Latitudes

Is the Common App a harbinger of international enrollment increases?

The number of prospective international students applying to American colleges through the Common App has increased at nearly triple the rate of domestic applicants since 2019-20, according to newly released data.

International applications over that period grew by 33 percent, while domestic applicants rose by 12 percent. International applications for the fall of 2022 are up 20 percent from the prior year, according to the Common App’s March update, the final one of the admissions cycle.

The largest number of international applicants came from China, India, Canada, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

Let me lay out the tea-leaf-reading caveats upfront: Spring applications don’t necessarily translate to fall enrollments, and several college admissions officers have told me they are particularly concerned about yield rates for international students. Because the Common App is used by incoming undergraduates, it doesn’t show graduate-level trends. Only a portion of American colleges use the standardized admissions form.

That said, some 980 colleges are part of the Common App, including institutions that enroll some of the largest numbers of international students, such as New York and Northeastern Universities. (A slightly smaller group of colleges are included in the data set because they have reported multi-year data.) Its near real-time reporting makes it one of the earliest harbingers of potential enrollment trends.

International-student numbers took a massive hit during the Covid-19 pandemic. But foreign enrollments had been softening for several years prior to the global health crisis, due to politics, global competition, and other factors.

Last fall the number of international students increased by 4 percent in a post-pandemic rebound, according to the Institute of International Education.

Trent Kajikawa, a data scientist with the Common App who contributed to the recent analysis, said it was difficult to pinpoint specific causal factors behind the recent application increases, but he suggested that a more-favorable attitude toward international students under President Biden and a move toward test-optional policies by many colleges could have contributed. Standardized tests like the SAT are not administered in countries like China, and the pandemic may have made it more difficult for international students to sit for exams.

But, Kajikawa cautioned, “we really are talking about a very diverse group of students.”

There’s one other cautionary note in the Common App data: While China accounts for the largest share of international applicants, the number of students applying from that country fell this year. It’s the fifth year in a row of Chinese application declines, according to the Common App.

Readers, your on-the-ground insights and observations make my international-enrollment coverage better. Send me a note at karin.fischer@chronicle.com.

Ukraine in the classroom

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Amy B. Shuffelton of Loyola University Chicago shook up her lesson plans for an honors course she was teaching.

Shuffelton, a professor of cultural and education-policy studies, spent a decade in former Soviet satellite states like Poland and knew her students would be curious about what was happening in Ukraine. After giving a crash course on the history and politics of the region, she had students draw parallels between Russia’s actions in Ukraine and the U.S. government’s historical treatment of Native Americans, which had been that day’s lesson.

“Because the students are terrific, all I had to do was provide the materials and ask the right questions, and they came up with the ideas,” Shuffelton said. “It was a beautiful pedagogical episode.”

In college classrooms across the United States, the war in Ukraine is suddenly on the syllabus. Some professors draw on their own deep expertise in and ties to the region. Sometimes the new lessons slot in easily, in courses about international relations, Russian history, and intelligence studies. But faculty members in fields including composition, linguistics, and American history have also drawn connections to their own disciplines.

Maryann Cusimano Love, an associate professor of international relations at Catholic University, said the war has made theory concrete for students in her peace-studies course. They studied earlier Ukrainian protest movements, in 2004 and 2014, and examined how Ukrainians are practicing principles of nonviolent resistance, such as making direct appeals to end the fighting to Russian soldiers and the Russian public.

“I am a big believer in helping students make sense of disturbing headlines and world events, using the safe space of the classroom and the frames of reference of our coursework to make sense out of what can otherwise seem a confusing cacophony,” Cusimano Love said.

In Laman Tasch’s international-relations class at Southern New Hampshire University, students have been applying theories they have learned in the course to examine different aspects of the war, such as the motivations of the Russian government and the potential impact of international sanctions. David Rivera, a visiting assistant professor of government at Hamilton College, has adjusted his course on domestic Russian politics throughout the semester. As Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border he did an overview of the history of the Russian empire to help students understand the “imperial nostalgia” that is one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s reasons for invading Ukraine. A forthcoming lesson on perestroika and the collapse of Soviet communism will focus on the part played by nations like Ukraine then under Soviet control.

At the University of Vermont, students in Susan Munkres’s social-movements class are reading Zeynep Tufekci’s book Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, an examination of the role of social media in modern-day protest movements, and using it to analyze Ukrainians’ use of social media as well as Russia’s online censorship.

