As the school year begins at Oregon universities, some international students may not be able to start classes with their peers.
As first reported in the Oregon Capital Chronicle, travel bans, changes to the length of stay for student visas and increased immigration enforcement have led to a 20% decline in international students choosing to study in the U.S. Students from foreign countries who do choose to attend university in the States are seeing delays in the student visa process that could mean they will not be able to start classes in the fall.
Eowyn Brown is the associate vice provost for global engagement at Portland State University. Dennis Galvan is the dean and vice provost for global engagement at the University of Oregon. They both join us to share what they are hearing from students about the visa application process and what the overall decline in international students means for Oregon schools.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: As the school year for Oregon universities begins, some students are finding they just can’t get to class this year. Increased immigration enforcement and changes to the student visa program have led to a 20% decline in international students choosing to study in the U.S. We wanted to see how that’s playing out in Oregon. Eowyn Brown is the associate vice provost for global engagement at Portland State, and Dennis Galvan is the dean and associate vice provost for global engagement at the University of Oregon. Welcome both of you to Think Out Loud. It’s good to have you.
Eowyn Brown: Hi, thank you for having me.
Dennis Galvan: Thanks, thanks. Pleasure to be here, Geoff.
Norcross: Eowyn, you first, how would you define what an international student is?
Brown: Right. So an international student is someone who’s coming to the U.S. from a different country to get a degree from an American institution, and one of the things that we notice about them is that they have to get not only academic admission, but legal permission to come study in the United States in the form of a visa.
Norcross: What would an international student come to Portland State for? What is it that you find is a special draw for students from around the world to come here?
Brown: Yeah, that’s interesting. So at Portland State, we have a lot of legacy students, so I’ve interacted with students whose parents and uncles and other extended family members came to this area, had a great experience. And so, sort of by word of mouth through the family or through the local community, they chose Portland. Another interesting factor is that oftentimes we hear that students want to go to a major metro area. They want New York, they want Los Angeles, and the family says that doesn’t seem very safe. And so the city of Portland can be a great compromise because the student feels like, all right, I’m in at least a mid-sized metro area and the parents and the rest of the family feel like they’re safe.
Norcross: And what about you, Dennis? Why do students from around the world find the U of O?
Galvan: Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s something very similar, what’s true for Portland is also true for Eugene: small college town experience, residential campus, living on campus, getting to know American students. The international alumni I get to meet with around the world are so in love with the experience they had in Oregon, the hospitality, the warmth. And then they come here because there are top academic programs in biomedical engineering and in sustainable architecture and all things environment, all things related to human performance and sports. So we, like our sister University of Portland State, we attract top talent from around the world and that’s really important to our academic mission.
Norcross: I’m just curious, do you find yourself competing for students, the two of you?
Galvan: I think we’re in different domains, we have different academic areas of strength. Portland State has engineering, and that’s always been a major draw for international students, and that’s something only emerging now at the University of Oregon. Things like law, business, architecture, and the sport related programs are more distinctive to U of O, I would say.
Norcross: OK, well, here’s where we are. Eowyn, let’s start with you at Portland State. What numbers are you expected in international enrollment this fall and how does it compare to years past?
Brown: Right. So the short answer is it’s down. And it’s been down year over year for Portland State as it has been nationally. I’m going to give a caveat here that PSU is on the quarter system. And so a lot of the national press that you’re seeing where you’re starting to see reports on actual numbers of students in a classroom, those are semester schools. And so those students have already enrolled, and they’re here attending classes. So that’s not the case for Portland State, we start on the 28th. But what I did look at is the number of students who’ve registered for our international student orientation. So, we might have students who haven’t registered yet or register and don’t show up, but it looks like we’re about 25% down in our number of registrants for this fall’s international student orientation over last year.
Norcross: How about you, Dennis? What are you seeing?
Galvan: We’re seeing for international student orientation, we start at the same time, we’re on quarters as well. About 160 students will be at our international student orientation. And to give you an idea, at our peak in 2015, international student orientation filled a ballroom with 500 students. So, like at Portland State, things have been slipping in terms of international enrollment for about a decade, and some of that reflects some big sending countries like China, their higher education system changing. But we are seeing undergraduate enrollment incoming this fall. It’s going to be about the same level as last year, not very big, and then graduate student enrollment is starting to dip a little bit. It had been steadily increasing for most of the last 15 years.
Norcross: Why?
Galvan: I think the big one, of course, is the last year and a half of messaging from the federal administration in DC, that when you look at it in the aggregate, more or less says, we don’t want international students in this country. We’re making it harder for students to get visas, we’re making it unclear what are the legal terms under which they can stay.
