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International Education MattersA
Forum for Issues Pertaining
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"Education Group Calls for National Foreign-Student Recruitment
Strategy" By BURTON BOLLAG The United States is losing its position as the destination of choice for international students and must take determined action to reverse the trend, according to a new report by Nafsa: Association of International Educators The report, "Restoring U.S. Competitiveness for International Students and Scholars," released this week, says visa restrictions set after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the lack of a national strategy are causing the United States to lose out to growing global competition for international students. The report calls on the government to develop a strategy to attract foreign students and scholars, coordinate the actions of its various departments, and remove barriers that keep foreign students out. The report follows one from Nafsa on the same issue published in 2003. "From today's perspective," Nafsa states, "we can see that by the time the report was released three years ago, the era of robust growth in international student enrollments in the United States was already over. There are now fewer international students enrolled in U.S. higher-education institutions than there were in the fall of 2001." During the 2003-4 academic year, the number of foreign students in the United States dropped for the first time in three decades - by 2.4 percent. Foreign enrollments continued declining the following year. According to the report, preliminary data for 2005-6 suggest that foreign enrollments were flat. In the meantime, the report says, some countries, such as Britain, have seen their foreign-student enrollments grow steadily, the result of energetic recruiting campaigns that began years ago. Positive Steps Nafsa praises the State Department for reducing the visa delays and other obstacles foreign students and scholars face, but says more needs to be done. In a well-publicized incident last February, for example, a prominent Indian scientist, Goverdhan Mehta, dropped his plans to attend an academic conference at the University of Florida in protest over what he called "humiliating" treatment by U.S. officials during his initially unsuccessful request for a visa. The Nafsa report says that unlike its competitors, the United States has no national strategy to attract foreign students, and the report calls on President Bush to appoint a "senior White House official" to oversee policy in this area. One urgent task for the official, the report says, would be to coordinate policy among the departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Education, and State. Nafsa calls DHS "the 800-pound gorilla" and says that the department is under no mandate to work with other agencies toward helping to recruit foreign students. As a result, the report states, "the United States government is in worse disarray on this matter than it was before 9/11." Also among Nafsa's recommendations were: Eliminate the requirement that visa applicants prove they do not intend to immigrate, remove or adjust caps on the number of work visas granted to foreign students who wish to stay on after graduation, allow more flexibility in the visa-application review process, and allow short-term study on tourist visas. Congress is already working on some of these issues through major new legislation in the politically charged area of immigration. While the bill adopted by the House late last year contains no changes in student-visa regulations, the recently passed Senate bill contains changes that would ease restrictions on foreign students in science, technology, or mathematics specialties, according to higher-education officials monitoring the legislation. Key Exemptions The Senate bill would exempt students who seek to enroll in graduate programs in those fields from the need to demonstrate that they do not intend to stay in the United States after their studies. (Those seeking visas for graduate programs in other fields, however, would continue to have to prove they intend to return home.) The bill would increase from one year to two years the length of time that a student who completes a graduate degree in those fields can work in the United States under a provision known as "optional practical training." The bill would exempt such students from limits on the number of H-1B classifications issued annually. This classification status allows graduates to work temporarily - for up to several years - in a professional field. For students with a bachelor's or higher degree in other fields, the cap on the number of such classifications would be raised from 65,000 to 115,000 annually and could continue rising each year. Students graduating with advanced degrees in science, technology, or mathematics would be exempt from limits on the number of green cards issued, which allow holders to become permanent immigrants. Not all the changes Nafsa has proposed in recent years are contained in the bill. For example, most of the rule relaxations apply only to graduates in science, technology, and mathematics, fields in which employers have been loudly appealing for the right to hire more foreign graduates. "It's rather narrow," said Victor C. Johnson, Nafsa's associate executive director for public policy. "But it's a start." He said he worried, however, that many of the changes would be lost when the House and Senate reconcile their respective bills. Amy M. Scott, senior federal relations officer of the Association of American Universities, said that after lobbying the House in recent months, she and other supporters "are hopeful that many of the provisions will end up in the final legislation." The report is available online (http://www.nafsa.org/Compete Report). This file was updated on June 20, 2006 |
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