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A global learning village Metro Pittsburgh fifth in attracting college students Sunday, December 31, 2000 By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
It's sundown, and 10 Muslim students assembled in a dormitory lounge have lined up facing east, their shoes removed for worship marking Ramadan.
The daily prayers are routine, save their location, smack in the middle of a Catholic college.
The makeshift mosque at La Roche College is one way the North Hills school is embracing a rapid influx of foreign students. La Roche, which had virtually no international students in 1990, now estimates that one of every five of its 1,200 full-time undergraduates is from outside the United States.
Benchmarks Illustration: Student Impact
Benchmarks Illustration: University Quality
Other Western Pennsylvania campuses also are opening their doors to more foreign students.
The Pittsburgh metropolitan area is fifth among PG Benchmarks regions in how successfully its colleges and universities attract all undergraduate and graduate students. The success by those schools is helping to give a youthful feel to a region with an otherwise aging population.
And increasingly, that youth is an eclectic global mix -- some raised in prosperity and others wracked by memories of war and famine. It's part of a national trend, and it's changing the environment not only at urban schools but on campuses miles from the city.
Undergraduates from China and Ethiopia and the former Yugoslavia are learning side by side with natives of Ambridge and Butler.
That is certainly true at LaRoche, which in 1993 launched what is now the Pacem In Terris Institute, dedicated to helping subsidize the studies of students from war-ravaged and developing nations.
The small school has broadened its mission to reflect the new population and has discussed adding the word "International" to its name. It has hired a full-time administrator to consider ways to make courses such as finance and education more relevant to students from Eastern Europe, Africa and South America.
Language and immersion instruction are in high demand, said Monsignor William Kerr, president of La Roche.
And the campus calendar of events now includes such holidays as Ugandan Independence Day (Oct. 9) and Yemen Unity Day (May 22).
"I think it's important to recognize ... we may live in Western Pennsylvania, but we are part of the world," Kerr said.
The growing ranks of foreign students strolling the tranquil campus in McCandless has rankled a few students and alumni, but Kerr said the school by-and-large is behind the program. The campus still draws most of its students from Allegheny and Butler counties.
"There have been occasional tensions, but not as much as I thought there would be," he said.
"What we've got here is a small community. When 22 percent of your population is from other parts of the world, it forces everyone to interact," Kerr said. "They're forced to come out of their provincial cocoons."
The school learned that early. Some of the first students admitted through the program were Croatians, Bosnians and Serbs, whose homelands were embroiled in violent civil and ethnic war.
"We really didn't have any outbreaks of violence or anger because I think they realized the intent of the program," said Kathleen Sullivan, campus director of Pacem In Terris, which is Latin for "peace on Earth."
That's not to say the program hasn't produced uncomfortable moments over the years.
A student from Ambridge asked one from Macedonia whether people there used knives and forks, and was humbled by the answer. "He said, 'I think we Europeans invented knives and forks,"' Kerr recalled.
A group of students from Africa was stopped and questioned harshly by guards at a store off campus who mistook them for shoplifters.
And, there is plain old culture shock.
Shakir Mohammed, 22, a sophomore from Ethiopia with a double major in business administration and computer information systems, had to get used to Americans' reserved nature and Pennsylvania winters.
And getting news from loved ones back in non-Internet-wired homelands isn't always easy, he said.
"You write a letter and then wait for an answer. That can take a month," he said. "A five-minute phone call can cost $20."
The PG Benchmarks numbers represent totals for all students, both from the United States and abroad. The region's students made up a larger share of Pittsburgh's overall population than in Seattle, Miami, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Portland, Tampa, Kansas City, and Milwaukee. The Pittsburgh area trailed Denver, Cincinnati, St. Louis and San Diego.
Experts say the arrival of tens of thousands of students each year is a boost to the region's economy, from what they purchase in the clothing and record stores to the meals they buy to the concerts and movies they attend. Those from foreign countries also provide a measure of diversity.
Nationally, what foreign students spend on tuition and living expenses represents a $12 billion industry, according to the Institute for International Education in New York City. Last month, the group announced that the number of foreign students in the United States had grown by 5 percent to a record 514,723 students, the second-largest gain in a decade.
The organization says the benefits of those students continue to accrue long after they graduate.
"When these students return home, they take with them an appreciation of American values, culture and society that contributes to improved bilateral relations, business relationships and cultural ties," said William Bader, assistant secretary of state for cultural and educational affairs.
Allegheny County ranks 33rd among the top 100 counties for international students, according to the institute. Many of them attend classes at Pittsburgh's three major universities.
The 2,021 international students at Carnegie Mellon University account for 24 percent of the school's 8,514 students. The largest group, 341, is from India, followed by 273 from China; 179 from Korea; 85 from Taiwan; and 78 each from Canada, Singapore and Turkey.
At the University of Pittsburgh's main campus in Oakland, there are 1,633 foreign students, 6 percent of the total. The countries most represented are China, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.
Duquesne University has 532 foreign students, or 5 percent of the total enrollment, double the number from a decade ago. They come from 110 nations including China, India, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Muslim students on the campus hold daily prayers in an international prayer room in Towers residence hall.
Like other schools, Carnegie Mellon offers foreign students orientation when they arrive and counseling on everything from tax laws to how much participation in class is expected by American instructors.
Even so, students from some parts of the world can be thrown for a loop -- sometimes by something as simple as an American habit of saying, "Hi, how are you" while passing on the street.
"Some [students] say, 'Why would you ask me about how I am and then not wait for, or care about, the answer," said Linda Melville, interim director of Carnegie Mellon's office of international education. "The answer is it's not a real question. It's just part of a greeting ritual."
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