U.S. colleges are beginning to reverse the decline in international student enrollment that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But the key to future growth may be the ability to attract lower-income and disadvantaged foreign students, including those from Africa, witnesses told a House hearing Friday.
A top U.S. priority must be to “provide educational opportunities to a broad and diverse segment of young people overseas, including women, minorities and those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds,” said Thomas Farrell, assistant secretary of state for academic programs. Many of these students want to study in the United States but lack the resources to do so, he told a joint meeting of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House higher education subcommittee.
One major factor is the high cost of U.S. higher education, which is more expensive than college in other industrialized countries. “We believe that cost of U.S. higher education is the most significant barrier to building back our higher education international student numbers,” Farrell said.
Overall, nearly 80 percent of international students pay for a U.S. college education through family or personal resources, which often skews enrollment in favor of more affluent families, he said.
Despite these factors, several initiatives are under way to increase the number of lower-income international students studying in the United States. According to Farrell, State Department officials met with U.S. community college leaders last year to launch one of these new efforts. That initiative is focusing on students from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East who can afford less costly two-year institutions.
College also are using Title VI grants under the Higher Education Act to expand partnerships in Africa, said James Manning, the acting assistant secretary for postsecondary education. The University of Florida’s Center for African Studies has hired African graduate students as teaching assistance to expand African language programs.
Such initiatives drew praise from U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., a senior lawmaker on the Foreign Affairs panel. “If we focus on Africa, we can have success,” he said.
