Student Union
If It’s 3:30 a.m., It Must Be Time for Online Class
It’s 3:30 a.m. It’s almost time for class.
I take a moment to stare into my pitch-black room. I always set my alarm 30 minutes before class starts so I don’t oversleep. Sometimes I hit the snooze button to get an extra 10 minutes of rest.
After a few minutes, I get up and slowly open my door. I tiptoe to the kitchen to get a glass of water, careful not to wake my sleeping family members.
As I click the link into the Zoom classroom, my professor greets everyone with a “Good afternoon.” It’s 2 p.m. in Virginia, but 4 a.m. in South Korea. Some of my classmates sip on their afternoon coffee on their patio before class begins.
I wish I had coffee.
When the first couple of cases were reported in the United States in January, South Korea was the second most infected country in the world with around 10,000 cases. I was more worried about my family back home.
They would update me regularly about the strict coronavirus guidelines and how the government passed a mask mandate where people could only purchase two N-95 face masks per week.
When they asked how I was doing, I reassured them that I was fine and that there were only a few cases. This was in February.
But as cases began to climb at a frightening speed in early March, my parents and I decided it would be best to be with family during this bizarre time.
I was one of the thousands of international students who returned to their home countries that month due to the coronavirus pandemic.
I knew that this meant I’d have to take courses during the middle of the night and become a master of time zones. Online courses are definitely not the most ideal way to absorb information, but because I was so close to graduating, I decided to finish my degree online in South Korea.
This semester, my synchronous classes started at 3 a.m., 11 p.m., and 10 p.m. Then Daylight Saving Time pushed time an hour back. Needless to say, I don’t really have a set sleep schedule at this point.
But like most people around the world, this year was all about adjusting and becoming flexible with one’s schedule and surroundings, so I told myself this was an adjustment I’d have to make.
“Zoom University,” a term frequently used to describe online classes, has left college students around the world dissatisfied and anxious.
“Six hours in school is better than three hours in online classes,” tweeted Muhd Akif Bin Azmi, a student attending Form Six college in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. His tweet struck a chord with thousands of people, garnering more than 99,000 likes and nearly 31,000 retweets.
In a report surveying 290 university students in South Korea, 56% said they were planning to take a leave of absence for the 2020 fall semester with low satisfaction for online courses being the top reason. The main complaint? “I would rather take a leave of absence than take a class that only reads Powerpoint.”
New enrollment of international students dropped 43% because of COVID-19 in the academic school year that began four months ago, according to the Institute of International Education. Nearly 40,000 students — mostly incoming freshmen — have deferred enrollment at 90% of U.S. institutions.
Many students struggled at the beginning of the year with the abrupt shift to virtual learning, prompting universities to switch to pass/fail grading options or cut back on tuition. Some universities extended pass/fail grading options for the fall semester as the coronavirus continued to spread at alarming rates.
Despite setbacks, I’m grateful for the position I am in and understand it is a privilege to be able to continue my education online.
Millions of other students have been derailed from their studies because the coronavirus pandemic has created a global education emergency. As of December 1, more than 224 million students have been affected by school closures, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
For children, the number is even higher. More than 1 billion children are out of school because of closures across 188 countries, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Students are not the only ones struggling with online classes. Parents, teachers and university professors have expressed their frustrations and concerns with online learning.
In the end, 2020 has proven to be one of the strangest and most devastating times for millions around the world. We’ve all had to sacrifice, adjust, adapt and heal in our own ways.
On the bright side, I’ve learned to work under tough conditions and deliver and become a flexible, strategic thinker.
And as my college journey comes to an end, I do think that this has been a character-building experience and I know I’m going to exit this situation better than when I came into it.
I have my graduation ceremony to look forward to! It will be virtual.
At 4 AM KST.
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- By Dylan Ebs
International students find community during Pride Month
For LGBTQ+ international students, Pride Month, observed in June, is a unique time to reflect.
They hold on to multiple identities — both their LGBTQ+ identity and their cultural background — but coming to terms with them is not always easy.
