Colleges grapple with online-course limits for international students
A return to the federal student-visa policy that limits the number of online classes that international students can take each term is creating new headaches.
Although the end of temporary rules, put in place during the earliest days of Covid-19, had been anticipated, the change has nonetheless been problematic for some students. That’s because colleges, and students, had grown used to having the flexibility of having classes online or in hybrid form, and even with the return to in-person learning, many academic programs continue to have a larger share of courses in virtual formats than they did prior to the pandemic.
But this new normal can create scheduling issues for international students and their advisers. One in five colleges responding to a snapshot survey conducted this spring by the Institute of International Education said their foreign students faced difficulties with visa status and the availability of in-person classes.
Under the visa rules, international students are permitted to take just one online course each term, with few exceptions.
Victor Ihuka, a graduate student at East Carolina University, said he’d had to “shelve” some courses he planned to take this fall because they were not available in person. Meeting the reinstated requirement was an added stressor, said Ihuka, a geography major from Nigeria. Rather than take the courses that most appealed to him, Ihuka, who is an international-student representative for East Carolina’s student government, said his first consideration had become “is it in person? Then it’s, is it relevant?”
An international-student adviser at a public university in the Midwest who is responsible for student-visa compliance said it had been difficult to get some departments and schools to understand the reinstated rules. In particular, her campus’ computer-science department, which enrolls a large number of international students, had continued to offer many courses online, especially during the summer term.
The adviser, who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivities of discussing visa policy, said international-office leaders had tried to make both students and academic departments aware of the return to the longstanding restriction on online courses, even before it was formally announced in May by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Still, some programs continue to offer a substantial number of courses in virtual or hybrid formats, including some that are required for certain majors or concentrations, she said. That could put some graduate students in the position of delaying graduation or taking additional, unneeded courses in order to maintain their visa status.
Because of the flexibility of hybrid scheduling, the adviser said she was concerned that finding courses for international students could be an ongoing issue.
The federal government suspended the in-person requirements in the pandemic’s first days as colleges rushed to move classes online in order to allow international students to stay in the United States without jeopardizing their visa status. Although the Trump administration tried to revoke the Covid-era guidance in July 2020, it reversed course amid an outcry and lawsuits, and the more-flexible policy had remained in place for more than three years.
Laura Burgess, assistant dean of the School of Management at Clark University, in Massachusetts, said she and her staff had anticipated the return to the in-person requirements and had begun work to ensure sufficient course options were available long before registration for the fall semester.
That included prioritizing core courses in person and making sure that some sections of popular classes were offered face to face. The management school also reached out to students about the shift, including to incoming students. Although the Covid rules never applied to such students, they could be given incorrect advice about course registration from older students, Burgess said. “Just because your friend did it, you can’t.”
For example, even as face-to-face instruction resumed, some students took virtual courses while doing internships away from campus.
Being proactive in dealing with the policy change was important for the management school, where about 70 percent of students are visa holders.
As a relatively small program, offering large numbers of courses in dual modes wasn’t feasible. Plus, international students value the on-campus experience, Burgess said. Still, the management school will run some online courses this fall that Burgess had hoped to offer in person, largely because they were taught by adjuncts who could not easily come to campus. That flexibility could end in the future, particularly if enrollments were low, she said.
