Are we losing the competition for international students?

The National Association of International Educators (NAFSA) has just released a new report Restoring U.S. Competitiveness for International Students and Scholars.  It is an excellent hard-hitting report that deserves wide attention.  It does, however, miss a couple of important issues that I discuss below.

The report notes that the era of robust growth in international student enrollments ended three years age, and that “there are now fewer international students enrolled in U.S. higher education  institutions than there were in the fall of 2001." In addition, senior international scholars are encountering continuing difficulties in coming to the United States, and there is a growing negativity on their part towards this county.  As the report emphasizes, this “intellectual anti-global” stand on the part of the United States has a number of extremely negative implications for our future competitiveness and well-being.

The report outlines some of the major changes taking place in the international student market.  The first of these is that “our traditional competitor countries have adopted and implemented strategies for capturing a greater share of the market.”  I have been astounded as I read  documents out of e.g. Australia and England, where it is made clear that the governments of those countries actually have thought about the value of international students, and have set out aggressive policies to increase their numbers.   The second changes reported by NAFSA is the entry of new competitors in the market, with the European Higher Education Area at the fore.  Under the Bologna process, the greater European area is making very significant changes in higher education, with the goal of creating a seamless higher education by 2010.  As part of the process, English is becoming more common as a language of instruction, thus making the whole area much more attractive to students who wish to have an English language education. Finally, NAFSA reports that many formerly “sending countries” are ramping up their own education systems in order to keep their brightest students to remain at home.   

In the end, the report points the finger of blame for our eroding position directly at our own federal government.  It emphasizes that we still have no strategy for protecting the U.S position in international higher education.  While there are some parts of the government that recognize the critical importance of attracting the world’s best and brightest to our shores, there are other parts that to not, and coordination between agencies seems to be broken.  The report points out several problems with our current policies.  They point out that our visa system is not flexible, and does not recognize the global mobility of talent today.  Talented people increasingly are likely to move from country to country following the best opportunities. The report also underline the major negative implications of the export control system that prevent many of the world’s best scientist from working in our laboratories. Secrecy in today’s globalized research environment can lead to our falling behind, and so must be used much more strategically than we have been doing.

As I travel to other countries, I find an additional growing problem: many people around the world are losing faith in the United States as an exemplar of democracy, morality and high ideals.  A recent FT Harris poll found that a significant percentage of Europeans view the United States as the greatest threat to global stability. College-age students are often very sensitive to what they perceive as moral laxity or duplicity, and consequently this growing perception may well cause us increasing difficulty in the future in international student recruitment.   It will be extremely difficulty to turn this perception around, and public relations efforts will not do it.

One other area that the NAFSA report does not discuss is the increasing economic and technological prowess of other countries, particularly several of those in Asia. I have written about some of the major problems these changes will cause in attracting international students in several previous posts ( And the leader in R&D is.., Where is the engine of the world economy?, and The World in 2020).  Loss of leadership in technology, and as the engine of the world's economy, will make this country much less attractive to international students.  While this is a longer term problem (10 years?) it will be much more difficult to counter if the momentum runs against us in the shorter term due to lack of attention to immediate issues.

There are many very serious long term components to this problem, but we may be on the way to losing the war in the short term unless we actually develop a national strategy that recognizes the importance to our economy and our way of life of international students, scholars, and researchers. NAFSA is right on target in that conclusion.

Comments

[anonymous]

This is very interesting commentary. Do you think that international students specifically undergraduate freshmen find it difficult to study in the U.S. because they do not know the language as well as their American peers?