The Importance of International Students on Our Campuses

Abstract

International students have become a hot global commodity. Governments and institutions of higher education worldwide have begun putting in place policies and programs to draw the very brightest international students. Tony Blair, for example, announced in 2006 that he was putting in place a package of incentives to make Britain an even more attractive destination for international students. This represented the second phase of an initiative launched in 1999 to increase the number of non-European students study ing in the U.K. In Australia, a governmental agency, Australian Education International, works in coordination with universities to streamline efforts to attract international students. In the U.S., the Institute of International Educators recently issued a report titled “Restoring U.S. Competitiveness for International Students and Scholars,” which calls for the federal govern ment to develop a national recruiting strategy for international students and to make far-reaching changes in the immigration regulations and visa procedures as they impact this recruitment. There are numerous factors behind the surge of interest in international students. At the national level, there is the recognition that international students have historically played an important role in advancing America’s research competitiveness in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Whereas the best American-born students have tended to gravitate to careers in business and law, the first-choice ca reers of their counterparts from countries such as China and India is often in engineering and the sciences. The advancement of scientific research and technology therefore has relied disproportionately on foreign-born talent. There is also a feeling that international students, having lived and studied in the United States, often become excellent ambassadors of American culture when they return to their home countries. This is seen as an important step in enhancing the image of the U.S. overseas, and by extension, U.S. security. At the scale of universities and colleges, there has been an increasing recognition that our graduates will be competing in an international labor market and need to become comfortable in working with students from different parts of the world. The term “global competency” is often used to