Colleges see drop in students from Islamic lands

Monday, November 03, 2003

By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Baraa Shareef worked hard to get a scholarship to study in America, but then came the really difficult part -- getting into the country itself.

Baraa Shareef was detained and threatened with jail when she arrived from overseas on her way to visit Duquesne University. (John Heller, Post-Gazette)

An Iraqi-born Swede, Shareef was detained in Atlanta's airport, threatened with jail and had to rebook a connecting flight to Pittsburgh after her arrival from overseas to check out Duquesne University made some immigration inspectors suspicious.

She said the embassy workers who processed her student visa request were equally wary. The approval was so delayed she arrived on campus two weeks after classes started and nearly forfeited her $8,000 award at Duquesne, where she's now a freshman pharmacy major.

"Just because I was once from Iraq," said Shareef, 19, a Muslim who emigrated from that country while in elementary school, "it doesn't make me a terrorist. It doesn't make me bad."

	Online Chart: Place of origin for international students

It's the sort of complaint that educators say could help explain a study released today that shows the number of foreigners studying at the nation's colleges has all but leveled off after five years of steady growth.

The study by the Institute of International Education counted 586,323 foreign students here as of the 2002-03 academic year -- a gain of less than 1 percent.

That compares with a 6.4 percent rise a year earlier and an overall gain of 29 percent between 1995 and 2002.

Among the study's findings was a 10 percent drop in students coming from the Middle East. Nations with sizable Islamic populations also saw significant declines.

A single year's numbers can reflect various influences like the economy and don't automatically mean foreigners are less inclined to study here, the New York City-based institute said. Nevertheless, the results will be closely studied as they are the first to include a full year of overseas recruiting since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the hardened attitude toward foreigners that followed.

For months, backers of tightened visa requirements have justified the new rules as necessary to thwart those who would do the country harm. Others have countered that in the rush to clamp down, harm is being done to exchange programs that often make foreigners feel closer to America.

"This year, obviously, the visa procedures are making a difference, whether it's turndowns or in the perceptions of people that it's going to be so hard they don't even apply," said Peggy Blumenthal, the institute's vice president for educational services.

"It's too soon for us to really say this is a trend," she said. "Clearly, from some countries, the drop is quite serious. I would say predominantly Islamic countries but also countries like Thailand."

In Pittsburgh, the numbers didn't surprise some who work with international students. They said foreigners intent on an American degree nowadays navigate an increasingly restrictive and time-consuming visa approval process. Like Shareef, some get caught in tense situations.

At Duquesne, the international student office said 20 or more students from Saudi Arabia used to enroll at the school but only nine do now, largely because of difficulties getting visas. Enrollment from Oman is a fourth of what it once was.

And several students from other countries like China and Russia, who appeared to Duquesne to have met requirements for travel to the United States, nevertheless were rejected.

"It tells me a lot of things, but I think it certainly shows how the changes in our immigration laws have affected the international student flow," said Joe DeCrosta, Duquesne's associate director of international affairs. "Students are perceiving it as a hassle and, in some cases, they're not even trying to get visas."

Shareef said her troubles at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport in December started when her name did not show up on a computer and she was unable to remember the exact day -- though she knew the month -- that she last departed the United States. That trip was several years earlier as she was about to enter ninth grade.

Despite her Swedish citizenship, she said, immigration authorities ushered her into a separate room after learning her birth country was Iraq. She said she was moved from room to room and told sternly that any untrue statements could land her in jail.

"I got scared," she said.

Eventually, Shareef was allowed to head for her connecting flight but missed it and had to pay for a hotel room in Atlanta before leaving the next day.

The institute that released today's study is a leading international exchange organization whose yearly survey of all colleges and universities is supported by the State Department. Later this fall, the organization is expected to update its study of American students studying abroad, which in years past also has been rising.

The results from the current survey vary widely by country of origin and by campus.

In Western and Central Pennsylvania, campuses with the largest concentrations of international students outpaced the nation as a whole.

Penn State University with 3,681 students had a 6 percent increase as did Carnegie Mellon University, where 2,534 foreign students were enrolled. The University of Pittsburgh's population grew by 3 percent to 1,731 students.

Thirteen of the 20 countries that send the most students to this country showed declines. Countries posting significant drops included Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, each down by 25 percent; and the United Arab Emirates, which sent 15 percent fewer students, the study said.

Some Southeast Asian countries posted large losses including Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Still, other countries like Kenya and Korea had significant gains. India also saw a 12 percent increase and remains the largest exporter of students to the United States at 74,603 students.

At Carnegie Mellon, the fall 2003 numbers have raised eyebrows because for the first time in recent years new foreign arrivals for its graduate programs are down. Forty percent of Carnegie Mellon's full-time master's students and six out of 10 doctoral students are from other countries, said Lisa Krieg, director of the school's office for international education.

Krieg has said she worries about the potential for visa restrictions to influence recruiting but also said it's too soon to draw firm conclusions.

Her counterpart at Pitt, David Clubb, hasn't seen substantial evidence that tighter visa rules are hurting recruiting. He said next fall may prove more telling because some requirements are only now becoming known, including new interview rules for visa applicants and a $100 fee that foreign students must pay to be tracked by a new national database.

"All of this will have sunk in a little bit more," he said.

In a smaller online survey of 275 international educators, the institute found that that the largest share who reported student declines this fall -- 59 percent -- pointed to visa issues as a cause. Another 21 percent cited financial issues.

A spokesman for the Association of American Universities, one of several groups now looking at the foreign student issue, said it's not as if safeguards can relax to what they were before the deadly World Trade Center attacks. But the trick is making sure that a safer country doesn't alter a program whose benefits go beyond what half a million visiting students do for academia and the nation's economy.

"There are so many world leaders who were educated in the United States," said the spokesman, Barry Toiv. "That's so important to giving them a better understanding of our country."

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