For graduate student David Zhou, these identities can feel conflicting as transgender rights in China remain a controversial issue and spaces for LGBTQ people close. Zhou, 25, is transgender and pursuing an education in the STEM field at an urban university in the Midwestern United States.
VOA is using a pseudonym for Zhou’s first name and is not naming his university to protect his identity due to safety concerns back home in China. Zhou is not open about his transgender identity to his family.
During Pride Month, Zhou said he attended multiple LGBTQ+ events in his community and is surrounded by a supportive group of LGBTQ+ students who can relate to his experiences. But he’s not open about his identity to everyone on campus and said he doesn’t disclose his preferred pronouns to everyone to avoid transphobic comments.
“I feel like I have to make some judgments of the character of that person to see if they’re a good person to disclose [my identity] to,” Zhou said.
Zhou’s Pride Month celebrations included attending local markets with LGBTQ+ vendors and hanging out with his LGBTQ+ friends.
“They normalized being trans and for a long time I feel like trans identity is, should I say a vulnerability, brings me fear and worrying about discrimination, but having those events are helpful because it allowed me to see that queer people could just [live] openly,” he said.
At social events where few international students are present, Zhou said it can be tough to fit in.
“There's a lot of times like when they were talking about things I kind of, don't really understand, mostly because I kind of lack some background experience or knowledge,” he said.
Zhou said he is not aware of specific groups for LGBTQ+ international students at his university, but said international students are more prevalent in graduate programs and therefore find representation in organizations for LGBTQ+ graduate students.
In China, transgender individuals must obtain consent from an “immediate family member,” even for adults hoping to transition, which critics say limits the autonomy of transgender individuals while supporters say the policy protects doctors from violence by upset parents.
Struby Struble, a former coordinator of the University of Missouri LGBTQ+ Resource Center, told NAFSA: Association of International Educators in 2015 that LGBTQ+ international students face a “double barrier” on campus.
“With their international student friends, they feel isolated because they’re the LGBT one,” she said. “But then among the LGBT students on campus, they feel isolated because they’re the international one.”
Nick Martin, associate director of the Q Center, Binghamton University’s LGBTQ+ student support office, said when international students tour the center, there’s often a sense of hesitation as they enter a type of space that may not be present in their home country.
“I compare that to a year in after they've come into the space, they've again, maybe come to some of our events, they've got more connected,” he said.
Martin said graduate students have a unique interest in the Q Center as they may use the office for research and advocacy purposes that align with their studies.
“For older students, there may be hesitancy in a different way, but I think it's more in the vein of they want to do some of the advocacy work,” he said.
Martin said he thinks about how both his office and BU’s international student office can support students who come from countries with few — if any — protections for LGBTQ+ individuals.
“It's been a learning process of what those students really need, but I think I've kind of learned that a lot of students are just looking for the safe space that we offer,” Martin said.
- By VOA News
International students discuss US campus culture shock
International students at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, talked about culture shock in an article in La Voz News, the student newspaper.
"It felt like a major culture shock. Everything was so different, from academics to mannerism," said a student from Mexico.
Read the full story here.
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MSNBC looked at the most expensive schools in the country, with one costing more than $500,000 for a bachelor’s degree. (June 2024)
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Students from Uzbekistan are among the international students admitted to top colleges and universities in recent years.
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- By Stella Hsu
Reports of visa checks, deportations worry Chinese STEM students in US
Geopolitical tensions and growing competition in tech between the United States and China appear to be spilling over into academia despite commitments from the world’s two biggest economies to boost people-to-people exchanges.
The United States remains the top choice for Chinese students seeking to study abroad with nearly 300,000 studying in American colleges and universities during the 2022-2023 school year. But reports of some cases that students and professors are facing extra scrutiny while passing through immigration and the deportation of others are raising concerns.
For Chen Xiaojin, a doctoral student studying semiconductor materials at a university in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, it has been six years since she returned to her hometown of Beijing.
