Regional

Survey Suggests Ranking Plays Most Critical Role in Decision-Making Process of International Students

International students are more influenced with teaching quality and academic ranking than they are student satisfaction or contact hours when deciding where to study, according to the findings of a new Hobsons‘ survey.

The survey of over 14,000 prospective UK-bound international students found that more than 80 percent choose their study destination based on the quality of the education on offer over factors such as job opportunities in the destination country. Just 12 percent of survey respondents said that coming to the UK was the most important factor in choosing an institution – highlighting, the study says, “the fact that universities are competing globally for international students, not just with other UK institutions.”

In fact, more than 40 percent of potential international students put ‘subject ranking’ ahead of either the country of choice or the university ranking overall as the key to their decision.

Hobsons has warned that if an institution fails to rank in the top 20 percent of universities either overall or for a particular subject, “large student segments are almost completely unavailable to them.”

It has advised universities to lead their marketing efforts with their best rankings figures, particularly if they are in the top quintile. It also advises that fees are not a large factor in potential international students’ decision making, providing they are below a “critical level.”

– Hobsons
March 20, 2104

Canada

Stakeholders Worry Changes to Immigration Rules Could Hurt Education Exports

As more countries compete for the world’s best students and academics, some worry that planned changes to Canada’s Citizenship Act could dent the nation’s efforts to attract international students.

The changes, which are expected to become law later this year, remove a provision that eased the path to citizenship for those who live in the country before becoming permanent residents — a rule that benefited foreign students. The move, some argue, appears to run counter to the government’s pledge to double the number of international students in Canada by 2022.

“We’re taking away one of our major selling points,” said Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants.

Under current laws, every day spent in Canada as a non-permanent resident counts as a half day of residence needed for citizenship application, up to a maximum of two years. In addition to taking away that provision, the government is simultaneously increasing residency requirements for citizenship from three out of four years to four out of six years.

In 2012 Canada welcomed a record number of over 100,000 international students. And over the last three years, more than 23,000 transitioned to permanent residency in Canada.

The government says the change is meant to create a “level playing field” for all citizenship applicants.

“While it may take someone who came to Canada as a foreign student longer to meet the residence requirement under the new rules, the changes are designed to deepen their attachment to Canada,” said Sonia Lesage, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration.

– Macleans
February 21, 2014

Chile

New President Signs Tax Bill to Finance Major Education Reform

The president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, signed a tax reform bill at the end of March and signaled an historic shift in education policy for Latin America’s strongest economy. The initiative is one of three policy priorities for the Bachelet administration and is her first major act since becoming president for the second time on March 11.

The bill seeks to raise US$8.2 billion to finance expanded government education, especially higher education. Much of the funding will come from an increase to the corporate income tax rate from 20 to 25 percent. Despite opposition to the tax increases, the bill is likely to pass as Bachelet has a parliamentary majority in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Congress is set to approve the new law before May 21.

Bachelet’s reform initiative stems from widespread student demonstrations that have grown since 2011. Most notably, participants have demanded fully taxpayer-funded education — including the elimination of for-profit institutions — and mandated open admissions.

– PanAm Post
April 1, 2014

Mexico

U.S. Education Leaders Issue Statement of Support for Mexico’s Academic Mobility Program

North American leaders have issued a joint statement via the White House lending their support to Mexico’s international education initiative, Proyecta 100,000, after it was discussed at the annual North American Leaders Summit (NALS) in Toluca, Mexico in February.

Proyecta 100,000, which also seeks to increase the number of U.S. students in Mexico to 50,000, aims to double the number of Mexican students enrolled at U.S. colleges to 27,000 this year, increasing the number every year thereafter. Last year there were 13,893 Mexican students studying in U.S. higher education institutions, and just 4,167 U.S. students in Mexico.

Bilateral agreements between Mexico and the U.S. include a number of measures to overcome specific barriers to student mobility, including visa processing and tuition fee gaps. One proposal is a reciprocal agreement whereby Mexican students will be eligible for in-state tuition at some U.S. institutions and vice versa. Another is that Mexican students can study on a J visa which can be processed quicker than F-1 or M-1 visa.

– The PIE News
March 11, 2014

United States

New Credit Transfer Agreement Between Community Colleges and University for International Students in Hawaii

Pacific University recently entered into an agreement with Hawai’i Community Colleges to allow international students obtaining their associate’s degree from Kapi’olani Community College (KCC) on the island of Waikīkī as well as the other six community college campuses on the islands that fall under the University of Hawai’I to transfer into the third year of a bachelor’s program.

International community college students will be invited to complete their degree at Pacific University if they have maintained a minimum 2.70 grade point average through their associate’s studies.

Pacific University is looking to expand its international enrollment, and this was a major factor in the decision to formalize the credit-transfer agreement. At KCC, for example, there are currently 650 international students, half of whom are from Japan.

– Pacific Index
March 13, 2014

Owner of California ‘Visa Mill’ Found Guilty of Fraud

In a case that highlighted the growing problem of so-called “visa mills,” a federal jury in March convicted the founder and president of Tri-Valley University of dozens of fraud charges related to a multimillion dollar scheme to illegally provide immigration status to foreign nationals.

The jury convicted Susan Su of 31 counts, ranging from conspiracy to commit visa fraud to money laundering to alien harboring in connection with allegations she ran a scam school from 2008 until her arrest in 2011. Federal prosecutors have yet to recommend a sentence, but Su, 43, faces the possibility of many years in a federal prison.

A federal grand jury indicted Su three years ago, alleging her university, which catered primarily to online students, was a bogus, unaccredited venture designed to rake in millions of dollars from foreigners who sought to obtain student visas so they could remain in the United States.

