International Students and Scholars in the United States

Coming from Abroad

Heike C. Alberts, Helen D. Hazen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137024466
• eBook ISBN: 9781137024473
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

An international team of academics and experienced practitioners here bring together scholarship on academic migrants to the United States - the world's top recipient of academic talent. They examine the multidirectional migration patterns of academic migrants, adaptation challenges, and the roles played by international students and faculty.

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INTRODUCTION

Helen Hazen and Heike Alberts

Knowledge flows increasingly freely in today’s global society. Human beings, in whom this knowledge is embedded, are now also highly mobile (Meyer, Kaplan, and Charum 2002), resulting in an integrated global market for the highly skilled. Academics are a significant stream within this global flow of talent. While early educational exchanges were often associated with policies to promote cultural, social, and political ties between specific countries, more recently expansions in international student migrations have been attributed also to declining transport costs and improving technologies (OECD 2010). In addition, increased demand for higher education has in some cases outpaced the capacity of individual countries to provide quality higher education, motivating students to seek opportunities internationally (Bhandari and Blumenthal 2009). Such factors led to a tripling of the number of students studying outside their country of citizenship between 1980 and 2008 (OECD 2010, 313). By 2008, approximately 3.3 million students were pursuing tertiary education abroad, the majority (79%) in the affluent countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (OECD 2010).

Academic careers are often characterized by significant geographical flexibility; indeed, international mobility is frequently considered an integral part of academic work (McNamee and Faulkner 2001; van de Bunt-Kokhuis 2000). As such, “the idea of an extreme volatility of highly skilled people, who are submitted attractive offers and hence are susceptible to move from one place to another overnight, is gaining momentum” (Meyer, Kaplan, and Charum 2002, 310). Academics are nonetheless subject to barriers to migration (see Richardson 2009), and a deeper understanding of their migration patterns is called for.

While international students dominate flows of international academics, significant numbers of individuals also move to take up positions in other countries with their degree in hand. These positions include academic faculty posts, as well as postdoctoral and other research jobs; individuals in these positions are often referred to collectively as “international scholars.” International students and scholars share some of the same motivations, such as the desire to improve their economic circumstances, take advantage of more promising opportunities elsewhere, and experience another culture. Similarly, they encounter many of the same challenges, including cultural dislocation and language issues. There is also a lot of continuity among these two groups as a significant number of international students eventually become international scholars. Efforts to investigate common ground are, therefore, warranted. However, these groups are also distinctive in some ways, particularly in how they are recruited, whether or not they will be remunerated for their work overseas, and their typical age and stage of life. It is therefore important to avoid inaccurate generalizations when analyzing migration patterns of academics. Even among students a distinction has to be made between undergraduate and graduate students in terms of their opportunities to obtain external funding, the degree to which they are actively recruited, and their likely degree of commitment to an academic lifestyle, among other things. This volume attempts to carefully draw out commonalities in the experiences and context of academic migrants, while recognizing variations in the patterns that typify different groups.

The United States is a particularly important case study within discussions surrounding academic migrations owing to its dominant, and rapidly evolving, global position in hosting international students. For several decades, the United States has been one of the most significant recipients of international students, and is today host to the largest number of international students worldwide. However, in the face of increasing competition from other countries (Bevis and Lucas 2007; Mooney and Neelakantan 2004; NAFSA 2003), improving opportunities in major sending countries such as India and China (Mooney and Neelakantan 2004), tightening immigration restrictions and hostility toward foreigners in the United States (Dollag 2004; Hindrawan 2003), and economic constriction, the United States risks losing its position as the primary global recipient of international student and faculty talent (McHale 2011; Lin, Pearce, and Wang 2009; Florida 2005; NAFSA 2003). As Florida (2005, 147) points out, international students are the “canaries of the global competition for talent,” with fluctuations in international student enrollments indicating wider trends in highly skilled migrations. A declining share of international students in the United States could therefore be followed by a decline in the share of highly skilled migrants more generally. The United States may have to make a coordinated and proactive effort to maintain its attractiveness to international students (NAFSA 2007, 2003).

FRAMING ACADEMIC MIGRATION

While the migration of international academics has traditionally been framed within the “brain drain” discourse, with Western countries seen as overwhelmingly benefiting from their ability to attract global talent and draining skills from the low-income world, the reality today is far more complex. New players are emerging on the scene as providers of world-class education, some low-income countries now actively send students abroad to transfer knowledge back to the home country, and many student and faculty migrations have been revealed to be circular rather than unidirectional. Indeed, “mobility” may be replacing “migration” among the highly skilled, reflecting the idea that the movements of highly skilled migrants today are often short term (Vertovec 2002). As a result, many scholars now argue that the terms “brain circulation” and “brain exchange” more accurately describe the increasingly multidirectional nature of international migrant flows and the growing awareness that these movements are beneficial for both sending and receiving nations (Bhandhari and Blumenthal 2011; Brooks and Waters 2011; Goldin, Cameron, and Belarajan 2011; Johnson and Regets 1998; Gaillard and Gaillard 1997). Nonetheless, migrant flows from less to more developed regions continue to dominate (Meyer, Kaplan, and Charum 2002). Since the 1990s, there has also been increasing attention to the transnational position of migrants, recognizing that many migrants maintain close ties to both home and host country, even when the two are geographically distant. Migrants are understood to “develop and maintain multiple relations—familial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political—that span borders” (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Szanton Blanc 1992, 1). Thus, they remain embedded within their country of birth while creating ties to, and potentially even settling permanently in, a new host country.

