of English programs for internationals at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, says her language center's enrollment is half of what it was two years ago. So far 49 international students have enrolled this fall, compared with 89 last fall and 96 in the fall of 2001.

"Visa officials in other countries will not give visas to students who want to study English because they tell students they don't need to go to the United States to study English" and "that they can go elsewhere," she says. "So they go to Canada or Australia."

The shortage of students has forced her to cut her staff. Before the September 11 attacks, she employed 40 faculty and staff members. She now has 20.

To make up for the shortfall in students, Ms. Rowe has tried to attract groups of government officials or groups from corporations because they tend to get visas more easily, she says. For example, her program is currently playing host to 19 schoolteachers sponsored by the Fulbright program in Mexico and that country's ministry of public education.

Artur Czarnecki may be one of the more fortunate students. After graduating from Warsaw University of Technology with a master's degree, Mr. Czarnecki got a one-year visa that allowed him to attend the Ph.D. program in civil engineering at Michigan. He arrived in January to start his program.

But when he returned to Poland in June to see his family and renew his visa, American consular officials in Krakow would only renew it for three months. He says he is now scared to go back to Poland and risk not being able to return to this country. "If they won't give me a visa, what then?" he says. "I'll be stuck in Poland and won't finish my program here."

Meanwhile, Yingnan Jiang, Ms. Shi's boyfriend, does not understand what has caused her delay. His visa process went quickly and smoothly, he says, allowing him to start his Ph.D. program in plant sciences at the University of Florida this fall. Since they share the same educational background and are pursuing the same degrees, he wonders why he is here and she is not.

Used with permission of The Chronicle.

This file was updated on November 8, 2003