International Education Matters

A Forum for Issues Pertaining to
Intensive English Programs

International Educator
Spring 2003
"Keeping the Door Open"
Kyna Rubin

About 9:00 a.m. on September 11,2001, Norman Peterson was sitting in an Atlanta airport lounge in a jetlag-induced fog after a 16-hour flight from Johannesburg, mindlessly watching CNN. "What's that building?" a nearby man, pointing to the TV, asked the groggy Montana State University assistant vice provost for international education. Peterson, on his way to Washington, D.C., to attend a meeting of NAFSA's Strategic Task Force on International Student Access, wound up spending three days at the Marriott Hotel next to the Atlanta airport. The 18-person task force had been scheduled to gather in the nation's capital on September 12. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon delayed their session, but had an equally profound effect on the group's deliberations three months later. "The whole meaning and timetable of the task force was transformed by those events," says Peterson.

If not for September 11, the work of a task force examining how the U.S. government could make a more concerted effort to attract foreign students to its shores would have been uncontroversial. Meeting on December 12, 2001, the representatives of universities, research institutes, exchange organizations, recruiting services, and business were keenly aware of the fresh sensitivities informing their mission, whose genesis had pre-dated the collapse of New York's trade towers. "The question used to be, how do we get the public's attention on these issues?" recounts task force member and Institute of International Education (HE) Vice President Peggy Blumenthal. "This was the first time I was on a task force where the issues we were discussing were already under so much public scrutiny, at least in the press."

Well before September 11, international educators had noticed increasing difficulties that foreign students (from China, for instance) faced in obtaining visas, finding financial support to study in the United States, and getting information about study in America. NAFSA wanted not only to take a fresh look at these problems and what they meant for ensuring foreign students flows but to do so in a strategic, big-picture way. According to Jerry Wilcox, task force chair and director of the University of Texas at Austin's international office, the task force was inspired by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's directive to government agencies to do a better job in "putting a friendly face forward to foreign students- and they have, as have Canada and Australia." Wilcox says that his group tried to look at all the challenges for foreign students who want to study in the United States and to make suggestions for removing them. The task force report, "In America's Interest: Welcoming International Students," was released in mid-January 2003 and focuses on one of two areas receiving stepped-up attention from NAFSA's new strategic thinking (see p.11 for a report summary); the other area --enhancing study abroad -- is being addressed by a separate task force whose report will appear in late 2003.

A Product of September 11
The biggest challenge facing task force members when they regrouped was deciding whether to focus narrowly on what one participant describes as "the 300-pound gorilla in the room," that is, shorter term post-September 11 concerns, or to stick to their original, broader mandate. They chose to do both, though not without some careful tweaking of the report's tone and agenda. According to Wilcox, 95 percent of the report reflects prior issues: The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) already had been well on its way, for instance, and visa denials for China (due not to security but to skepticism about students returning home) had been increasing by 20 to 25 percent.

The 5 percent of the report directly resulting from September 11, says Wilcox, was born from the new "unpredictability" about when and whether US visas would be issued to foreign students, especially but not only to those from Muslim countries. Also, due to September 11 concerns, less emphasis was placed on financial obstacles for foreign students wanting to study in the United States and on the trade imbalance issue, subjects that task force members say previously had been considered high priority. And a brighter spotlight was thrown on regulatory obstacles. However, task force member and Harvard University International Office Director Sharon Ladd says that the 214(b) issue -- referring to the report's suggestion that the "intending immigrant" test stated in section 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act be replaced with a standard "focusing on whether the applicant is a legitimate student" -- existed before the terrorist attacks.

In a larger sense, September 11 helped to crystallize rather than detract from the task force's main goal. The report may be a "thoroughly post-9-11 document," observes Peterson, but he says that, ironically, the task forced decided that the most important thing to do in the new context was to remind policymakers of "the need to reconnect with the enduring value that international students hold for US higher education." International student exchanges would seem less compelling had terrorists not encroached on US soil. Now, say task force members, these exchanges are one of this nation's greatest foreign policy assets. Before September 11, 2001, interactions with the outside world were a "long-term, beneficial, generous thing to do," notes former INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, a task force member. Now, she says, "they are at the heart of a security agenda."