Another case raising similar allegations involving a different university in Silicon Valley is set to go to trial in July in San Jose federal court. Jerry Wang, the CEO of Herguan University, faces federal fraud charges in that trial, where prosecutors plan to accuse him of running a sham school to sponsor overseas students for the coveted visas.

– Mercury News
March 25, 2014

New Data Show Strong Growth in Recent U.S. STEM Enrollments

New data presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in April suggest that undergraduates at four-year institutions are enrolling in growing numbers in the STEM fields, especially engineering and biology. Much of the growth has come at a time when professional enrollments (especially business and education) are shrinking.

The research, by Jerry A. Jacobs, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, and Linda Sax, professor of education at the University of California at Los Angeles, is based in large part on the “freshman survey” conducted annually by UCLA on a national pool of freshmen at four-year institutions. In their paper, Jacobs and Sax write that this dataset enables them to spot trends much earlier than is possible with the more commonly discussed data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Using data collected by UCLA, Jacobs and Sax write that from 1997 through 2005, the proportion of freshmen planning to enroll in STEM fields declined, hitting a low in 2005 of 20.7 percent. After modest gains in 2006 and 2007, real increases started to show up in 2008. The percentage of freshmen planning to major in STEM increased from 21.1 percent in 2007 to 28.2 percent in 2011, just as the recession was prompting many students and families to focus on the job potential of various fields of study.

The growth was not consistent across STEM fields. Engineering saw a 57.1 percent increase and biology saw gains of 28.2 percent. But the physical sciences saw gains of 11.1 percent, and mathematics was up by 12.6 percent.

– Inside Higher Ed
April 7, 2014

Academic Credit for Apprenticeship Training

The Obama administration in April formally launched a new consortium of colleges, employers and unions aimed at making it easier for students to turn their apprenticeship experience into academic credit. Colleges participating in the consortium must agree to provide academic credit to students who complete certain apprenticeship programs, as decided by third-party evaluators who translate the skills learned during an apprenticeship into credit hours.

The goal of the apprenticeship program, the administration said, is to scale up to the national level the thousands of existing agreements between a single college and regional employer or union to provide credit for apprenticeships. The American Council on Education and the National College Credit Recommendation Service are two third-party organizations that provide colleges with recommendations about how to translate apprenticeship experience into academic credit.

The evaluators compare the requirements of the apprenticeship program either to specific college courses or what would be covered in a semester of college, and make recommendations about how the apprenticeship experience translates into the traditional academic unit of credit hours. Colleges are free to accept or reject those credit recommendations. But those participating in the consortium will now promise to accept those recommendations from ACE, NCCRS or an institution that has a similar evaluation process.

Among the colleges that have already signed on to the program are the Community College of Baltimore County and the Wisconsin and Ohio Community College systems. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union has also agreed to participate, an administration official said.

– Inside Higher Ed
April 8, 2014

Tightened Oversight of Study-work Programs for International Students

The Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) has not been adequately monitoring the 100,000 international students working temporarily during or after their studies at a U.S. institution, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found. It is calling for immediate action, recommending that designated school officials (DSOs) provide more in-depth information to the government.

The report states that “the SEVP program, including the OPT program, needs serious leadership that will consider enforcement a top priority and will work diligently to close loopholes and reduce risks associated with it.”

In the report, the GAO claims that students are at risk of overstaying their legal time limit and schools aren’t able to adequately monitor students’ employment after graduation.

Approval rates for OPT have risen from 28,497 in 2008 to 123,328 in 2013 with just 2.6 percent of applications denied as reason for concern. Under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regulations, OPT is available to foreign students who are enrolled in a college, university, vocational institution in a program other than English language training. Students must have completed at least one academic year before they can work part-time while in school or full time on school breaks. Students may also work full-time for up to 12 months after graduation and can apply for a 17-month extension if they have a degree in a Department of Homeland Security designated STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) program.

The GAO has created a list of recommendations for immediate action. They include SEVP developing guidelines for DSOs to determine whether a job is related to a student’s area of study and requiring DSOs to provide SEVP with information of how they ensure students are in appropriate work. It also calls for current and graduated students to report to DSOs, and requires that DSOs record initial dates of employment, any periods of unemployment and the employers’ name and address in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).

– The PIE News
March 10, 2014

International Graduate Applications from India Skyrocket for Second Year

Applications to U.S. graduate schools from India skyrocketed for the second year in a row in 2014, while those from prospective Chinese students fell – also for the second year in a row. These are a couple of the findings from an annual report released in April by the Council of Graduate Schools, which also showed that overall international applications were up 7 percent versus last year.

The two-year trend of booming Indian applications (and enrollments) and flat Chinese graduate applications bucks a reasonably long-standing trend to the contrary. With years of double-digit annual growth, Chinese students have come to account for one-third of all foreign graduate students on American campuses. However, applications from prospective Chinese students for this fall dipped 1 percent, following a 3-percent drop a year earlier.

In 2013, Indian applications increased 22 percent and enrollments were up a massive 40 percent, so this year’s 32 percent increase in applications is predictive of even bigger enrollment gains.

Speculating on the reasons behind the renewed interest from India, some have suggested that U.S. colleges are benefitting from recently tightened student-visa rules in Britain, where the number of first-time students at English universities from India have halved since 2010, according to a recent report from the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The presumption is that large numbers of Indian graduate applicants are turning their attention from Britain to the U.S.

Aside from India, applications from Brazil, which accounts for about 1 percent of foreign graduate students, were also up significantly, by 33 percent. Applications from South Korea, which ranks behind China and India as the third-largest source of international students, dropped again, by 5 percent.

– The Council of Graduate Schools
April 17, 2014