Harvard Needs More International Students

More than 80 percent of Harvard’s students come from one small but privileged group.

In the past few years, there has been no shortage of scrutiny for Harvard’s admissions policies — from affirmative action and legacy admissions, to athletic preferences and feeder schools. So what group is this overrepresented on our campus? Might these students come from an exclusive private school, or perhaps a squash team?

No. It’s the United States of America.

Harvard claims to be committed to promoting diversity, even after the downfall of affirmative action. It should be. It’s important for Harvard to represent all of the people of our country — but why draw the line at our borders?

Although Harvard College admits students hailing from 100 different countries, a comparatively tiny proportion of the student body is international. Indeed, Americans make up nearly 80 percent of Harvard College students but comprise less than five percent of the world’s population.

Harvard is an internationally renowned university. Its name and impact are known across all seven continents. Its welcome page even declares that the University’s mission is to “foster change in the world.” Harvard’s admissions policies should reflect that, too.

For better or worse, a Harvard degree is often viewed as a ticket to the upper class. For first-generation or low-income American students, a Harvard education can be extraordinarily valuable.

Many have pointed out that Harvard’s economic diversity is practically nonexistent, with two-thirds of students coming from the top 10 percent — of America, that is. When viewed on a worldwide scale, the reality is even worse. The median family income at Harvard — $168,800 — falls squarely in the top 1 percent of the world’s population.

The same positive effect that Harvard can have for low-income Americans holds true for people around the world.

America, too, would benefit from having the opportunity to educate the world’s best students. If Harvard truly believes in the transformative power of its education, it should want to share this transformation with the rest of the world. Harvard aims to produce the citizen-leaders of society — why should this be limited to America?

Additionally, increasing the number of international students would expand Harvard’s talent pool. Given that America regularly underperforms in math, science, and reading as compared to other industrialized nations, it does not make sense that it is overrepresented nearly twentyfold on campus.

Creating parity for international applicants would make the process more meritocratic since, statistically, one would expect there to be more qualified candidates from the rest of the world than from America alone. This would simultaneously create a more diverse student body — an inherent good for Harvard and its students alike — while providing yet another example of the interrelatedness of promoting diversity and merit.

This is by no means arguing for a purely meritocratic admissions process — whatever that may mean. Nor does it argue that test scores and grades alone fully encapsulate an applicant’s merit; admissions practices should continue to reflect more than just those criteria.

It is baseless to assume that international students have worse essays or less compelling personal narratives — that they are holistically inferior to Americans. Unless one assumes the above to be true, quality concerns can’t be the main factor behind the dearth of international students.

To be fair, this problem does not seem to stem from Harvard’s admissions policies, which have “no quotas or limits of any kind.” It is quite likely that Harvard simply receives relatively fewer applications from international students than American ones. That’s to be expected, given the long distances that they must travel and the language barriers that they must overcome in order to attend Harvard.

Indeed, the College’s current international population is predominantly composed of students from Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, and Germany respectively — most of which are primarily white, English-speaking countries. As such, they have the smallest implicit hurdles for their students to attend Harvard.

As a result, most of the world is vastly underrepresented.

Canada, a country of just more than 39 million, is the most represented nation behind America. The number of students from the United Kingdom, a country with a population of 68 million, is greater than the number from China and India combined — whose 2.8 billion people make up more than a third of the world’s population.

Given Harvard’s present demographics, creating a more international student body would increase diversity while also recognizing merit outside of America. Therefore, Harvard cannot view the deterrents for international students as immutable.

In the past, Harvard has leveraged its financial resources and used targeted recruiting to foster a more regionally, racially, and economically diverse student body. Now, it must do the same to create an internationally diverse one.

Whatever reasons that international students have for choosing not to apply or attend, Harvard should commit its resources to making these pathways more accessible so that it can attract the best students in the world. Moreover, it could increase its efforts at recruiting international students, possibly by having its admissions officers travel internationally to demonstrate the University’s interest in non-American students, explain the college application process, and highlight its resources for applicants.

Some may remain patriotically unconvinced, arguing that Harvard is an American university located in America that exists to educate American students.

To that I say, if Harvard should overrepresent Americans so drastically, why shouldn’t it overrepresent people from Massachusetts to the same extreme degree? Would we consider Harvard diverse if it were 80 percent Cantabrigian?

If that prospect seems unfair, consider the reality for international students.

Matthew R. Tobin ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Government and Economics in Winthrop House.