Constituent Reactions
Professionals around the country who believe that foreign students make indispensable contributions to US research and higher education report relief and gratitude for the articulate voice the task force report gives to their concerns at a difficult time. Past calls were piecemeal and didn't approach the foreign student recruitment problem in such a comprehensive manner. For too long, they say, the United States has taken for granted its ample numbers of international students, assuming that their desire to come to the United States is practically an act of nature. Aggressive measures long underway in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to recruit foreign students to their universities -- coupled with barriers posed by post-September 11 US security processes --indicate that the assumption may not hold for long. Nils Hasseimo, president of the Association of American Universities (AAU), says that we now have a situation where continuous foreign student and scholar flows "could be compromised" unless, as the report spells out, the US government and universities work at facilitating student immigration. In addition, the report has inspired at least one recruiting service to work more cooperatively with its competitors. Says Linda Heaney, president of Linden Educational Services, "The task force makes it easy to now say that our first job is to promote US universities, not any one particular recruiter." She and one of her leading competitors held an April 2003 meeting in Washington, DC, to which they invited individuals from the government agencies involved with foreign student intake.

Research universities that rely on foreign talent on their campuses are thankful for the task force's affirmative statement. Stanford University President John L. Hennessy, for instance, finds the report "well thought out" and its recommendations "very reasonable" at a time when his institution worries most about the impact of onerous visa procedures. Even more concerning than short-term refusals or delays, he says, is "the long-term impact that can easily send a message of distrust and isolation rather than welcome." Alice Gast, MIT vice president for research and associate provost, praises the paper for getting across a message that "we in universities and the technological communities understand but that the public probably doesn't understand in the same way."

The task force report complements a proposal released by the American Council on Education (ACE) in spring 2002. The latter document, "Beyond September 11: A Comprehensive U.S. National Policy on International Education," advocates enlarging the ranks of American students who possess global skills and knowledge and ensuring that SEVIS runs effectively and is adequately funded. Nancy Zimpher, who chairs the commission on international programs of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), is pleased to see by NAFSA's report another strong document favoring international student exchange. She has been using the ACE proposal as a "guide-post" for her commission work and welcomes NAFSA's new statement, which, she says, "increases the visibility and centrality of building student exchanges to build global competence" -- her commission's primary goal.

Covering Many Bases
A variety of NAFSA constituents are happy to find their concerns included in the task force report. "The report was sensitive but still made the points we needed it to make," states George Boggs, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges. His organization was one of several associations of higher education to write a formal note of support to NAFSA for the report. International student enrollments in community colleges doubled between 1994 and 2001, according to IIE'S Open Doors, and Boggs wants that trend to continue. "Community college leaders often get questions about spending time and money on recruiting international students by people who believe all of our efforts should be focused on local students," he says. "We would be doing our students a disservice," he adds, "if we did not prepare them to live and thrive in a global society and economy. One of the best ways for students to learn about other cultures is to interact with students from other countries."

Incoming president of the American Association of Intensive English Programs, Kelly Franklin of Maryville College in Tennessee, is delighted that the report looks at short-term programs. "The new visa regulations, like the old ones, virtually ignore this class of students -- not only those who study English but also the MBA students who take a degree in their home country and come here for a three-week stint or a summer." These students, he says, receive conflicting answers from the US government about whether they need an F or a B visa. "The visa regulations need to clarify what these students need to do, and the report addresses this problem," he says. He also observes that while global demand for short-term training is growing rapidly and our competitor countries are allowing students on short-term programs to enter for up to 90 days on tourist visas, the United States, to the contrary, is making it more difficult.

