♠ Posted by Emmanuel in
Americana,
Education
at 11/26/2018 03:19:00 PM
 |
| AMERICA FIRST = COLOREDS OUT in plain English...and that includes foreign students. |
It should be of no particular surprise that the United States is becoming an increasingly unattractive place for foreign students to study in. On the financial side, a strong US dollar is making other Anglophone countries comparatively attractive like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. I've always been bemused by Brexit plunging the British pound to recent depths and in the process benefiting UK educational institutions. On the security side, the mountebank President Trump's barely-concealed hatred for all things foreign--and foreigners themselves--has understandably caused apprehension among would-be students in the US. Recent numbers of new students
tell the tale:
[T[he number of students enrolling for the first time at American colleges
in fall 2017 dropped nearly 7 percent compared to the previous year,
according to the 2018 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange,
an annual survey taken by the Institute of International Education. New
foreign student enrollment in the U.S. dropped by 3 percent during the
2016-17 school year.
American officials at the State Department [
surprise!] emphasize competitive factors for the slowdown in new foreign students:
The authors of the report, which has been supported by the State
Department since 1972, downplayed the role of politics — including
Trump’s policies — in the slowdown. They instead blamed intensifying
competition from universities in other countries and the rising cost of
college in the U.S. “We’re not hearing that students feel they can’t come here,” said
Allan Goodman, president and CEO of IIE. “We’re hearing that they have
choices. We’re hearing that there’s competition from other countries.”
However, American universities are more willing to pin blame on the real culprit here: Trump and his xenophobic rhetoric and policies. To no one's real surprise, Anglophone competitors for international students are really happy about this state of affairs:
American colleges have largely blamed Trump because foreign
competitors use the president’s anti-immigration rhetoric to
aggressively recruit international students and faculty who would have
typically come to the United States for their higher education.
Universities in Canada, China, New Zealand, Japan and Spain all have
seen gains.
Phil Honeywood — CEO of the international education association in Australia, one of America’s biggest competitors — told POLITICO earlier this year
that “We don’t actually need to be negative about the American academy,
as President Trump is doing more damage to ‘brand America’ on his own
than any competitor country ever could.”
Make no mistake, big money is at stake here should Trump target foreign students directly like Chinese students accused of being spies for the PRC. As bad as things are for American universities no thanks to Trump, they can get even worse:
The new student enrollment slowdown could pose economic risks.
International students at U.S. colleges and universities contributed $39
billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 455,622 jobs during
the 2017-18 school year, according to a separate report released Tuesday by NAFSA: Association of International Educators...
China yet again sent the most students in 2017 — 363,341, nearly a third
of all international students in the U.S. That marked a 3.6 percent
enrollment bump, even as the Trump administration has been especially
aggressive toward China, going so far as to consider banning student visas for Chinese nationals.
