[IP] U.S. Slips in Attracting the World's Best Students
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From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 21, 2004 6:11:44 AM EST
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Commonweal Mailing List
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Subject: U.S. Slips in Attracting the World's Best Students
From the New York Times --
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/national/21global.html?th
U.S. Slips in Attracting the World's Best Students
By SAM DILLON
American universities, which for half a century have attracted the
world's best and brightest students with little effort, are suddenly
facing intense competition as higher education undergoes rapid
globalization.
The European Union, moving methodically to compete with American
universities, is streamlining the continent's higher education system
and offering American-style degree programs taught in English. Britain,
Australia and New Zealand are aggressively recruiting foreign students,
as are Asian centers like Taiwan and Hong Kong. And China, which has
declared that transforming 100 universities into world-class research
institutions is a national priority, is persuading top Chinese scholars
to return home from American universities.
"What we're starting to see in terms of international students now
having options outside the U.S. for high-quality education is just the
tip of the iceberg," said David G. Payne, an executive director of the
Educational Testing Service, which administers several tests taken by
foreign students to gain admission to American universities. "Other
countries are just starting to expand their capacity for offering
graduate education. In the future, foreign students will have far
greater opportunities."
Foreign students contribute $13 billion to the American economy
annually. But this year brought clear signs that the United States'
overwhelming dominance of international higher education may be ending.
In July, Mr. Payne briefed the National Academy of Sciences on a sharp
plunge in the number of students from India and China who had taken the
most recent administration of the Graduate Record Exam, a requirement
for applying to most graduate schools; it had dropped by half.
Foreign applications to American graduate schools declined 28 percent
this year. Actual foreign graduate student enrollments dropped 6
percent. Enrollments of all foreign students, in undergraduate,
graduate and postdoctoral programs, fell for the first time in three
decades in an annual census released this fall. Meanwhile, university
enrollments have been surging in England, Germany and other countries.
Some of the American decline, experts agree, is due to post-Sept. 11
delays in processing student visas, which have discouraged thousands of
students, not only from the Middle East but also from dozens of other
nations, from enrolling in the United States. American educators and
even some foreign ones say the visa difficulties are helping foreign
schools increase their share of the market.
"International education is big business for all of the Anglophone
countries, and the U.S. traditionally has dominated the market without
having to try very hard," said Tim O'Brien, international development
director at Nottingham Trent University in England. "Now Australia, the
U.K., Ireland, New Zealand and Canada are competing for that dollar,
and our lives have been made easier because of the difficulties that
students are having getting into the U.S.
"International students say it's not worth queuing up for two days
outside the U.S. consulate in whatever country they are in to get a
visa when they can go to the U.K. so much more easily."
American educators have been concerned since the fall of 2002, when
large numbers of foreign students experienced delays in visa
processing. But few noticed the rapid emergence of higher education as
a global industry until quite recently.
"Many U.S. campuses have not yet geared up for the competition," said
Peggy Blumenthal, a vice president at the Institute for International
Education.
Still, Ms. Blumenthal said, it remains unclear whether the sudden
decline in foreign enrollments is a one-time drop or the beginning of a
long slide.
Not all educators are expressing concern.
Steven B. Sample, president of the University of Southern California -
which last year had 6,647 foreign students, the most of any American
university - said colleagues who lead other universities had expressed
anxiety at professional meetings.
"But we compete no holds barred among ourselves for the best faculty,
for students, for gifts and for grants, and that's one of the reasons
for our strength," Dr. Sample said. "Now we'll compete with some
overseas universities. Fine with me, bring 'em on."
Certainly many American universities continue to be extraordinary
global brand names. Shanghai Jiao Tong University has compiled an
online academic ranking of 500 world universities, using criteria like
the number of Nobel Prizes won by faculty members and academic articles
published (ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/2004Main.htm). Of the top 20 on the
list, 17 are American. Of the top 500, 170 are American.
During 2002, the most recent year for which comparable figures are
available, some 586,000 foreign students were enrolled in United States
universities, compared with about 270,000 in Britain, the world's
second-largest higher education destination, and 227,000 in Germany,
the third-largest. Foreign enrollments increased by 15 percent that
year in Britain, and in Germany by 10 percent.
The countries exporting the most students were China, South Korea and
India, but the annual global migration to overseas universities
involves two million students from many countries traveling in many
directions. That number is exploding - by some estimates it will
quadruple by 2025 - as economic growth produces millions of new
middle-class students across Asia.
