U.S. Slips in Attracting the World's Best Students

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com>
Date: December 21, 2004 6:11:44 AM EST
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>, Commonweal Mailing List 
<commonweal () yahoogroups com>
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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