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International applications down 43 percent
By DONNA BUDNIEWSKI
Reporter
Assistant Editor
Applications to UB from international students are down about 43 percent from last year, and while final totals won't be in until May, graduate programs have suffered the biggest hit, Steven Shaw, director of international admissions, told the Faculty Senate Executive Committee yesterday.
"The number of applications, to graduate programs especially, is down, not just at UB but across the nation, but we're doing pretty well compared to larger peer institutions," said Shaw.
He suggested that while tightened immigration restrictions leading to longer delays in obtaining visas may have led to fewer applications, other contributors to the decline include the fact that some departments are notorious for processing applications very late. His own office is not behind in processing applications, he noted, adding that he's still optimistic about the overall picture for international enrollment for the next academic year.
Another issue that may severely impact international enrollment is a Congress-approved increase in the fee to apply for a visa to the U.S.—possibly to $100. While the final figure and implementation date of the new fee has yet to be decided, Shaw said the increase could come as early as June or July.
"The problem (with the drop in international applications) is actually what's happened with the immigration policies," suggested Samuel Shack, professor and chair of the Department Mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences. "If we bring in enough people from overseas to fill the graduate programs in this country and they stay afterward because it's a better place to live, then we stay ahead of the rest of the world. This is the way we've gotten ahead in the world—we import brains," he said.
But if the U.S. adopts a set of policies that prompts students to go to countries like Australia and Spain instead of the U.S.—as is now happening with Chinese students who used to apply to UB—that poses a major problem for the nation, he added.
Despite the terrorist attacks of September 2001, UB reached an all-time high for international enrollment in the Fall of 2003, with nearly 3,500 students from 106 countries, Shaw said, pointing out that those numbers were achieved in a difficult recruiting environment due to Homeland Security restrictions on immigration to the U.S.
As of March 26, 3,267 international students currently are enrolled at UB.
Shaw told FSEC members that according to a 2003 report on international education, UB ranked 17th in the nation in the number of international students enrolled in the university, and also ranked first with the highest proportion of foreign students of any public university among the 25 institutions with the largest international enrollments. About 13 percent of UB's total student population is comprised of students from other countries, and the university wants to increase that to about 15 percent, said Shaw.
The number of offers made to international students has risen, but that increase isn't the result of UB lowering its admissions standards—the Office of International Enrollment Services is just doing a better job of obtaining completed applications and "better offer yield," said Shaw.
For the past two years, the office has employed 12 international students to maintain contact and follow up with prospective international students, which strengthens the application pool and the ability to make offers, he said.
Although UB is recruiting more heavily in the Middle East to increase the diversity of the campus and for altruistic reasons, he noted that the bulk of international students, about 70 percent, comes from Asian countries. The top 10 countries contributing the highest number of international students—graduate and undergraduate combined—for 2004 are India, China, Korea, Taiwan, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Turkey.
As of Spring 2004, the top five majors chosen by undergraduate international students are management, electrical engineering, computer science, accounting and mechanical engineering. For graduate students, the top five majors are computer science, electrical engineering, management, mechanical engineering and civil engineering.