Commentary
Welcoming International Students to Community Colleges in the U.S. -- The Role of the State Department
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services
Janice L. Jacobs
NAFSA Annual Conference
Seattle, Washington
June 2, 2005
Importance of International Education
It is a great pleasure for me to be here this afternoon and have the opportunity to discuss with you the commitment of the Department of State to maintaining the openness of the United States to international visitors. I am particularly pleased to be able to describe for you some of the efforts that the State Department has undertaken on behalf of students and exchange visitors.
You represent – and indeed the annual NAFSA conference affirms – this nation’s enduring commitment to supporting international education. In fact, I know that community colleges around the nation have taken an increasingly active role in making sure that foreign students have access to the incredible educational opportunities available to them in the community college system. I was pleased to attend an award ceremony and luncheon recently at which a community college – Santa Fe Community College in Gainsville, Florida – received the Institute of International Education’s Andrew Haskell Award for Innovation in International Education this year in recognition of its efforts to “internationalize the campus.” Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty visited one of the campuses of Miami Dade College in April to discuss with its president our commitment to supporting international education, and was thrilled to learn that its 163,000 students include 171 nationalities.
I am here to discuss what the Department of State is doing to honor this commitment. If you will indulge me for a moment, I would like to offer several recent quotations regarding the importance to the United States of international education and exchange.
“Our interaction with the rest of the world must be a conversation, not a monologue, and America must remain open to visitors and workers and students from around the world. We do not and will not compromise our security standards, yet if our public diplomacy efforts are to succeed, we cannot close ourselves off from the restof the world.”
“To those of you who are considering study abroad, you can make no better choice than to study in the United States.”
“It is in our own national interest to encourage people who want to visit our beautiful nation, conduct business, and study at our educational institutions, rightly famous the world over for offering the very best in education. We have particular regard for international students, recognizing that the U.S. is preeminent in the field of higher education worldwide, and gained that standing with the contributions of students and academics from all over the world."
You might be surprised to learn that these quotes do not come from prominent academics or college presidents. The first is from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The second quote is from a speech that Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Maura Harty gave a few weeks ago at a university in Turkey. And the third quote is from my own deputy, Tony Edson, during his testimony on March 17 before members of the House Education Committee.
These quotes do not represent the views of just a select few within the Department of State. They exemplify the fundamental commitment of the Department, and the Bureau of Consular Affairs to maintaining the openness of the United States. Although security must always be our first priority, we work every day to see that access to our country is not impeded for those whose presence we encourage and value.
Consular Affairs Support for International Education
Since I represent the Bureau of Consular Affairs today, I would like to tell you a little bit about it. Consular Affairs is an organization of some 7,800 people working all around the world in over 200 embassies and consulates at which we adjudicate visa applications, as well as in our domestic operations. We are charged with the responsibility of determining who is qualified to receive a visa and in doing so we play a key role in enhancing U.S. border security while facilitating legitimate travel to the United States.
The balance between these two objectives is what we strive so fervently to achieve. It is in our own national interest to continue to encourage people to visit the United States, to do business here, and to study here. We encourage and value the presence of international students. In fact, the State Department actively seeks out young leaders and promising students and supports their academic and professional growth through a host of government-sponsored exchange programs. The Fulbright Program, International Visitors Program, Partnerships for Learning, Cochran Fellows program: all promote mutual understanding and closer ties among people and nations. Together, they contribute to the most prestigious “alumni association” in the world: its best and brightest; leaders in government, academia, sport, business, the arts – every field of human endeavor. We know that the U.S. is preeminent in the field of higher education and gained that standing with the contributions of countless students and academics from all over the world. We know that, beyond the contributions that international students make to our 4,000 institutions of higher learning, a young person's positive experience in America strengthens and enriches the United States today and in the future.
Turning the Corner
No discussion of visa policy would be faithful to recent history without including the horrific events of September 11 that shaped so much of our world. Naturally, in the aftermath of the attacks, the United States Government had to take steps to develop as strong a defense as possible against those who might wish to come to this country to do us harm. We have accomplished a great deal in this regard, and we have made this nation safer, not only for the American people, but for visitors to this nation.
The changes we undertook were comprehensive and initially, some resulted in processing delays. As you know, the delays were particularly troublesome in the spring and summer of 2002. However, it has never been an option for us to accept the status quo and one of the things we realized early on was that we would need more people dedicated to processing visas. We have created more than 350 new consular positions since September 2001 and our current budget request includes proposed funding for an additional 121 consular officer positions.
I hope you are all aware by now that, for the last two years, we have instructed all of our overseas posts to give priority to students and exchange visitors. Our embassies and consulates have implemented this requirement in a number of ways and have been very successful in getting student applicants appointments in a timely way. Visa applicants now have more information to plan their travel since we began posting current visa appointment wait times and processing times on our internet website. We have reiterated the importance of making sure that the information about appointment wait times and processing times is accurate and up to date. In fact, we overhauled the website last summer to make it more user-friendly overall and to provide additional resource material. Having more information about the process helps visa applicants be better prepared when they attend an interview.