In October, the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation,
an economic forum for 30 leading industrial nations, took note of this
global movement in a study. Stphan Vincent-Lancrin, an analyst at the
organization's headquarters in Paris and an author of the study, said
that traditionally most countries, including the United States, had
tried to attract foreign students as a way of disseminating their
nation's core values.
But three other strategies emerged in the 1990's, Dr. Vincent-Lancrin
said. Countries with aging populations like Canada and Germany,
pursuing a "skilled migration" approach, have sought to recruit
talented students in strategic disciplines and to encourage them to
settle after graduation. Germany subsidizes foreign students so
generously that their education is free.
Australia and New Zealand, pursuing a "revenue generating" approach,
treat higher education as an industry, charging foreign students full
tuition. They compete effectively in the world market because they
offer quality education and the costs of attaining some degrees in
those countries are lower than in the United States. Emerging countries
like India, China and Singapore, pursuing a "capacity building"
approach, view study abroad by thousands of their nation's students as
a way of training future professors and researchers for their own
university systems, which are expanding rapidly, Dr. Vincent-Lancrin
said.
In August a delegation of education officials from Singapore visited
Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan, at the
Ann Arbor campus. They took over a conference room, set up computers
and peppered her with questions about tuition policy, fund-raising,
governance and research, Dr. Coleman recalled. They wanted to know how
Michigan became a prominent university, and how it was run today.
"Eventually they'll reap the benefits of this work," Dr. Coleman said.
"Singapore will create world-class universities. Other countries are
taking the same approach. We're going to have enormous competition.
We'd better be prepared for it."
The rapid changes in India and China have special importance. The
number of Indian students in the United States has more than doubled in
a decade, to 80,000, the largest representation of any country. The
62,000 students from China make up the second-largest group. Graduate
students and degree holders from those countries play a critical role
in American science, engineering and information technology research.
Some 28 percent fewer Indian students applied to attend American
graduate schools this fall than last year, according to a survey by the
Council of Graduate Schools. This matched the overall decline for all
foreign students.
Rabindranath Panda, the education consul at India's consulate in New
York, said that huge private investments in Indian higher education in
recent years had greatly increased options at home for Indian students,
and that those who wished to study abroad were increasingly looking at
universities not only in the United States and Britain but also in
France, Germany, Singapore and elsewhere.
Higher education is undergoing even more sweeping transformation in
China. The number of students seeking a postsecondary degree is
expected to rise to 16 million students by 2005 from 11 million in 2000
and to keep rising thereafter, according to a recent report by the
Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation. Even if only a
small minority of those new students seek a foreign degree, they will
enlarge their already important presence at hundreds of overseas
universities.
But the new wave of Chinese students may not wash into the United
States. Educators say applicants from China face more visa difficulties
than applicants from any country outside the Middle East.
One reason, they say, appears to be that many Chinese students pursue
the science disciplines that set off a screening process known as Visa
Mantis, intended to prevent the transfer of sensitive technology. A
Congressional study found that during a three-month period last year,
more than half of all the Visa Mantis investigations worldwide involved
Chinese students. The especially long visa delays experienced by
Chinese students are a major irritant for many university presidents.
"Chinese students are getting heightened scrutiny," said the president
of Princeton University, Shirley M. Tilghman. "I've asked many people
for the rationale, but I've never gotten an answer that makes sense."
Chinese applications to American graduate schools fell 45 percent this
year, while several European countries announced surges in Chinese
enrollment.
"We had an especially large increase in Chinese students," said Martina
Nibbeling-Wriessnig, a spokeswoman for the German Embassy in
Washington.
The United States is also losing some Chinese scholars, partly because
of China's strategic decision over the last decade to channel special
investments to 100 universities with a view to building them into
world-class research giants capable of winning Nobel Prizes.
In October, Dr. Coleman of the University of Michigan visited Shanghai
Jiao Tong University, which created the online university ranking
system and has also built a vast new campus. Partly because Dr. Coleman
is a biochemist, her hosts took her to visit their new pharmacy school.
It had hired 16 professors, she said - all of them returned from
American universities.
But not only Chinese universities are seeking to lure top faculty
members from American campuses.
"Baseball's World Series includes only American teams," said Michael
Crow, president of Arizona State University. "But higher education is
truly a world series now, because we're competing for students and
faculty against universities all over the world."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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