INTO Hofstra University’s inaugural class of more than 120 students from 13 countries
Over the past month, some 2,500 students from around the
world commenced their studies at INTO’s 12 university partners in the United
States. Understanding the anxieties that
accompany this journey, faculty and staff across INTO’s U.S. university
partners and their respective INTO centers deploy a combination of pre-arrival
communications, carefully curated orientation sessions, and online applications
to familiarize students with their new university communities. The result: a high-touch orientation
experience that provides students a launchpad for a successful academic career.
Following
the second annual P3 – EDU Conference, hosted at George Mason
University this past May, former GMU President Angel Cabrera posited that “the
private sector holds the key to solving many of the challenges public and
non-profit universities face.” The success of such
partnerships,
he pointed out, depends on private sector parties’ capacity to support their
higher education partners’ strategic goals, prioritize student experience, and
protect an institution’s academic integrity and reputation.
Student
success and campus enrichment lie at the heart of every INTO university partnership. From our first with the University of East
Anglia in the United Kingdom to our most recent with Hofstra University in New
York, each of our partnerships is predicated on supporting the university’s
mission through comprehensive internationalization. Collaborative initiatives led jointly by INTO
Center staff and their university colleagues at GMU, Colorado State University
(CSU), and Drew University exemplify the symbiosis INTO shares with its partners.
Student experience matters.
When international students feel welcome and supported across all
dimensions of their life at university, they contribute positively to their new
communities and graduate at higher rates.
INTO’s 22 university partnerships deliver exceptional
student experiences to students from around the world. In fact, 92% of international students across
INTO’s 12 university partners in the United States indicated that they were
satisfied or very satisfied with their experience in and out of the classroom
in the INTO University Partnerships 2019 Annual Student Survey.
In mid-July, alongside INTO’s academic directors’
conference, the student services teams that drive these incredible results convened
at Saint Louis University for their own student services conference. There, they shared best practices for student
care and some of the dynamic co-curricular initiatives they have launched on
their respective campuses to promote student success in tandem with academic
faculty.
INTO academic and student services faculty gathered at Saint Louis University.
While it is critical to grow international student enrollments in INTO’s university partnerships, it is equally important to retain those international students in degree programs, support their academic success, and ensure their timely graduation. This is the complex task that academic faculty across INTO’s 12 university partnerships in the United States addressed over three days at the annual INTO academic directors’ conference at Saint Louis University (SLU).
Recently, some colleagues asked us whether there was any relationship between the political affiliation/control of states in the US and their success in attracting international students. Armed with Gallup’s state political affiliation analysis, we had a look.
Gallup
identifies five categories: Strong Republican, Lean Republican, Competitive,
Strong Democratic and Lean Democratic.
Using those definitions we overlaid IPEDS data to identify the number of
international students and the extent to which those enrollments have grown or
declined between Fall 2015 and Fall 2017.[1]
In the maps
below, the size of the bubble indicates the relative size of the international
student population in the State and the color is aligned with Gallup’s
definition of political affiliation.
So what are
the findings?
International students enroll
everywhere but of the top ten most popular state destinations, six are either
strong or lean Democratic, three are
designated as competitive (Texas, Ohio and Florida) and one, Indiana is
designated as Lean Republican. This does not imply any particular political
affiliation amongst students. States
with strong Democratic leanings are home to large urban centers with big
concentrations of universities, including many of the Nation’s best known and
highly ranked. These large urban centers
are also home to multiple language schools, large community colleges and generally
offer strong employment opportunities.
In the first blog on
our global agent survey, we explored sentiment for various destinations around
the world. In this edition, we take a
closer look at what is important to agents and the students they counsel.
SEVIS, IIE, HESA, the OECD and Open Doors are useful
tools for helping us understand the global distribution of students – and for
establishing long term trends. But they
are not crystal balls. INTO’s latest
recruitment agent survey which polled more than 1800 counsellors across the
world produces revealing insights into their assessment for future student
enrollments in key destination countries. The survey, conducted in April 2019, includes almost 500 responses from China,
traditionally a blackspot for global polls of this nature – and making it the
most authoritative China agent insight survey ever conducted.
The dip in international student numbers in the United States captured in the latest data from the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) is unsettling. A 3.1% decline in the number of international students in the US between December 2017 and December 2018 accelerates the 0.5% recorded in the SEVIS data from 2017.
The United States Department of Homeland Security recently released quarterly data from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) that revealed a 3.1% drop in the number of foreign students in the US—the difference between 1.21 million in December 2017 to 1.17 million in December 2018—sparking widespread concern throughout the international education field. The data confirms that nine of the 10 countries that send the highest volumes of international students to the US registered fewer numbers of student visa-holders in 2018 than they did in 2017. Additionally, it shows drops in all but six states’ share of the total international student population.
Balance or imbalance—Is there a gender disparity in international education in the United States? It is true that more female students come to the US to study than the combined total of US students who study abroad, but a greater proportion of those who study abroad from the US are female. To mark International Women’s Day and this year’s campaign theme of #BalanceforBetter, INTO’s Dana Bukenova and JP Deering examine some of the gender balances and imbalances that define the international education environment in the US.