Last spring, we had students who had their status as international students summarily terminated on very short notice, and that sent a chill through the entire international student community in higher education. And now we have some other changes that are coming up right away that make it harder to be an international student in the U.S. and to the detriment of universities, to the detriment of the economy of the state of Oregon and the whole country.
Norcross: I’m guessing you’re going to say something similar, Eowyn.
Brown: I am. I’ve got notes here all about visa delays, interview delays, generally, sort of the perception of an unfriendly climate based on news out of Washington, D.C. But I think the thing that I would add to this is that ultimately, international students look for a predictable, stable environment to come to. And so anything that happens that suggests that things are in flux, that they might come and not be able to finish, pushes them elsewhere. And these students do have other options. Canada, the UK, Europe, all have offerings that are very competitive. They can be sometimes less expensive. And in Canada, in particular, there’s a clearer path to
employment and citizenship if that’s something that international students want to do.
Norcross: I can’t help but wonder if there’s a financial element here because tuition is rising for everybody and international students don’t pay the lower in-state tuition costs. Is that contributing to the problem?
Galvan: Certainly, the cost of higher education is an issue. What I would point out is we’ve been for years, we have the same cost for international students as for students from any other state in the United States, anyone who’s not from Oregon. And we do our best to keep those costs under control. The cost of higher education wasn’t inhibiting enrollment in the period of massive growth from about 2005 to 2015. So what we’re seeing is there are other factors besides simply the cost. The cost of Oregon universities is still relatively competitive compared to a number of other places that they could go in the United States.
And as Eowyn mentioned, we have the advantage not just of safety, we also have the advantage of this wonderfully beautiful natural environment and what we hear from international students from around the world is “Oh my gosh, this place is so green, so beautiful, the environment is so pure and clean and we really like being here,” so we we have some comparative advantages that I think make the price well worth it.
Norcross: Eowyn, I’d like to hear a story, and you can be as specific as you like. Is there a student that you can point to who wants to come but doesn’t feel that they can?
Brown: Sort of a student who self-selects out, without a barrier being necessarily formally put in front of them?
Norcross: Yeah.
Brown: I don’t think I have a specific anecdote like that, but I do, I hear from our immigration advisors who work with students on some really heartbreaking situations. So, I can share a story of a particular student at Portland State who had a fully funded, not by the state of Oregon, but by the sending government, I believe, to do a graduate degree for a particular number of years, was an excellent student, and had to leave the U.S. to get a new passport and was denied a re-entry visa.
So it’s really frustrating and sad because we had someone who was here doing what they said they were going to be doing, engaging in studies, doing an excellent job by all accounts. There certainly was not a financial issue underlying, because we know that those costs were being covered. And yet, for reasons that are really unclear, that student is not going to be able to continue.
Norcross: Do you know where they went to school instead?
Brown: I think this is too recent for a new decision to have been made.
Norcross: Yeah. And for you, Dennis, I’m sure you’re hearing stories like that all the time as well. Is there anything that you can do at the university level to assuage potential students’ fears?
Galvan: Absolutely, Geoff. The students have been fearful for a long time, this whole year and a half has been a period where the federal administration has made these changes in a way that induces more anxiety because you don’t know exactly when the change is coming and you don’t know if it’s gonna apply to you. And so we have seen stories of students who have said I’ve had enough and I’m going to go back home and pause my studies until I can either come back to the U.S. at another time or go to another country.
So what we do very intensively, as I know Eowyn’s team does at Portland State as well, is we’ve got a team of specialized international student advisors, all people with extensive international experience who are the go-to individuals. They are the shoulders to cry on. They are like family for many of our international students, and then they connect our international students to services around campus, whether it’s mental health services, whether it’s academic advising.
But most importantly, what we do is put up on our web page on federal changes every bit of information we have. We hold public fora every term. We have one coming up next month for our students so that they know that the administration is tracking all the changes. We’re very honest about what we know and what we don’t know about regulatory changes, so that international students feel at the University of Oregon that somebody has their back and is looking out for them and they know that this campus is not only safe for them but incredibly welcoming for them. And I will say in Eugene it’s been an incredible rallying effect among faculty, domestic students, and members of the Eugene-Springfield community who have come out and said, we want international students here and have opened their doors, opened their homes, made sure they feel really welcome.
Norcross: Dennis Galvan, Eowyn Brown, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Brown: Thank you so much.
Galvan: Thank you, Geoff.
Norcross: Dennis Galvan is the dean and vice provost for global engagement at the University of Oregon, and Eowyn Brown is the associate vice provost for global engagement at Portland State.
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