Foreign Students Decline to Study at U.S. Universities
The number of foreign graduate students applying to study in the United States has dropped dramatically, according to a survey conducted by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) in early 2004. The precipitous decline, and reports of continuing delays in the processing of international U.S. visa applications, prompted NAFSA: Association of International Educators to issue recommendations in April calling attention to the "prospect of an impending 'reverse brain drain,' in which the United States could lose increasing numbers of gifted foreign scientists to more welcoming countries."
The CGS survey found that more than 90 percent of U.S. graduate schools of all institutional sizes and types reported an overall decrease in international graduate student applications for fall 2004. Applications from China and India—the countries that in recent years have sent the most international graduate students to the United States—decreased most steeply: China's applications declined by 76 percent and India's by 58 percent. Substantial drops also occurred in applications from Korea, Taiwan, Western Europe, and the Middle East. Applications decreased in all major fields, but the most striking declines were in engineering and the physical and biological sciences.
"The alarming declines in applications reported by CGS member graduate schools are in areas critical to maintaining the scientific enterprise and economic competitiveness of our country as well as the cultural and intellectual diversity that contributes to the international renown of U.S. graduate education," says Debra W. Stewart, president of CGS.
Just as the CGS reported its findings, the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, issued a report responding to concerns raised in the higher education community about the length of time it takes for international students to obtain visas to study in the United States. University officials have cited delays in the visa process as a major factor in decisions by top international graduate students to apply to universities in other countries.
The report urged the secretary of state, the secretary of homeland security, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to improve the Visas Mantis system, which performs automatic security checks on foreign visa applicants whose field of study in the United States appears on the government's Technology Alert List. The list, which was expanded in 2002, covers scientific technologies that are believed to pose a potential threat to U.S. national security if knowledge of them were acquired by those hostile to the United States.
GAO researchers examined a random sample of Visas Mantis cases sent for review between April and June 2003. They found that it took an average of sixty-seven days for the security checks to be completed. In addition, their visits to China, India, and Russia in September 2003 revealed an even longer wait for applicants from those countries. The GAO report urges that the review process be sped up significantly.
Responding to the widely reported delays in processing visa applications, NAFSA recommended steps to reverse what it calls "the alarming extent to which international students are apparently voting with their feet by not submitting applications to U.S. higher education institutions for this fall." NAFSA urged Congress and the Department of Homeland Security to address the absence of an overarching visa policy to guide decision making; the lack of a focused approach to reviews that results in repetitive processing of routine cases and takes resources away from cases that require more scrutiny; a need for clear time guidelines to prevent visa applications from being indefinitely lost in the review process; and a lack of balance between resources and responsibilities for those charged with carrying out the policy.
|