Welcome to America

In a post-9/11 world, the University intensifies efforts
to bring international students to Binghamton.

The benefits they bring "are more important than ever, given the climate of today's world," said Ellen Badger, director, international student and scholar services (ISSS). "But they are so much harder to achieve." New federal regulations, put in place to defend our nation's borders following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have convinced many international students that the U.S. doesn't want them. This unintended consequence, according to Badger, "has been a reduction in the number of highly qualified students
from other countries who are able to come to the U.S. to study."

According to Open Doors 2003, an annual report on international education published by the Institute of International Education (IIE), the number of international students attending U.S. colleges and universities rose by less than 1 percent between the academic years 2001-02 and 2002-03. In each of the two years before that, enrollments rose by 6.4 percent.

Like colleges and universities throughout the country, Binghamton is working hard to counter negative perceptions among international students, and to continue to attract the best and brightest students from abroad. It's also trying to ensure that qualified international students who want to attend school here successfully negotiate any obstacles that post-9/11 immigration rules might place in their way.

So far, these efforts are mostly paying off. This fall more than 1,200 international students are enrolled at the University, compared with 923 in the fall of 2001. While enrollment of international graduate students fell by 7.5 percent since last year -- from 815 to 754 -- the number of international undergrads climbed from 350 last year to 455 this fall.

But campus officials say that in a post-9/11 world, they must work extra hard to maintain a steady flow of international students into Binghamton.

Rumors magnify real obstacles
"There's a huge amount of distrust now" among students from abroad who want to study in the U.S., Badger said. That sense grows partly from the obstacles some students face as they apply for permission to enter the country and requirements they face when they arrive here. It also grows from rumors that perhaps magnify the bad and gloss over the good, so that even as the situation improves, many students in other countries still feel they are unwelcome in the U.S.

The new rules dictate that everyone applying for a visa to enter the U.S. must appear in person at a U.S. embassy or consulate (Fewer than 3 percent of the millions of foreign nationals who enter the U.S. each year are students, and the sheer volume of people applying for visas has forced some students to wait weeks or months for appointments.) Requirements that certain applicants undergo security checks can also delay the visa decision by 30-60 days. Federal officials say both of those situations have improved, and many fewer students face delays of this magnitude. But stories still circulate about students who have missed the start of school, sometimes setting their educations back by a semester or more.

For Jonathan Velásquez, an undergraduate from Peru majoring in computer engineering, achieving a student visa took "three interviews, two extensions, two I-20s (Certificates of Eligibility), 10 bank statements, special permission from the ISSS to arrive late and a lot more," he said. "I lost the semester, wasted six months in my country doing nothing but paperwork, a few hundred dollars in useless applications [and] more than $1,000 in travel tickets."

Payal Shetty, a student from India working toward a master's degree in computer science, obtained her visa without trouble. But some of her friends who applied for study in the U.S. at the same time weren't as lucky. "One of them gave up. One of them tried and then got his visa after a year. Another guy gave up his plans of coming to America and decided to go to the U.K.," she said.

As they enter the U.S., students -- like nearly all visitors -- must be photographed and fingerprinted. Some must proceed to a secondary inspection site, where officials are also questioning suspected criminals. The whole experience "can be very disconcerting and a little bit scary," Badger said. Once they begin their studies, the University must report details about their activities to the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a new federal database.

Stories that circulate about the trials some face while trying to get to school in the U.S. create special challenges for the people who work to attract international students to Binghamton. So does competition from countries such as Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, which are seizing the opportunity to court students who feel discouraged about their chances in the U.S. "Their governments are actually throwing millions of dollars into recruiting international students," said Jenae Schmidt, senior assistant director of admissions and coordinator of undergraduate international admissions.

In the Graduate School, "our applications from international students are down by 30 to 35 percent," and in engineering and management the number is closer to 40 percent, said Nancy Stamp, vice provost and dean of the Graduate School. Binghamton is not alone. "Across the country, we've seen the applications from international students drop tremendously," she said.

