Over the weekend, I noted this guest essay at the NYT by Princeton historian David A. Bell: Are International Students Good for American Universities? The bulk of the piece echoes things that I have said myself on multiple occasions. He notes the general mission of colleges and universities, the economic advantage of international students, and the enhancement of American soft power, for example.
And then he gets to this.
But if we think of universities as engines of social mobility and promoters of national unity, the story looks different. Many of the most elite American universities have not raised their overall enrollments significantly since the 1970s, even as the U.S. population has risen by 50 percent, making admissions far more competitive. The more slots that go to foreigners, the more challenging the process for homegrown applicants.
He then goes on to elaborate a bit on this issue.
But this is not a good answer to the question “Are International Students Good for American Universities?”
It may be that there is a discussion to be had about the enrollment sizes at Harvard or Princeton. Maybe there is a conversation to be had about the percentage of international students at those schools. But those are complex and nuanced discussions that are not being fostered by the Trump administration’s blanket attack on international students.
Bell is, in my view, being a bit myopic from his office at Princeton. But worse, the NYT and its ilk constantly publish op/eds about higher education that almost always come from the POV of the most elite schools.
There are over 2,000 4-year colleges or universities in the United States. Of those, there are the elite Ivies, some other elite private schools, and a number of elite public flagships; there are also a huge number of schools, indeed the vast majority, that do not fall in this camp. And yet, it often feels like the NYT has only heard of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, with Stanford occasionally tossed in for regional diversity.
There are debates to be had about the role of the most elite schools in our social, economic, and political lives. But if we are going to talk about higher ed in a general sense, we need to understand that “higher ed” is not just The Most Elite Schools + The AP Top 25 in Football (or, really, the Top 10).*
According to the IIE’s annual Open Doors report (I guess we need to change the name under the current administration) from last November, there were over 1.1 million international students in the US, scattered across the country. If you want to look at individual state summary sheets, you will note that even with just the top schools listed, we are not talking about solely elite schools.
I would note that due to the tyranny of the alphabet, Alabama is the one that pops up first. I would further note that the third school listed is Auburn University Montgomery, and the fourth is the University of North Alabama. Neither is an elite institution, and both, especially AUM, are likely to be suffering in the Fall from the Trump administration’s policies towards student visas, as well as the general atmosphere of fear and uncertainty surrounding being an international student in the US. As a percentage of the overall AUM enrollment, that international student number is quite significant.
You can note, too, the projected economic impact by state of these students.
So, sure, we can have conversations about Harvard and friends, but please, please, please stop writing about them as if they are at all representative of higher education.
Back to the column:
Furthermore, while foreign students bring one sort of diversity to U.S. universities, it may not be as great as the diversity provided by Americans of different social backgrounds. A graduate of an elite private school in Greece or India may well have more in common with a graduate of Exeter or Horace Mann than with a working-class American from rural Alabama. Do we need to turn university economics departments into mini-Davoses in which future officials of the International Monetary Fund from different countries reinforce each other’s opinions about global trade?
This may well be true. But it has precious little to do with the Trump administration’s attack on foreigners in general, nor on student visas in particular.
I continue to think that the answer to the essay’s title, “Are International Students Good for American Universities?” is “yes!” This is the time to focus on the general attacks on higher education and on foreigners, and we can worry about whether the elites of the elites need to tweak themselves at some point in the future.
*i.e., “Schools I’ve heard of.”