US educators are not the only ones distraught over barriers to foreign students studying in America. Muslim countries that traditionally have sent large numbers of young people to earn an American degree are very supportive of the "In America's Interest" report. Mappa Nasrun, educational and cultural attache at the Indonesia Embassy in Washington, D.C., says that US universities offer Indonesian students "the best" education for a country that, he says, is "moving toward a more democratic society" and needs "agents of development." Due to visa problems and financial barriers, many Indonesian students are choosing instead to head to Australia, he reports, sadly. But he is confident that if conditions "become better" for Indonesian students wishing to go to the United States, they will change course and transfer to American institutions. He was glad to see the task force report's reference to creative institutional links as a way to spur exchanges. He cites U.S.-Indonesian university partnerships as the most promising mechanism for "increasing the bargaining power" of US universities and helping eliminate visa and financial barriers to Indonesian students studying in America. Under these arrangements, Indonesian institutions would handle screening, selecting students "likely to get their US visas approved," he says.

Right Tone, Right Issues?
Most individuals canvassed for this article felt that task force members were successful in producing a document that is hard-hitting while going "as far as is prudent right now," in the words of one university chancellor. MIT's Alice Gast commends the task force for doing "a wonderful job of posing [the report] in the context they pursued." One campus international services director would like to have seen a report more critical of current US government policy but appreciates how counterproductive such an approach would be in the current climate.

Louisiana University Chancellor Mark Emmert feels it is important that NAFSA is standing up and saying "we can't back away from our commitments to international exchange at a time when the instincts of the country are to do the opposite." He rates the report a "good, solid B," because he would have liked the task force to push harder on the need for government to add staff and resources to implement the new regulations (mainly SEVIS) being imposed on foreign students. "Legislative bodies think that universities should be in a position to better control students, but we don't play the role of policeman very well," he notes. "It's inappropriate to expect universities to do this alone-we don't have the authority or the resources. We need staffing in place at the federal level so that we can work on these issues together." Emmert appreciates that this point could best be made "had the report been written in different times."

Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, agrees. The report "nailed the issues," she stresses, but could have bolstered its recommendations to include "a hand-and-glove partnership" between government and higher education institutions and associations. "The best locus of control for recruiting [foreign students] resides in higher education institutions, with the government providing incentives to make this easier." She also wishes the task force had asked government to make its regulatory process "more user friendly."

Another supporter of the report nonetheless faults it for what he sees as two related, weak points --the lack of a non-university president academic on the task force, and the report's failure to address the free flow of information debate. Robert Kaplan, a retired professor of applied linguistics and former NAFSA president, finds the document "a fairly spectacular tour de force, making NAFSA's case quite well." But he would have liked to have seen one or more figures from major academic organizations (such as the American chemical or physical societies, the Modern Language Association, and so on), as well as distinguished faculty members from research universities. Absent that representation, he says, "the academic voice -- as opposed to the administrative voice -- is not there." Says Kaplan, "It is important that the government fix the problems identified by the task force, but there is a danger that, in so doing, the government may assume a role no one wants it to assume." He says it is not clear in the report, for instance, "that the admissions decision belongs absolutely to the academic institution." Government must be free to designate areas in which information flow is restricted, he argues, "but that control must be sane. It is absurd to restrict information that has already been published in Science or Popular Mechanics. The decisions on restrictions must involve academics." These are all, he says, "delicate matters that need attention as part of any national plan."

Mary Dhooge adds that the policy related to designated sensitive areas of study for foreigners needs to be clarified and the screening completed before a student or researcher enters the United States. This way, once students or scholars arrive, universities will have no additional mandates to monitor their participation in certain courses or research. "No one's suggesting that we let down security standards," says the international center director and dean of international education at University of California/San Diego. Dhooge also would have liked the report to mention the benefits of coordinating federal government recruiting of international students with state-level initiatives.

Congressional and Government Ears
Washington task force recommendations are worth little unless they get into the right hands and have some chance of being implemented. Contributors to the report remark that it was composed in a highly charged environment in which national security trumps all else. This reality has led one taskforce member to wonder "whether or not anyone will wish to touch the report with a ten-foot pole." This same person notes, however, that international educators have potentially powerful allies in strange places, including realtors fearful of fewer short-term clients if foreign student flows are stemmed, and hospitals concerned that foreign patients have died waiting for visas to get medical care in the United States.

NAFSA is too small an organization to start a national conversation about welcoming foreign students entirely on its own, admits Vie Johnson, NAFSA's associate executive director for public policy. But NAFSA wanted to start the process. "We see the report as the beginning rather than the end," he explains. It will take "years," he says, to get all the players engaged to figure out how to implement these changes.