A survey conducted by five organizations that represent institutions of higher learning in the U.S. bears this out. Of 130 respondents to the survey from doctoral and research institutions, close to 60 percent said they had seen a decline in applications from overseas compared with the year before.*

Alumni: fantastic resources
To keep international undergraduates coming to Binghamton, recruiters are working harder than ever, Schmidt said. In the past two years, campus recruiters have visited China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Japan and Thailand to talk with prospective students and their guidance counselors. They will add India to the tour this fall. In each country, Schmidt also met with an official from the U.S. embassy, to learn about changes in the visa applications process.

In some countries, local Binghamton alumni join the recruiters, and they have become "fantastic resources for us," Schmidt said. Some of these alumni call prospective students and their families at home. "To have someone, in their native language, talk to their parents and kind of ease their fears is beneficial to us," she said.

One program that has helped boost international undergraduate enrollment is the Turkey Joint Degree Dual Diploma Program, Schmidt said. This partnership with several universities in Turkey allows Turkish students to earn bachelor's degrees from two institutions by studying for two years in their native country and two at Binghamton. Currently, 28 students attend the University under that program.

At the Graduate School, although international student applications have declined, the good news lies in the high percentage of excellent candidates. "Our pool of applicants is so deep on the international side -- there are so many well-qualified students who want to come here -- that [the drop in applications] didn't really hurt us too much," Stamp said. BU welcomed almost as many new international graduate students this year as last -- 173, compared with 175. "But," she added, "that doesn't mean next year isn't going to be difficult."

The Graduate School continues to recruit in the countries that have traditionally sent the most students, such as China, India, Korea and Taiwan. An experiment at placing ads in Indian newspapers bore little fruit but was worth the attempt, Stamp said. The Graduate School has also created an information sheet to distribute at enrollment fairs around the world.

Beyond that, the Graduate School is stepping up marketing to international students who are currently Binghamton undergraduates and to international undergraduates who attend other nearby schools. It's also doing more recruiting in countries where interest remains strong. "Some of the Eastern Bloc countries are still looking to the U.S.," Stamp said. Beyond that, the Graduate School is boosting efforts to attract domestic students, especially in science and engineering, trying harder to attract underrepresented minorities and promoting the career and professional guidance it offers graduate students.

Universities throughout the U.S. are trying similar tactics, Stamp said.

Education and communication
For international students who are admitted to Binghamton, ISSS tries to ease their way into the U.S. through education and communication. "With our visa documents, we send them extensive information on what they want to bring to the visa interview and, equally important, what may happen in the visa interview," Badger said. Students receive this information via e-mail; it is also available on the ISSS website.

International students who attended orientation in August said "they found the e-mails we sent them exceptionally helpful in preparing for their visa interviews and in being prepared for their entry," Badger said.

ISSS also asks students to report on the results of their interviews, explaining whether they succeeded and why. "We track those things, and where we can be of help, we will." If ISSS can't help the student win a positive decision the first time, it offers suggestions about how to do better on a second attempt.

Educators throughout the U.S. are working with the federal government to try to improve the situation for overseas students who want to attend school here, Badger said. "There's a tremendous amount of communication between the Executive Branch, especially the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, and the professional associations that represent the schools. They're talking all the time."

It's hard to say, though, whether the situation is likely to get easier anytime soon. "It depends a lot on the U.S. government's strategy in all this," Stamp said, noting that other governments, such as the U.K., provide money to help their universities set up recruitment fairs in other countries. "We don't do anything like that."

"It is very difficult to predict what the trends will be, because so many new factors and changing regulations come into play, and it is so difficult to track them all," Badger observed. For example, since Sept. 1, students initiating visa applications have had to pay a new $100 fee to the Department of Homeland Security to help support SEVIS. Campus administrators across the country will be watching spring 2005 admissions to see what impact, if any, this has on students' ability to come to the U.S., she said.

In the face of so many challenges, campus administrators were delighted to see a record 1,209 international students at BU this fall. "Looking at these numbers generated a lot of good feeling among us," Badger said. "It was saying that, in spite of all the barriers and the road blocks and the difficulties, our continuing students are persisting with us, and we've brought in a nice-sized class."

-- Merrill Oliver Douglas, MA '82