For all the talk of building walls and reducing traffic
through America's borders, there's one group of visitors
who continue to enter the United States in record numbers. And Americans
are enthusiastic to have them.
Earlier this month, the U.S. state department announced
it had issued more visas to international students in 2007
than in any other year. Student and exchange visas topped
600,000 for the first time as the 4,200 college and university
campuses across the country welcomed new faces into classrooms
and residence halls.
"We’re making every commitment to increase the number of our degree-earning
international students in our population here," Arizona State University's
Anthony Rock told a campus publication. "The experience of international
students on the ASU campuses is enriching for all. We have much to offer these
students. Our students and faculty, in turn, gain vastly broadened global perspectives
through this engagement with cultures from around the world."
Rock, who is the vice president for global engagement at
the Tempe, Arizona-based institution, made his comments after
ASU reported that its number of enrolled international students
increased 12 percent from last year. That school sees benefits
all around from having foreign students taking courses in
the United States, and it's not alone.
The economic benefit of international students is immense.
They contributed $14.5 billion to the U.S. economy last year,
according to a report by Open Doors, a program run by the
International Institute of Education (IIE). The report, released
this month, said international students in 2006-07 totaled
582,984, a 3 percent increase in enrolment from the previous
year.
With the majority of those students paying vastly higher
tuition fees than their American peers, their impact to the
learning institutions' bottom lines is significant. And,
as San Francisco State's Yenbo Wu pointed out to her campus's
newspaper, it's not only the schools that profit.
"These are the people who will be doing business and
becoming friends and buying U.S. goods," said Wu, who
is the associate vice president for international education
at SF State. "The ties we've created through these international
students are tremendous."
Wu's school has been one of the most aggressive at recruiting
students from outside the country. SF State has more foreign
master's students (2,496) than any other institution in the
nation, according to the IIE, and its total population of
international students grew by a whopping 23.8 percent in
2006-07. There's no doubt SF State'’s contingent is
responsible for a sizeable chunk of the $2.2 billion international
students contributed to California's economy last year.
"I wanted to come to either New York or San Francisco
for the diversity and culture," Anna Zhu, a student
from Australia, told SF State News. "Academics-wise
the university has really eased me into studying here."
The exchange of minds isn’t a one-way relationship.
In fact, more American students are studying abroad than
ever before, according to the IIE. The organization's recently
released findings stated that the number of American students
pursuing their education outside of their homeland totaled
223,534 in 2006-07, an increase of 8.5 percent from the year
prior. The most popular educational destination, with 400
U.S. students, is Cairo, where an American University campus
is located. The number of American students enrolled in the
Egyptian capital is close to three times what it was five
years ago.
Of course, the benefit of hosting international students
is hardly limited to the United States. Great Britain recently
learned how much the international students in London contribute
to the economy of its capital city. A study by Oxford Economics
published on Nov. 20 reported that the 86,000 international
students taking courses in London pump 1.5-billion pounds
into the city’s economy each year.
While the reports by the IIE and Oxford shed light on the
economic advantages to host nations, the gains for the international
students themselves have been widely understood for years.
Not only is the acquisition of education a life-long keepsake,
but the experience of living abroad is often cherished.
"I have studied abroad in both Granada, Spain, and
Brisbane, Australia,” said Jamie Cegelski, an exchange
student from the University of California-Santa Barbara. "I
am having the time of my life and have realized what it is
like to truly live."
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