Foreign exchange students

DEFINITION: International students admitted to a country as nonimmigrant residents to attend institutions of higher learning, as other students from their host country attend schools in the visiting students’ home countries

SIGNIFICANCE: Exchange students undertake formal studies at postsecondary institutions to increase their cultural exposure, expand their learning opportunities, and improve their language skills. These experiences enrich human societies by building greater understanding among peoples of different cultures and nationalities and often lead to collaborations that benefit organizations, institutions, and disciplines over time.

Since ancient times young people have traveled to other lands to acquire new languages, improve their existing language skills, broaden their understanding of foreign customs, access historical sites and geography, and reflect on the meaning of these experiences. The rise of universities, and particularly their expansion within the modern era, has created a context for these experiences to become more formalized. Under organized exchange student programs, students spend time in other countries with structured educational aims in mind for set periods of time and report back to supervisors within their home institutions.

Post-World War I Developments

The calamity of World War I caused many world leaders and educators to consider ways in the postwar period to increase understanding among people at all levels of society, but especially among current and future leaders of governments, business, and academia. The Carnegie Foundation of New York provided thirty thousand dollars to create the International Institute of Education (IIE) in New York City for the express purpose of fostering educational exchanges between the United States and other nations. By 1921, this institute had designed a special student visa that would simplify the process by which foreign students could enter the United States for formal study. It was lobbying the U.S. Congress to approve the visa. The institute was also undertaking the first survey of American academic institutions to gather their views on adopting new programs and approaches for dealing with foreign students. The institute would go on to become a key global hub of information and coordination for foreign student exchange activities and a vital source of information collected from around the globe.

World War II touched every continent, resulted in catastrophic loss of life, and demonstrated the potential capacity of humankind to destroy the globe. Once again, the end of hostilities heightened public interest in improving understanding among nations. Private organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation of New York joined with the United Nations and its affiliates such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as well as government agencies such as the U.S. State Department, to promote formal student exchange programs among American universities and their overseas counterparts. New organizations were launched during this period. They include the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors, established in 1948. The latter body eventually grew to over 10,000 individuals from more than 160 nations under its revised name, NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

Foreign Students in the United States

Foreign students enter the United States by obtaining any one of three types of visas:

• F-1 visa for full-time academic education

• J-visa for cultural exchange for informal learning of professionals as well as student travel and work programs

• M-visas for nonacademic courses of study, such as vocational training

• J-visas are often colloquially called “Fulbrights”; however, that name properly refers only to a specific program, not to all programs that merit J-visas.

During the academic year of 2014–15, a total of 974,926 foreign students registered for full-time study at American universities. This figure represented an increase of 10 percent over the prior year and a substantial increase over the 565,039 students who had registered during the 2004–5 academic year. Between 2004 and 2014, foreign students accounted for 3 to 4 percent of all students enrolled in American institutions of higher learning. Their numbers were split about equally between undergraduate and graduate students between 2010–11 and 2014–15. The states of California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida—in that order—had the highest enrollments. During the 2014–15 academic year, six countries provided nearly 63 percent of all the foreign students in the United States: China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Brazil. The United States remained the most popular destination for foreign students in the 2019-2020 academic year when there were approximately 1,075,496 foreign-born students enrolled in institutions of higher learning in the country. Although foreign students represent over 200 countries, the majority were from China and India.

American Students Overseas

The number of American students going abroad for both short- and long-term study increased 5.2 percent in 2014–15 to an all-time high of 304,467, up from 264,886 the preceding year. That 2013–14 figure represented almost 1.6 percent of all American students enrolled in higher education during that academic year. Thirty-five percent of the students studying abroad were in semester-long programs, while 62 percent elected short-term programs. This positive trend seemed to be due to increases in the number of foreign-study programs, greater awareness that globalization requires knowledge and experience with other cultures, and the demands of a highly competitive job market. Some universities, especially private liberal arts colleges, make a full semester of overseas study a graduation requirement; many more require at least some formal overseas exposure. The United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and France have been the most popular destinations for American students, but by the early twenty-first century, students were demonstrating increased interest in going to China, Costa Rica, Japan, South Africa, and India. In the 2018-2019 academic year, almost 350,00 American students studied abroad, and European countries remained the most popular destinations. In the years following, the ability of American students to study abroad and foreign students to come to the United States for their education would be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early Twenty-First-Century Developments

After the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and other international incidents of terrorism, government monitoring of foreign students increased significantly, and many nations instituted more rigid requirements for student visas. The United States put in place a national monitoring system run by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). Although members of the national security community have remained concerned about the effectiveness of this system in monitoring possible terrorist activity, higher education institutions have come to accept that it is a worthwhile, if cumbersome, burden in a more complex global environment. Beginning in 2019 and stretching through 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the ability of American students to study abroad and foreign-born students to study in the United States. Programs were suspended due to the public health crisis. Foreign exchange programs were forced to make adjustments such as arrival quarantines, hybrid classrooms, and vaccine requirements.

The enrollment of international students continued to climb in the United States through the mid-2020s. In 2023, over 1.5 million foreign students had obtained F-1 and M-1 visas. This represented a 10.4 percent increase from the previous year and also the largest total since before the COVID-19 pandemic. China was the largest country of origin for foreign-born students with over 289,000 students. India closely followed with 268,000, South Korea with 43,000, and Canada with 27,000. Twenty percent of international student enrollment in 2023 occurred in twenty American universities.

The top five of this list were:

• New York University
• Northeastern University
• Columbia University
• University of Southern California
• Arizona State University

Foreign students cited numerous reasons for choosing to study in the United States. One of the primary motivators was the high quality of education and the international reputations associated with American univesities. A second motivator was a comparative wealth of research opportunities. The efforts of US universities to recruit foreign students played a large factor in their decisions to pursue degrees in the United States.

Bibliography

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