Protesters at Los Angeles International Airport last weekend carried signs with the names of people denied entry after President Trump signed his executive order restricting travel into the United States.Patrick T. Fallon, Reuters
The American campus today is global. Colleges send their students abroad and welcome the best and brightest from around the world, some one million last year, to their classrooms. Research is international, and universities work with partners around the world to create new programs, degrees, and even institutions. More than half of all colleges include internationalization among their top strategic priorities.
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Protesters at Los Angeles International Airport last weekend carried signs with the names of people denied entry after President Trump signed his executive order restricting travel into the United States.Patrick T. Fallon, Reuters
The American campus today is global. Colleges send their students abroad and welcome the best and brightest from around the world, some one million last year, to their classrooms. Research is international, and universities work with partners around the world to create new programs, degrees, and even institutions. More than half of all colleges include internationalization among their top strategic priorities.
But those globalist attitudes put higher education at odds with the nationalist policies of the new Trump administration. Colleges that have prided themselves on working across borders of country and culture now find themselves dealing with a president who campaigned on a pledge to build a wall to keep out foreigners. As higher education was looking outward, President Trump and his supporters embraced a mantra of “America first.”
Colleges that have prided themselves on working across borders now confront a president who has pledged to build a wall.
Last Friday brought the clearest example of that divide when, just a week into his presidency, Mr. Trump signed an executive order imposing a travel ban on all visitors, including students and those with valid visas, from seven largely Muslim countries. The hastily imposed order stranded travelers and led colleges to advise the more than 17,000 students from the affected nations — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen — as well as thousands more faculty and staff not to go abroad during the 90-day ban.
For colleges, the last week has been a mad rush, as they have sought to intervene on behalf of those stuck overseas and to reassure students that, despite the executive order, they would be able to continue their studies uninterrupted.
But the president’s action, and the broader political direction it signals, carries potential longer-term implications. It could hamper recruitment of international students and scholars, complicate, or even quash, overseas partnerships, and diminish U.S. higher education’s standing in the world.
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“A crucial part of the pre-eminence of American higher education is our openness,” says David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College. “I don’t see how we can close ourselves off.”
For colleges, the challenges are twofold: They must make the case for global education to a country where many citizens doubt its value. And they must convince a shaken and skeptical international audience that they still believe in it, too.
A Signaling Effect
Even before the executive order, some campus officials had worried about a “Trump effect” on international recruitment. A survey of prospective students, conducted months before the election, had found that nearly two-thirds said they would not feel welcome on American campuses if the Republican businessman won the White House.
But it was also possible to dismiss such concerns as overblown. After all, except for a few years immediately following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, the number of students seeking to study in the United States has climbed steadily for the last seven decades. Even when events — a financial crisis, a coup at home — led to fall-offs in enrollments from a top sending country, there were students from elsewhere eager for an American degree and the quality it confers. With the possible exception of Hollywood entertainment, higher education has been one of America’s most beloved and durable exports.
Coverage of how the president’s executive order barring all refugees and citizens of six Muslim countries from entering the United States affects higher education.
With the signing of the executive order, however, many international educators fear all bets are off. Though the number of students actually affected by the travel ban is relatively low, less than 2 percent of international enrollments, its impact may be outsized. Images of students and other travelers detained in airports or blocked from getting on flights have been beamed around the world.
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“It’s become concrete,” says Alan Ruby, a senior fellow at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in international education. “It’s a signaling effect, saying, ‘You’re not like us. You’re not welcome here.’ And it will echo and echo and echo.”
That echo could particularly reverberate in the Islamic world — though the order applies to just a handful of countries, Mr. Trump had, during the campaign, called for a broader “Muslim ban.” International advisers on several campuses say they’ve been approached by students from other countries with large Muslim populations wondering if they, too, could face restrictions. Were the ban to be extended to Saudi Arabia, for instance, the effect could be more significant. There are currently 60,000 Saudis on American campuses, making it the third-largest source of foreign students.
Immediately after the election, those opposed to Mr. Trump’s victory were admonished to take his campaign promises seriously but not literally. The imposition of the travel ban, just days into his presidency, has educators and other observers worrying which of his other pledges could become reality.
A trade war with China, for example, would put the United States at odds with by far the largest source of international students on American campuses. China’s state-run Global Times newspaper has already editorialized that the United States should expect retaliation if the Trump administration imposed new tariffs. One reprisal it suggested: Limiting the number of students studying in America.
Hans de Wit, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, says the fact that the current concerns are driven by policy makes this moment distinct from, say, the 2001 terror attacks. “What is happening now is not an incident,” he says, “it’s structural change.”
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A number of colleges have mounted a social media campaign, #youarewelcomehere, posting videos and messages to let prospective students know that American campuses remain open and hospitable. (The effort predates the travel ban.)
A crucial part of the pre-eminence of American higher education is our openness. I don’t see how we can close ourselves off.
Meanwhile, other countries have not been sitting still. Universities across Canada, not exactly known for its hard-sell tactics, took to social media in the wake of the travel ban to remind international students of their country’s welcoming reputation and underscore its more-liberal immigration policies.
The timing of President Trump’s order, coming in the middle of application season, also is tricky for American colleges, says Rahul Choudaha, an expert on global student mobility. A number of colleges have told The Chronicle that applications from abroad are down from the previous year. And Mr. Choudaha says some prospective students could opt to delay their applications for a year, in order to gauge the full effect of the new administration’s policies.