At first, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that kept her from going home. But over the past two years, she has been deterred by accounts of Chinese students majoring in science and engineering being required to reapply for their visas upon returning to China.
She also says she is worried by reports over the past six months of Chinese students being deported, even at nearby Dulles Airport.
"My current research is relatively sensitive, and my boss [adviser] is getting funds from the U.S. Department of Defense, making it even more sensitive,” she told VOA. "I am afraid that I won't be able to return after I go back [to China]."
Chen says that if she did return to China, she would have to apply for a new visa.
In a report late last month, Bloomberg said it had found at least 20 Chinese students and scholars with valid visas who were deported at U.S. Customs since November and barred from reentry. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency does not release relevant data.
Immigration attorney Dan Berger represented one Chinese student who was deported late last year. He tells VOA Mandarin that the student studied biological sciences at Yale University and was about to complete her doctorate.
She visited her family in China and got a new visa but was deported by customs at Dulles Airport and barred from reentering the country for five years. Berger said he did not see anything suspicious in the transcript of the conversation between the student and the customs officer.
"We have seen what seems like a pattern over the last six months of Chinese PhD students being turned around…. more than I've seen in quite a while," he said.
Matthew Brazil, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said neither country seems willing to explain the situation. However, he believes that in most cases, the United States must have valid reasons for blocking visa holders from entering the country.
In some cases, the student’s background may not match what is written on the visa application. In other cases, customs agents may also find something that the State Department missed, and once they see it, they are responsible for taking action.
"I wish the Chinese side would be specific about their students who were refused entry,” he said. “The fact that both sides are mum on details and that the Chinese side is engaged with the usual angry rhetoric means that each has security concerns. And that says to me that there was good reason for the U.S. to stop these particular applicants."
Brazil also sees a connection between the entry denials and export control regulations issued by the United States in October 2022 that restrict China's ability to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is one of the law enforcement agencies authorized to investigate violations of export control regulations, he said.
"Beijing's intelligence agencies are known to focus attention on PRC [People's Republic of China] students and scientists headed abroad who study or work on dual-use technologies controlled under the Export Administration Act — compelling Chinese students and scientists to report on what they've learned when they return to China on holiday,” he said. “This has been true for decades."
Bill Drexel, a fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said the U.S. government did find some cases where students tried to steal strategic technology for China.
"I think it would both not be surprising that they found some really questionable or incriminating evidence for some students,” he said. “It would also not be surprising if, in their hunt for really solid evidence, they also may have made some mistakes on other students.”
Drexel adds that “it’s just kind of an unfortunate fact of the time that we live in and the tactics that the CCP uses when it comes to these measures."
In a post on X in early May, U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns tried to dispel concerns about visas and entry to the United States for students and scholars. In the post, he said "99.9% of Chinese students holding visas encounter no issues upon entering the United States.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Monday, Burns said it is China that is making it impossible to promote people-to-people ties. Burns told the Journal that students attending events sponsored by the United States in China have been interrogated and intimidated.
He also said that since U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping held their summit in San Francisco last year, China’s Ministry of State Security and other agencies had interfered with Chinese citizens’ participation at some 61 events.
At a regular briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning dismissed those accusations, saying that they did not “reflect reality" and that went against key understandings reached by both countries’ presidents in San Francisco.
“The United States, under the pretext of 'national security,' unjustifiably harasses, interrogates, and deports Chinese students in the U.S., causing them significant harm and creating a severe chilling effect,” Mao said. “The image of the United States in the minds of the Chinese people fundamentally depends on the actions of the United States itself.”
Drexel said he believes Burns’ comments about visas and students' willingness to study in the U.S. still ring true.
“On balance, it's still the case that American universities are overwhelmingly warm towards Chinese students and want them in large numbers," he said.
However, Berger, the immigration lawyer, is concerned about the chilling effect recent cases involving Chinese students could have.
"In general, we are being more careful about advising Chinese graduate students in STEM fields about traveling and letting them know that there is some small risk,” he said.
Even though the risk is small, it does seem to be real at the moment, he said.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
