Uncertainty over law could disadvantage Florida in recruiting foreign grad students
A spokeswoman for Florida’s Department of Education told the University Press, Florida Atlantic University’s student newspaper, in June that SB 846 would have “no impact” on campuses with “large international student populations” or on individual students.
But when the Board of Governors released its interpretation of the new law in September, it said that institutional research-integrity offices must screen foreign applicants for all research and research-related support positions, including undergraduate and graduate students. In separate guidance issued the following month, it said colleges must submit all requests to hire a “foreign principal for academic, administrative, [or] research purposes,” or as research scholars from countries of concern, first to the institution’s Board of Trustees and then to Florida’s Board of Governors for approval.
Meera Sitharam, a professor of computer and information science and engineering and president of the University of Florida’s chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, said she has been told in meetings with university officials that they interpret the guidance to mean that all new graduate assistants on F and J student visas who are from, and currently residing in, the affected countries will be subject to screening by the governing boards. She said she was told that the vetting will not apply to students from countries such as China and Iran who are already in the United States.
In a written statement to The Chronicle, Steve Orlando, the university’s associate vice president for communications, said that the law “restricts agreements including employment contracts for persons whose domicile is in a foreign country of concern. It does not prohibit the enrollment of students from foreign countries of concern or impact scholarships.”
Orlando added, “The university’s obligation is to comply with the restriction, and the administration has communicated the law clearly to deans and center directors.”
He did not respond directly to questions about whether applicants for graduate assistantships would need to be screened or if such hires are now on hold.
Danaya C. Wright, a professor of law and chair of the University of Florida’s Faculty Senate, said the “stringent review process” put in place by the Board of Governors “makes is virtually impossible to have the kind of open-door relationships we have had in the past with students from these countries.”
While the university can admit such graduate students, it may be difficult to employ them as assistants, Wright said. “The law just doesn’t give us much flexibility on this subject.”
A spokesperson for the Board of Governors declined to comment, pointing to its September interpretation of the law. A spokeswoman for Florida State University also said the law would affect its hiring of graduate assistants.
Both Sitharam and Xue, who is president of the University of Florida’s Chinese faculty association, believe that the university and the Board of Governors may be going beyond the original legislative language in interpreting the law in a more far-reaching way. The law makes no mention of graduate students or assistantships.
And both said there was an urgent need for the university to issue a formal policy, given that graduate programs are in the thick of the admission season. Programs typically make offers to doctoral applicants, including assistantships, in the next four to six weeks, and delays caused by screening requirements could put Florida at a disadvantage compared to other colleges seeking to recruit top international students.
Nationally, one in five graduate students is from overseas, and their enrollments grew 10 percent in the last academic year, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.
Faculty members are being given different messages, the Florida professors said. Some departments have sent emails to their faculty members telling them to halt offers for graduate assistantships, while Xue said he was told in a departmental faculty meeting on Tuesday that a policy was being drafted.
“It’s just chaos,” said Sitharam, who said she is also concerned that the Board of Governors’ guidance could require approval of routine faculty collaborations such as writing an academic paper or sharing data with a colleague in a country of concern.
Xue, who originally came to the United States from China as a graduate student himself, noted that student-visa applicants are already subject to vetting, including security screening, by the federal government. He also questioned whether a policy that applies only to graduate assistants from certain countries would violate federal law forbidding discrimination based on country of origin.
The restrictions could be especially detrimental for the many faculty members recently hired by the university as part of efforts to improve its institutional profile, Xue said, because they are trying to build up their research labs. “These graduate students are scholars,” he said. “They’re assets, not liabilities, to the state of Florida.”
Zhengfei Guan, an associate professor of food and resource economics at the University of Florida, said his offer to a postdoc in China has been on hold since August. In email messages he shared with The Chronicle, officials with the university’s research-integrity office cited SB 846 and the Board of Governors’ guidance for the hiring delay.
Guan said he does not view the new law in isolation but as part of a host of measures that he said discriminate against Chinese students and scholars, such as another bill passed this year that bans Chinese citizens from purchasing property in certain parts of the state. Taken together, such policies could deter students and scholars from countries such as China from coming to the University of Florida and other colleges in the state.
“I know many of my fellow Chinese professors feel the climate is so hostile that they would be much better off simply voting with their feet,” Guan said. But although he called the law part of a “dark chapter” for Chinese and Chinese American scholars, he said he intends to stay in Florida.