Latitudes

Notre Dame won’t consider international students’ financial need

The very small club of colleges that offer need-blind admissions to international students has gained a member, the University of Notre Dame.

During his inauguration ceremony on Friday, Robert A. Dowd, Notre Dame’s new president, announced that the college would become the first faith-based, highly selective institution to become need-blind for both domestic and foreign students.

“It’s not just Notre Dame going out into the world, it’s making our campus more globally diverse,” Dowd told my colleague David Jesse ahead of the announcement.

With Notre Dame’s addition, there are now nine colleges, all private, that offer comprehensive need-blind admission regardless of citizenship — that is, they do not consider students’ ability to pay in the admissions decision and they commit to meeting students’ full demonstrated need. (A larger group of colleges do not consider students’ financial circumstances but also do not pledge to fully cover their costs if admitted.)

Brown University said earlier this year that it would be need-blind for all international undergraduates, beginning with the incoming fall of 2025 class. Bowdoin and Dartmouth Colleges made such a commitment in 2022.

The inclusion of international students in need-blind policies remains rare because few colleges have the resources to extend such a generous pledge. Any appearance of favoring students from overseas could also trip political sensitivities, particularly for public institutions.

Notre Dame has not said how it will pay for increases in financial assistance.

Indeed, for many colleges, foreign students — especially those studying for undergraduate or master’s degrees — are seen as a revenue source. Just 20 percent of international students say an American college is the primary funding source for their education, according to the Institute of International Education, with most relying on personal or family sources or employment.

Dowd said the new policy will help Notre Dame expand its global reach, to Africa and Asia. Over the past four years, between 7 and 9 percent of the entering class has been from abroad. “One of our great strengths that we’ve only begun to tap, and that we want to make the most of, is our connection to the Catholic world,” Dowd said.

For Dowd, the emphasis on international education is personal: As a young seminarian, he spent a “transformative” year abroad in Kenya. He has a master’s degree in African studies and his research is focused on African politics. Earlier in his career, he was Notre Dame’s assistant provost for internationalization.

As I’ve written previously, having an international background is not common for today’s college presidents: Almost half of college presidents report having no overseas experience. Just 15 percent studied abroad, according to a survey by the American Council on Education, and only 8 percent have had an international grant or fellowship for research or teaching, such as a Fulbright scholarship. Five percent were deployed overseas as part of military or civilian government service.

This lack of international experience at the top may be one reason why global engagement is often not a strategic priority for colleges, experts said. Is Dowd, then, a counter-example, a seasoned international educator turned president who went global with his first big policy push?

The U.S. House has passed legislation reinstating the China Initiative, the Trump-era federal probe of researchers’ ties to China that stifled international collaboration and led to claims of racial profiling.

The measure passed, 237 to 180, largely with support from Republicans, who said it was needed to secure intellectual property and protect American campuses from Chinese influence.

The bill is opposed by civil-rights, education, and scientific groups, and by the White House. In a statement, the Biden administration said, if enacted, the legislation would make it more difficult to investigate and prosecute academic and economic espionage by making witnesses and victims hesitant to cooperate. It could feed “incorrect and harmful public perceptions that [the Department of Justice] applies a different standard to investigate and prosecute criminal conduct related to the Chinese people or to American citizens of Chinese descent,” the statement said.

The administration issued tempered criticism of a second higher-education-related bill. It would restrict American colleges that host Confucius Institutes, Chinese-sponsored language and culture centers, or those that have relationships with other “Chinese entities of concern” from receiving funds from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. There may be “more appropriate ways” to combat potential campus vulnerabilities to China, the White House said.

The two measures were part of a suite of China-focused legislation approved by the House last week. Another bill that would prevent federal funds from going to some Chinese biotechnology companies could also force colleges to sever international partnerships with Chinese researchers and labs. It’s uncertain whether the measures will clear the Senate.

Taliban further restricts women’s education

A crackdown by the Taliban’s morality police may crush the educational dreams of Afghan girls and women.

The conservative Islamic group barred education for women beyond the sixth grade when it seized control of Afghanistan’s government three years ago. But in recent weeks, the Taliban has announced new restrictions on women — such as forbidding them from raising their voices in public — as well as stricter enforcement of existing rules.

Despite the ban, educational and nonprofit groups have worked to provide opportunities for Afghan women to study English and other subjects, and particularly in urban areas, many have attended classes in secret. But after the Taliban began warning male teachers, women have stayed home out of fear.

“The entire country has turned into a graveyard for women’s dreams,” one women’s rights activist said.

Male foreign students outnumber U.S. men in master’s programs in science

Male international students studying for master’s degrees in science, engineering, and health now outnumber American men enrolled full time in such programs.

As international enrollments rebounded after the pandemic, male visa holders overtook American citizens and permanent residents, according to data released by the National Science Foundation. In 2022, there were nearly 93,000 of them, surpassing their American counterparts by more than 28,000.

American women account for the largest number of full-time master’s enrollments.

The top fields of study for both male and female international students are computer science and computer and information science, the NSF reported.

Around the globe

Twenty-nine students have been selected as the first recipients of a special Fulbright fellowship to do research around the globe on civil rights.

The American and Chinese governments could be getting closer to renewing a longstanding science agreement, but the U.S. election could delay a deal.

For all the talk about illegal immigration, these would-be émigrés, many of them graduates of American colleges, said the legal system doesn’t work well, either.

A group critical of optional practical training says there is insufficient federal oversight of the work program for international graduates, disadvantaging American workers and leading to fraud.

About half as many study permits could be approved this year by Canada, according to projections, after the government imposed international-student caps.

Saudi Arabia announced plans to allow five foreign universities, including Arizona State, to open branch campuses.

In China, the government is asserting greater control over campuses set up in collaboration with foreign colleges.

Political science in Hong Kong is an “endangered species”after several universities restructured and downgraded their departments, turning them into programs or merging them with other departments. The moves are seen as a response to a four-year-old national-security law imposed by Beijing.

Forty percent of early-career researchers in Hungary say they have been hurt by a ban on European Union funding to many Hungarian universities.

Scientific freedom is not yet mainstream in Africa, a report from the United Nations said.

I discussed international-student success on the ICAway podcast.

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.