Des Moines Register
04-03-06
Foreign interest in graduate study in U.S. rebounds
Officials say they had seen a decline in years after Sept. 11, 2001.
LISA LIVERMORE
REGISTER AMES BUREAU
Ames, Ia. — More international students are likely to apply to attend graduate
school in Iowa and nationwide this year, following a two-year, post-Sept. 11
slump, according to new data from four-year universities, including Iowa State
University and the University of Iowa.
This follows a dip in the number of applications in 2004 and 2005, which
recruiters attributed to a perception of U.S. unfriendliness to outsiders after Sept.
11 and to visa backlogs.
As of March, 2,684 international students have applied to attend graduate school
at ISU in fall 2006, which is an 18.4 percent increase from the 2,267 who had
submitted applications at this time last year, data show.
The numbers are similar at the U of I, where the graduate school has seen a 12.7
percent increase in graduate applications from international students for fall 2006
so far this year, compared with this time last year, when 2,379 had applied.
The number of applicants to the master of business administration program has
increased by 35 percent, and the College of Law applications have gone up 45.2
percent, data show.
Graduate school officials said this rebound gives them a better selection of
applicants.
"You obviously want the highest-quality students you can get coming into the
program," said Carolyn Payne, ISU assistant dean of the Graduate College.
"Students at the graduate school level don't apply to one institution. They apply
to several institutions, and look for the best fit and the best financial package."
Scott King, director of the office of international students and scholars at the U of
I, said the shift occurred after university presidents lobbied the federal
government to make it easier for foreign students to study in the United States.
"In the last year or so, the university presidents have been speaking out," he
said. "I do believe that word gets back to students in foreign countries."
Last fall, ISU President Gregory Geoffroy was among the 15 university
presidents who joined the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board,
which the FBI said was meant to "foster cooperation and understanding"
between the agency and higher education.
The importance of attracting international students to apply to attend schools in
the United States "was a major topic we talked about there," Geoffroy said in an
interview Friday.
"It's hard to know how much influence any of those discussions have," he said.
"Any time leaders in federal government hear university presidents, particularly
with the passion they talk about this issue, it probably has impact collectively
when you put it together."
International students who have already enrolled at ISU applaud the reversal of
post-Sept. 11 trends.
"It's always good thing to interact with people from different backgrounds, said
Yukiko Yamada, who is from Japan and is a doctoral student in cell biology at
ISU.
"It's very good for us to learn how to communicate in English, because you could
do research in different countries and you could still speak English," she said.
Youssef Hanna, a 23-year-old from Egypt, arrived in Ames in January to obtain
his master's degree in computer science at ISU. He said the problems that
occurred for international students after Sept. 11 are "not a problem" now.
"We don't sense the unfriendliness," he said.
In fact, he said, he meets so many international students in his major, he
wonders where the Americans are. "I don't know why the Americans are not
interested in graduate studies like the international students," he said.
At ISU, international student applications for graduate school began dropping in
fall of 2004, when 2,851 international students applied, compared with 5,037 the
year before. The decline continued for fall 2005, numbers show.
Payne, the ISU assistant dean, said that because many more students apply
than actually enroll, she said, enrollment numbers did not go down quite as
dramatically.
Graduate colleges at the U of I also saw slumps in 2004 and 2005 in the
numbers of international students who applied and enrolled, data show.
At UNI, applications from international students dropped only slightly for fall
2005. That university doesn't have the aerospace and engineering programs that
were under pressure after Sept. 11, when the federal government didn't support
visas for students in some of those fields, said UNI assistant director of
international admis- sions Kristi Marchesani .
New studies show the trend of more international students applying for graduate
school are rippling across schools nationwide.
This month, the Council of Graduate Schools, of Washington, D.C., reported
results of a survey that asked 150 institutions to compare their international
student graduate application volumes so far for fall of 2006 with those for fall of
2005.
The results showed an 11 percent increase in that time period for applications.
Nationwide, graduate schools saw a 28 percent decline in graduate applications
for 2004 and a 5 percent decline for 2005 .
The report credits graduate schools, for making their admissions processes more
timely and efficient, and President Bush's National Security Language Initiative,
an effort to dedicate more federal money to teaching foreign languages
Americans, as some reasons for the uptick.