While global forces have led to increasing numbers of students seeking the best education available from a worldwide pool of universities, institutions and governments for their part have developed internationalization policies to try to capitalize on these cross-border flows. Three main rationales are given for implementing internationalization agendas: economic, political, and academic. From an economic point of view, internationalization prepares individuals for international careers, also benefiting the country as a whole by importing talent and knowledge. Within the political realm, internationalization is seen as contributing to national security, while in academia internationalization is in line with liberal education goals (Childress 2009). Although the notion of internationalization in higher education is supposed to involve the integration of international/intercultural approaches throughout all aspects of university life, in reality many universities have largely focused on recruiting international student and faculty talent in order to further their research agendas and attract investment and fee-paying students (Kelly 2009; Kim 2009; Waters 2008).

INTERNATIONAL ACADEMICS IN THE UNITED STATES

In the United States’ early years international educational exchanges were not always considered positive as the large number of students going to Europe served as a reminder that European institutions were superior to American universities. By 1900 the quality and reputation of American universities was improving, however, and the United States began to attract foreign students looking for a good education and research opportunities (Bevis and Lucas 2007). By the 1920s, the paradigm shift was complete, as international exchanges began to be actively promoted. A milestone was the opening of the Institute of International Education (IIE) as a clearinghouse for international exchanges in the United States in 1919. The IIE published lists of foreign scholarship opportunities, organized exchanges of professors, assisted in the creation of a student visa, and established more uniform evaluation of academic credentials from other education systems (Bevis and Lucas 2007). Today the IIE continues to be active in promoting and documenting international academic exchanges, and publishes annual Open Doors reports—the most important source of data on international students and scholars in the United States.

The most recent Open Doors report shows that 723,277 international students studied at US institutions in the 2010/11 academic year, numbers having increased on an annual basis with very few exceptions since the 1950s (Institute of International Education 2011a). Since the mid-twentieth century, the migration of students and faculty has increased rapidly worldwide, but particularly in the United States. By 2008, 19 percent of all students enrolled outside their country of citizenship were studying in the United States, making the United States host to by far the largest share of international students worldwide. The United Kingdom, with 10 percent of international students, ranks a distant second (OECD 2010, 314), but illustrates the significance of English-speaking countries in dominating the list of major host countries. The consistently high ranking of US research institutions, coupled with generous funding in certain fields, makes the United States a very attractive destination for international students (Goodman and Gutierrez 2011).

Despite these advantages, the United States’ share of the international student market declined from 24 percent of international student enrollees globally in 2000 to 19 percent in 2008 (OECD 2010, 314). Furthermore, there are now about a dozen countries in the world where international students account for a larger proportion of the country’s student body than in the US (Florida 2005). Increases in foreign student enrollments in the United States stopped in the 2002/03 academic year and declined over the next two years, even as other countries’ international student enrollments continued to expand (Institute of International Education 2011a; Lin, Pearce, and Wang 2009). This decline has been linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, after which the PATRIOT Act and the Border Security and Visa Reform Act of 2002 tightened immigration rules and intensified screening procedures for foreigners (Florida 2005). These reforms were designed to address concerns raised over the potential security risks posed by international students, related to fraudulent admissions of students and lack of monitoring (Borjas 2002). While stricter rules, and accompanying delays in issuing visas and increased visa rejection rates, had an influence on students (and scholars) from all countries (see Florida 2005), students from Muslim regions and countries that were seen as sponsors of terrorism were most affected. Hardening attitudes toward immigrants more broadly led to increasing discomfort for both students already in the United States and students contemplating a course of study there (Lin, Pearce, and Wang 2009; Alberts 2007; Bevis and Lucas 2007; McCormack 2007; Field, Mooney, and Neelakantan 2004). In response, numerous initiatives have been proposed or implemented to streamline the student-visa process and reduce the hardships imposed (Bevis and Lucas 2007; NAFSA 2003). In particular, the US government has made an effort to speed up visa procedures and offer opportunities for practical training after graduation in order to encourage renewed growth in international student numbers. However, critics argue that other laws and regulations, for instance related to obtaining drivers licenses and social se...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• 1. Introduction
• Part 1  Migration Patterns and Experiences
• Part 2  Diversity
• Part 3  Challenges and Support
• List of Contributors
• Index