For Jeremy Littau, an associate professor of journalism at Lehigh University, the war has underscored major themes of an introductory course he is teaching this spring, about how media companies determine what news is and how they frame perceptions of events, especially when the public knows little about a topic. As an exercise, he asked students what words they would use in a headline or cable-news chyron to describe the situation in Ukraine — such as war, invasion, conflict, or tragedy — and then discussed how language shapes consumers’ views of the news. Amber Dinquel who teaches freshman college composition at Rappahannock Community College in Virginia has also focused on media coverage of the war as a way to help students develop internet literacy skills.

Ukraine has informed courses in democracy, nationalism, and graduate research methods. Jennifer Eidum, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, taught her students about Putin’s rhetoric for war and linguistic differences between Ukrainian and Russian in a sociolinguistics course at Elon University.

Nicholas Sawicki, an art historian at Lehigh, has devoted several class sessions in his 20th-century art course to Ukraine and organized departmentwide discussions. “Anyone can lead a conversation about the war with their students,” Sawicki, a first-generation American whose family is from Ukraine, said. “Even without being a country scholar or area specialist, faculty can do that work, and it can be done critically and thoughtfully. You can guide and inform, from within your own field and the knowledge you have.”

Thanks to everyone who took time to tell me about your approaches to teaching about Ukraine — I only wish I had more space! And thanks to my colleagues at the Teaching newsletter for sharing my call-out. Subscribe to read their weekly insights on improving teaching and learning.

Prominent academics pen letter to Russian colleagues

Alarmed by Russia’s spread of misinformation about the war in Ukraine, dozens of prominent scholars from around the world, including Nobel Prize laureates, have signed a letter appealing directly to Russian academics to debunk false narratives.

“We have learned that your media are telling Russians that we in the West want Russia to become an underdeveloped Third World nation,” the letter states. “This is the opposite of the truth.”

The letter goes on to note Russia’s intellectual and scientific accomplishments and says that the signatories hope for future collaboration and exchange of ideas. But first, the authors write, academics must come together “to end the bloodshed in Ukraine.”

“We must work together for a world without war and a world that values intellectual, economic, and cultural interdependence, not anachronistic nationalism,” the letter states.

Martin Carnoy, a professor of education and economics at Stanford University, is an organizer of the letter, which is now circulating among Russian academics, he said.

Carnoy, a labor economist, first traveled to Russia in 1992, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, and helped start an institute that studies education at HSE University Moscow. In the last couple of years, he said, he noticed a tightening of academic freedoms in Russia.

Carnoy said that he felt “sick” watching the attacks in Ukraine and that he worried for colleagues in both countries. “It’s bad for Russia, but it’s awful for Ukraine,” he said, adding, “There’s a lot of sadness in that letter.”

Meanwhile, in The Washington Post, the columnist Catherine Rampell suggested using an unusual weapon to weaken Russia: brain drain.

Around the globe

Members of the Middle East Studies Association voted in favor of a resolution endorsing an academic boycott of Israel for its policy on Palestine. The boycott would target Israeli universities but not individual scholars or students.

The Association for Asian Studies is investigating an incident in which scholars in mainland China were allegedly pressured to withdraw from online presentations at the organization’s recent conference by the Chinese government.

An American teaching English at a Ukrainian university was released by Russian forces after having been detained for 10 days.

As Congress prepares to hammer out final legislation to bolster American competition in science and research, higher-ed groups have sent a letter to lawmakers highlighting their priorities — and what they hope won’t make it into the bill.

A federal jury convicted a New Jersey man for helping to fraudulently obtain U.S. visas for Chinese government employees who would pose as visiting researchers at American universities.

A federal-claims court ruled that an Indian man who enrolled at a fake university set up as a visa-fraud sting cannot sue the U.S. government for failing to provide him with legitimate educational services.

Southern Utah University will close its Confucius Institute, the latest college to shut down its Chinese-funded language and cultural center amid political pressure.

Students and professors at universities in Afghanistan face new limits on academic freedom.

Eighteen South Korean universities were barred from enrolling international students after previous students illegally overstayed their visas.

Malaysia’s prime minister said foreign students at universities in the educational hub will need to learn the local language.

China will create one million public-sector internships for unemployed college graduates.

And finally...

“I want to believe, but I don’t know what will be our future.” The Daily features the voices of young Afghan women, at once hopeful and heartbreaking.

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.