International Ed. Initiatives Unveiled

The Bush administration announced a series of international education initiatives last week to encourage more foreign students to study in the U.S., enable more American students to study abroad, and reward American students for learning languages critical to national security.

Harvard officials said the initiatives are another step in the steady progress the federal government has made to remedy the drop in international enrollment in American universities that resulted from post-9/11 policies, which caused major delays and complications for many seeking student visas.

Under-Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes told a summit of university presidents in Washington last Friday that the U.S. benefits from attracting the best and brightest international students. She added that studying in the U.S. exposes foreign students to American values.

The initiatives for international students include the creation of a new Fulbright award to fund the graduate studies of “outstanding” foreign students in science and technology, Hughes said. She also described plans for college and university leaders to travel abroad this year to promote American higher education in several trips to be organized by the State Department.

Hughes added that the government will try to increase the number of international students attending community colleges, and bring more women, minorities, and low-income international students to study in the U.S.

She said funding for Gilman scholarships will be increased by 40 percent to make study abroad an option for low-income American students.

Harvard students who receive federal financial aid can apply for Gilman scholarships, which offer grants of up to $5,000 for study abroad, according to the Harvard funding website.

President Bush also announced a plan at the summit last Thursday to allot $114 million to the National Security Language Initiative, which would promote the study of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, and Farsi, among other languages.

A related proposal, which would also emphasize the study of languages critical to national security, is part of a bill currently awaiting Congressional approval. The Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant would give some college students majoring in selected languages an additional $4,000 a year in federal funding.

In addition to the practical benefits of increased funding the initiatives could provide, Bush’s personal involvement in the initiatives raises the profile of the continuing effort to improve international education opportunities in the U.S., said Kevin Casey, Harvard’s senior director of federal and state relations.

“It’s very important symbolically, and that shouldn’t be underestimated,” Casey said.

Sharon Ladd, director of the Harvard International Office, wrote in an e-mail that the initiatives were a very positive development for international education in general, although she said she did not know how the initiatives will affect Harvard students specifically.

But Ladd said the introduction of the initiatives dramatized how far the conversation about foreign students in the U.S. has advanced since the months after 9/11, when increased security measures resulted in an arduous and lengthy visa application process.

“In December 2001, a government official in Washington described to me the atmosphere surrounding international students as ‘poisonous,’” Ladd wrote.

While Harvard College, unlike many other schools, did not experience a decline in international student enrollment over the past few years, Ladd wrote, Harvard students did experience “very worrying” visa delays.

These delays prevented some college students from arriving in Cambridge in September with their classmates, The Crimson reported in 2002, 2003, and 2004. Some were delayed for so long that they were prevented from enrolling for the fall semester altogether.

And Harvard’s nine professional schools noted a significant decrease in international applicants, The Crimson reported in 2004.

As a result, University President Lawrence H. Summers wrote a letter in April 2004 to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge ’67 in which he criticized the damaging impact of visa complications on universities.

“We risk losing some of our most talented scientists and compromising our country’s position at the forefront of technological innovation,” Summers wrote.

Ladd wrote that since then, “we have seen some real changes and improvements in this area.”

Casey said that Harvard and other universities will continue to work with the government to balance concerns about security with an awareness of the benefits of international exchange.

—Staff writer Lois E. Beckett can be reached at lbeckett@fas.harvard.edu.