Student Union
- By Rick Ruggles
COVID-19 Limits Foreign Student Enrollment
International students bring a wealth of diversity and a healthy chunk of money to many American colleges and universities.
But the flow of international students to the U.S. will most likely decrease in the fall. The coronavirus has hit the U.S. hard and may dissuade some international students from coming. Challenges and delays in obtaining visas to America, and in getting flights here, threaten the enrollment of some.
Trade conflicts and other tensions between the U.S. and some nations, particularly China, the biggest source of international students, might play into some students' decisions. Further, the number of international students enrolled in American colleges has already dropped over the past couple of years.
"There are just so many things out of our control," said Lina Stover, undergraduate admissions director at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Coronavirus crisis
Sue Zhang, a Chinese student who will graduate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln this month, has decided to go to graduate school at UNL as well. But Zhang, who has majored in civil engineering and math, told the Omaha World-Herald she expects the coronavirus crisis to cut into UNL's international student enrollment.
Worry about getting COVID-19 compelled her to stay put at UNL. She had hoped to visit other graduate schools this spring, such as Stanford University and the University of California-Davis, but she didn't want to fly while the country was intensely affected by the virus.
"I think the university is doing everything they can," said Zhang, who moved with some other international students into UNL's Eastside Suites residence hall when the crisis closed many dorms.
A UNL professor in civil engineering, Dave Admiraal, said Zhang has a passion for learning and the ability to pick up new things quickly. "I have learned so much from them (international students) beyond what I would have learned had I only been exposed to students from the U.S.," he said in an email.
Zhang plans to start working on a master's degree in water resource engineering this summer. As for trade tensions and other conflicts between the U.S. and China, she said they aren't vital to her. "I'm just not that into politics," she said.
Declining student population
Last fall, UNL's international student population fell from 2,807 to 2,560, according to the UNL Factbook, an 8.8 percent decline. The coronavirus crisis may affect all universities' enrollments in the fall, said Josh Davis, UNL's associate vice chancellor for global affairs. It's too early to say how much, he said.
"International students really add so much to our campus and our community," Davis said. They enrich a campus's diversity and have become a key source of revenue to American colleges over the past 10 years. At UNL and Iowa State, they make up close to 10 percent of the enrollment, and many of them pay full out-of-state tuition.
Davis said UNL wants to stay in touch with international students who have stayed on campus or gone home. UNL holds virtual coffee talks, he said, and held a virtual karaoke night this semester. The students "are looking for the signal and message that they're welcome here," he said.
If visa challenges mean that some international students can't get back to Lincoln until the middle of the fall semester, Davis said, UNL will work with them.
'Three-plus years of rhetoric'
Grant De Roo, a higher education consultant in Iowa City, said "three-plus years of rhetoric that paints other countries as antagonists to the United States" has hurt international enrollment. President Donald Trump's talk about sealing borders, American nationalism and a travel ban for some nations give the U.S. an unfriendly image, he said.
"I think it's really fundamentally changing the way international students view the United States," he said.
Ryan Hamilton, executive director of the Nebraska Republican Party, disagrees. Trump insists that allies fulfill their financial obligations to international organizations like NATO and that Mexico strengthen its border, Hamilton said.
If those expectations make the U.S. seem less friendly and unwilling to be taken advantage of, "most Americans are prepared to accept" the consequences, he said.
Edna Chun, chief learning officer at the consulting firm HigherEd Talent, said delays in obtaining visas could make it difficult for some international students to come to the U.S. Greater scrutiny of visas is also a concern.
Chun cited a Palestinian student from Lebanon who enrolled at Harvard University last year. Immigration officials in Boston sent the student back to Lebanon when they found anti-American political messages from his friends on a laptop, according to multiple news accounts. The young man was ultimately allowed in.
The University of Nebraska at Kearney saw a slight decline in international students last year. Tim Burkink, UNK's assistant vice chancellor for international affairs, said he and his staff hope to retain many of their existing international students, about three-fourths of whom remain in Kearney.
Visa hangups "would probably be the biggest barrier" to coming to UNK, he said. Staff shortages at U.S. consulates and embassies in other nations -- American staffers have been brought back during the pandemic -- contribute to visa problems.
Burkink nevertheless said he is optimistic that the number of international students at UNK will be flat or only slightly down.
De Roo said competition for those students has increased in recent years. English-language nations such as Canada, Great Britain and Australia have upped their higher ed games to provide good degree programs for international students, he said.
Not everyone saw a decline last year. Wayne State College said its global enrollment increased last fall to 82 from 38. UNO's rose from 845 to 876.
Sue Zhang, who plans to be an engineer, said her parents hope that she will eventually return to China. Their wishes are a major consideration, she said.
But she could also imagine getting a job in the U.S. or getting married and staying here. "I was kind of thinking about it," she said. "Who will know what will happen later?"
This story was written by Rick Ruggles of Omaha World-Herald for the Associated Press.
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Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
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The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
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Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