Were that to happen, it could have a real impact on some institutions’ bottom line. In the wake of the economic downturn several years ago, colleges turned to international students — who, at the undergraduate and master’s-degree level, typically pay full tuition — to plug holes caused by deteriorating taxpayer support or declining local enrollments. Nafsa: Association of International Educators estimates that overseas students contributed $32.8 billion to the U.S. economy last year.
Mr. de Wit and a colleague, Philip G. Altbach, warn that small colleges that have become overly dependent on international tuition revenues could face closure if student numbers declined significantly.
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Benefits at Risk
But the impact of international students goes beyond the financial.
Take Iran. Though it’s the 11th-largest source of international students, it punches above its weight when it comes to Ph.D.s — only three other foreign countries accounted for more doctoral students.
Over all, nearly 30 percent of doctoral degrees awarded by American colleges last year went to international students, and in engineering, mathematics, and computer science, fully half of the degrees were earned by those here on student visas. Some disciplines literally couldn’t fill their slots without international students, says Michael McRobbie, president of Indiana University. “We’re putting our talent pool in jeopardy.”
Many of the students return home, helping contribute to their local economies and collaborating on research projects with their former professors and classmates back in America. Others stay in the United States, filling faculty and researcher roles in American colleges. More than any other country since World War II, the United States has benefited from brain gain — it not only brings some of the most talented people to study in its colleges, it keeps them.
If anything, says one college leader, we shouldn’t back away from bringing in international students: ‘We should work harder to bring more people along.’
The brain gain transcends higher education, notes Robert A. Brown, president of Boston University. According to a recent study by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, more than one-third of the founders of American start-ups were born outside of the United States, and two-thirds of those innovators hold doctorates from American colleges. “If anything, we shouldn’t back away” from bringing in international students, Mr. Brown says. “We should work harder to bring more people along.”
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Mr. Brown and other campus leaders also worry that the travel ban could complicate research collaborations. Already, researchers from the seven named countries cannot come to the United States to work on joint research projects or to present at conferences. In addition, there are concerns that, whether stated policy or not, visitors to the United States, including academics, could face increased scrutiny and longer wait times for visas.
Some scholars are even considering a boycott of academic conferences in the United States until the travel ban is lifted. A petition circulating online has drawn thousands of signatures from professors and researchers around the world.
Patti McGill Peterson, who recently stepped down as presidential adviser for global initiatives at the American Council on Education, marvels at the idea of a boycott of the United States. “When did you last hear that!?”
But Ms. Peterson, who is currently working as a consultant, says she also has heard from colleagues around the world who are religious or ethnic minorities who ask whether they’ll be safe in America.
John Hudzik, a former vice president for global engagement at Michigan State University and a frequent writer on internationalization, says he fears that other countries could reciprocate, making it tougher for American academics to obtain visas to attend conferences or do field work abroad.
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In the long term, obstacles to international collaboration have the potential to undercut the global standing of American academics and researchers. Papers with international co-authors, for example, are more highly cited. And global rankings typically factor in international collaborations and reputation.
Mr. Altbach and Mr. de Wit, of Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education, even suggest that American policy could affect overseas programs or campuses of American universities. A number of the campuses, they point out, are in Middle Eastern countries, which may be less enthusiastic about supporting such projects in the wake of the travel ban.
As president of New York University, John E. Sexton spearheaded the building of two international campuses, in Abu Dhabi and China, part of the college’s aggressive international expansion. It would be a “disaster,” says Mr. Sexton, who stepped down as NYU’s president last year, if American colleges pulled back from their global work.
“It would be like retreating into a cave. The benefit would be zero and the cost would be cataclysmic.”
A Public Image Problem
One of the biggest beneficiaries of colleges’ international efforts, Mr. Sexton and others argue, are right here at home: American students.
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The benefits of globalization need to have a face.
Being exposed to a diverse set of ideas, whether studying abroad or sitting side-by-side on campus with classmates from overseas, is critical to preparing students to succeed in an increasingly global workplace. Whether they find a job in their hometown or on the other side of the globe, they will need to be able to work with people from other cultures and backgrounds. In a recent survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, nearly 80 percent of employers said that intercultural skills and the understanding of societies outside the United States were important when hiring recent college graduates.
Such efforts have a long way to go, says Carol Geary Schneider, who recently retired as the organization’s president, but to not expose American students to global ideas and experiences could “hamstring” them in the future.
Even as higher-education officials argue that international exposure gives American students a leg up, many Americans perceive globalization as the enemy. Talk with many of those who voted for Mr. Trump, and they say they fear that foreign competition, that outsiders, could take away their jobs or undermine their way of life.
For them, globalization isn’t something to be embraced, to be prized, to be pursued. It is a source of anxiety, it is something to dread.
Mr. Sexton, of NYU, says that for many people on the economic edge, such concerns are not unfounded. They are real and tangible.
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Colleges’ challenge, he says, is to demonstrate the value of international interconnectedness. To show how international research boosts the American economy or how students from overseas make their own children’s lives richer. “The benefits of globalization,” he says, “need to have a face.”
Corrections (2/1/2017, 12:19 a.m.): This article originally stated incorrectly that overseas students contributed an estimated $32.8 million to the U.S. economy last year. Nafsa estimates they contributed $32.8 billion. The article also misstated the number of students affected by the Trump administration’s new restrictions on travel. It is more than 17,000, not 15,000. The article has been updated with the correct figures.
Karin Fischer writes about international education, colleges and the economy, and other issues. She’s on Twitter @karinfischer, and her email address is karin.fischer@chronicle.com.
Karin Fischer writes about international education and the economic, cultural, and political divides around American colleges. She’s on the social-media platform X @karinfischer, and her email address is karin.fischer@chronicle.com.