Student Union
Tuition Decreases, Donations Bring Students Relief
After decades of tuition increases at U.S. colleges and universities that have led to increased student debt and pushback from students and their families, some schools are reducing costs.
At the University of Michigan — ranked among the top public universities in the U.S. — free tuition will be extended at its Flint and Dearborn campuses. Called the Go-Blue guarantee, the offer applies to new full-time students residing in Michigan with a 3.5 grade-point average (GPA) on a 4.0 scale, with a family income of $65,000 or less or assets of less than $50,000.
The University of Michigan has 6,666 international students, according to the university's International Center, and the state has a large Arab population.
"Not only will most in-state undergrads see no change in their net tuition costs, we estimate that more than a quarter will pay no tuition at all," University President Mark Schlissel said.
Clinton College, a historically black college (HBCU) in South Carolina, is cutting tuition in half for its students this fall and will give every student a new computer tablet. Associate Vice President of Student Enrollment Jocelyn Biggs said the COVID-19 pandemic has created hardships.
"This is our way of saying you can still go to college at a reduced tuition amount and we're here to help," Biggs said.
Tuition for full-time students living on campus is $10,165 per semester and $5,240 for those living off-campus. Clinton College was one of many schools established by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church during Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War, to help eradicate illiteracy among freedmen, according to its website. It has operated for 120 years.
The Kentucky Community and Technical College will maintain tuition from last year's rates.
"The board wanted to help students, and we felt keeping our tuition at the same rate would help thousands of families," Board Chair Gail Henson said in a news release.
Out-of-state students from counties contiguous to Kentucky pay $358 per credit hour. All other out-of-state students pay $627 per credit hour. International students typically pay out-of-state rates.
Tuition for in-state students at the University of Maine also will not increase in the coming academic year. The university has more than 600 international students from 70 countries and offers generous scholarships to those students, according to its website. Maine has a significant immigrant population from Africa.
The University of South Carolina announced it will freeze tuition at last year's rates. Other universities are issuing increases of about 1% to 2%.
The cost of tuition and fees at U.S. colleges and universities is the No. 1 reason that international students seek higher education elsewhere, in places such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). Those countries have been trying to attract foreign students through less expensive tuition and fees since enrollment in U.S. schools began to slide three years ago.
"The costs of U.S. higher education remain a perennial challenge in attracting international students, with 55.1% of institutions citing costs as one of the reasons for falling new student enrollment," according to IIE's Open Door report released in November 2019.
Celebrity donations recently have contributed to some students being able to study for less.
Yale University recently received a $150 million donation from David Geffen, a Hollywood business magnate, to the newly renamed David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. As a result, the university dropped its tuition for any student pursuing a degree or certificate in drama. It will allow the drama school to eliminate tuition for all degree and certificate programs, the university said.
Another billionaire, MacKenzie Scott, philanthropist and former wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has made three rounds of donations to 286 organizations, including U.S. colleges and universities, totaling $8 billion.
Those schools include Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City, College of the Desert in California, Florida International University in Miami (FIU), the University of Central Florida in Orlando (UCF) and Broward College in Fort Lauderdale.
In the case of UCF, the gift was the largest in the school's 58-year history.
In 2020, Scott made two similar surprise announcements in which she donated a combined $6 billion to fund COVID-19 relief, gender equity, historically Black colleges and universities and other schools.
The gift will help UCF toward its goal of becoming the world's leading public metropolitan research university, said UCF President Alexander Cartwright.
"The gift is a sign of trust and validation of our direction, and of the promising work that lies ahead for us and all our partners," a statement from Broward College said. "We send a tremendous thank you to MacKenzie Scott for this gift that will create economic mobility in Broward County for generations to come."
"This generous gift is a game-changer for FIU and our students' success for generations to come," said Mark Rosenberg, FIU's president. "Ms. Scott, [her husband] Mr. [Dan] Jewett and their team have taken note of our work serving a diverse student body and developing evidence-based strategies that have proven effective in helping our students succeed. This gift allows us to augment programs that we know work, develop models that can be replicated elsewhere, lift communities and combat poverty."
Twitter user @ramblingroses8 tweeted, "I don't know what I'd tell a kid today. I absolutely needed college because I'm an intellectual who wanted to explore ideas. it didn't make me much $ in the long run, but it was worth it to me. I did it on many jobs, aid & student loans, but it wasn't this expensive."
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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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.
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