Secure Borders and Open Doors

There is an interesting new government report just out entitled Secure Borders and Open Doors .  The Advisory Committee that prepared the report was charged by the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to try to balance the competing demands of securing our borders against threats, and of maintaining the open doors to international visitors that have served us so well in the past. The co-chairs of the Advisory Committee are John S. Chen, Chairman, CEO , and President, Sybase Inc., and Dr. Jared L. Cohon, President, Carnegie Mellon University. 

The report notes that the number of international visitors has dropped off significantly since 9/11, and that our share of transnational students has dropped as well. They make a number of very good recommendations to try to remedy this situation.  In one instance, however, they go beyond  what might be construed as the limits of their charge to make the following excellent observation:

America is losing competitiveness for international
students for one primary reason, and it is not related
to how the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA ) at State is
performing their operational responsibilities. Rather,
it is because our competitors have – and America
lacks – a proactive national strategy that enables us
to mobilize all the tools and assets at our disposal,
and that enables the federal bureaucracy to work
together in a coherent fashion, to attract international
students. Instead, the U.S. effort is characterized by
a bureaucracy that often works at cross purposes

I am not sure that I would be so confident that our loss of international students has nothing to do with the way we hand out visas, but the thrust of this observation is right on target.   I have commented earlier in these posts (see.e.g. Why has globalization had such a small effect on higher education-and when will that change?) that the US is essentially the only advanced country without an extensive strategy for attracting international students.  There is no doubt in my mind that this lack of national strategy is a significant contributor to our declining ability to attract international students.   I hope this  recommendation will stimulate some thought in the halls of power.  It must be noted, however, that earlier, similar recommendations have had no visible impact (see e.g.Are we losing the competition for international students?)