We also invested heavily in automating outdated systems to enhance the predictability and efficiency of the visa application process and our efforts have shown real results. The metrics are irrefutable and continuing to move in the right direction.
Although there has been quite a bit of public discussion about visa delays, I think it is important to remember that almost all of the visa applications we receive – some 97 percent – are processed in one or two days. For the two-and-a-half percent of visa applicants who, for national security reasons, are subject to extra screening, we have streamlined the screening process so even this small percentage of the overall number of applicants can expect an answer promptly. Some of these are the special clearances due to the applicant’s involvement in a sensitive scientific field – which I know have been a cause for concern among Chinese student visa applicants. A year ago, the average processing time was about 74 days for a sensitive technology case. Today, the average processing time for these cases is 14 days, and we will continue to refine that process.
We have made other improvements to the security clearance process, including extending these clearances for students from one year, in most cases, to the entire length of the academic program. This means that, if a student receives a clearance, it remains valid as long as he or she remains in the same program, up to a maximum of four years.
Department Highlights the Many Educational Options in the U.S.
I wanted to review some of the improvements we have made, but sincerely hope this is not the first time you have heard about some of our initiatives. Over the last year, we have conducted an aggressive outreach campaign on student visas, and consulted regularly with our partners in the education community on how we can support a resurgence in international students choosing to study in the U.S. Since September 2004, we have conducted outreach events hosted by major universities in cities including San Diego, Chapel Hill, Washington, D.C., Boston, Miami, Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, Ann Arbor, and College Park, where the University of Maryland is located. Before the end of the year, we will visit Indianapolis, Memphis, the Dearborn/Detroit area, Philadelphia, Austin and Orlando. We have made a special effort to ensure that Community Colleges in the area are invited to these events and they have contributed to what is always a lively discussion.
Both our outreach efforts and our instructions to consular officers around the world stress the same theme: the diversity of excellent education opportunities available in the United States. In fact, I believe that one of the main reasons foreign students look to the U.S. is because of the wide array of educational choices we offer. We have instructed consular officers to remember that different institutions meet the needs of different students, from four-year colleges to two-year colleges, vocational programs, and English language programs. Indeed, many international students are looking to two-year institutions as a cost-effective way to seek higher education. Intensive English programs serve students who have not benefited from an English language background and are a springboard to further academic study. They also serve as a worthy end in themselves in teaching a language that is universally important. We emphasize that, just as in the U.S., many foreign students may wish to pursue two-year degrees or begin their studies in community colleges before transferring to four-year institutions to obtain other degrees. All of these iterations are valid and consular officers are instructed to review every single case on its own merits, keeping this broad array of educational opportunities in mind.
Our 450 EducationUSA advising centers located all over the world and operated by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs play the key role in providing information to prospective students, and are an excellent resource for community colleges wishing to expand their international enrollment. Consular officers at our Embassies and Consulates overseas maintain close, productive relationships with the EducationUSA advising centers and are increasingly conducting outreach to prospective students.
Our initial consular training course now includes a segment highlighting the importance of international education. Indeed from the very first week that we welcome new Foreign Service Officers to the Department of State, they hear about the importance of international education to U.S. national security. At the last session, Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty emphasized the role that community colleges can and should play in acquainting foreign students with what Americans are really like, and shaping the next generation of foreign leaders.
Encouraging Signs
What do we hope to achieve? The U.S. Institute for International Education compiles annual statistics that show that over 572,000 foreign students were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities during the 2003-2004 academic year. India and China are among the leaders in international enrollment in U.S. institutions of higher education. During the 2003-2004 academic year, there were 79,736 Indian students and 61,765 Chinese students enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States. Yes, we have seen a decline in the number of foreign students applying to U.S. colleges and universities. However, U.S. institutions of higher learning account for one-third of the total worldwide. And we still host more international students than any other nation.
And we know from an article earlier this year in The Chronicle of Higher Education that international student enrollment at the some 1,200 U.S. two-year colleges shot up about 60% in the decade between 1993-2003. That figure is double the overall growth for international students at all post-secondary institutions, a positive sign that foreign students are taking advantage of the wide range of educational alternatives available in the U.S.
One thing we desperately hope to do is dispel any misperceptions that might linger abroad about the United States not welcoming foreign students. It is simply not true. Students from Muscat to Mumbai need to know that if they want to study in the United States, our door is open.
We also want to disabuse those who continue to believe that visa procedures are an insurmountable barrier to travel to or study in the United States. Outdated public perceptions regarding changes to visa processing couldn’t be more different from the reality. The Department of State is working hard to support what we hope will be a resurgence of international students, exchange visitors, scientists and business people by making sure that they are informed of the facts and importantly, that they receive visas in a timely and efficient manner. Our welcome mat is out and we look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate it to more and more foreign students.