Who are the key players that need to ingest the report in order to bring about change? The White House, says AAU's Hasseimo, who thinks that so many different government agencies are involved -- State, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security -- that leadership needs to come from the president. And Congress, despite its many other pressing priorities, he adds. Maryville College's Kelly Franklin says he doesn't expect the legislative aides to whom he distributed the task force report in January during a congressional visit to read it. "It not a magic bullet that will suddenly change things," he states, but it's important to have it to refer to when talking with lawmakers. For instance, Franklin found the economic-loss argument useful on his trip to Washington. "When you talk to legislative aides, as we did, about international exchange, their eyes glaze over. They stop taking notes. But when you mention the economy and job loss, they perk up and the pens start moving again." In his discussions Franklin referred to his college's intensive English language program as "a little program that is like a canary in the mine." It lost six teaching positions this past year because of increasingly low enrollments of foreign students, a trend that began with overseas economic downturns but was exacerbated by the aftereffects of September 11-- especially, he says, students' fear and misunderstanding about their ability to obtain US visas.

Congress aside, the plea to do a better job in attracting international students to US universities should be of broad interest to the US diplomatic and intelligence communities, says Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. "It goes to our image and ability to be understood and have voices around the world who can talk about America in face of hostility toward the United States," she asserts. That said, as the report points out, responsibility for foreign student policy is diffuse. "There is no one point person," observes Meissner. "Changing things would require someone in the administration to take up the cause and press the agenda." She is unaware, she says, of that happening right now.

One of the report's main recommendations, that the various government agencies here and abroad that recruit foreign students coordinate their efforts, cries out to be read by US embassy personnel. Recruiter Linda Heaney argues for better communication between the Department of Commerce's Foreign Commercial Service (FCS), which sponsors US university fairs through American embassies, and US advising centers, which generally are off site. She links improved coordination among US entities engaged in recruitment work with the possibility of imposing higher standards across the board. For example, the FSC charges fees for fair participants, she says, so "anybody can have a booth," even unaccredited programs and non-academic institutions such as travel agencies.

Multiple Pressures for Change
University leaders acknowledge actions they themselves need to take to help ensure foreign student streams. The higher education community "first needs to get its act together and lay out its strategy," says AAU president Hasseimo. He hopes that NAFSA will draw university heads together with government and foundation representatives "to explore their perspectives on these issues."

Capturing the attention of high-level decision makers won't be easy without pressure at the grassroots, cautions one task force member. Peggy Blumenthal says the only way that the report will be effective is if campuses and communities change legislators' perceptions of foreign students "from the bottom up."

With the recent war in Iraq, it is unrealistic to expect significant changes to occur from the task force's work. "It would be naive of us to think that the report will result in an instant turnaround from the post-9-11 mindset," says Norman Peterson. He is, nonetheless, optimistic that the country soon will be prepared to return to a more balanced perspective about foreign students than has until now been conveyed by policymakers and the media. Doris Meissner, too, is hopeful. The success or failure of these types of reports, she observes, isn't a matter of what happens in the first few months after they are released but what happens over the long term "among the people who've been pushing for coherence in these policies for a long time." She is hopeful that as the United States reformulates its foreign policy and better integrates international exchanges with foreign policy goals, an openness to the report will emerge.

Indeed, messages like those delivered by the task force may not receive immediate attention but have a shelf life that shapes the discourse and can be used in unexpected ways. ACE Vice President and Director, Center for Institutional and International Initiatives Madeleine Green recalls being surprised and delighted when, at ACE's annual meeting in February, UNESCO's assistant director general, speaking at the gathering, mentioned how his organization could help the United States fulfill the objectives spelled out in Ace's international education proposal, a report that had come out nine months before. We have to think long-term about these kinds of documents, she says, post-Code Orange, postwar in Iraq. And post-the scene that Norman Peterson watched unfold on an airport TV screen a year and a half ago.

- - Kyna Rubin is a regular contributor to IE.

Used with permission of International Educator.

This file was updated on November 8, 2003