American Must Fight for Foreign Students
On a recent trip to Singapore, I had the opportunity
to meet with Phillip Yeo, the powerful chairman of the
country's Agency for Science, Technology and Research. I
was surprised in the midst of our conversation when my host
jumped up, walked over to a blackboard and without notes
wrote out a detailed summary of the numbers and
nationalities of foreign-born students in his country. But
in retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised at all.
Singapore actively recruits the best and brightest
students from many countries to attend its world-class
universities. In exchange, officials require those students
to remain and work in Singapore for a specified number of
years and encourage them to stay permanently to contribute
to the nation's high-tech future. Thus, for Singapore, the
number of incoming foreign students — like the
balance of trade or the currency reserves on hand —
is considered a key economic indicator. They are another
measure of the nation's economic security and future
productivity.
In recent years more and more nations have begun to
recognize that advanced education in science and technology
is a vital economic commodity. Some nations — such as
Singapore, Canada and Germany — are pursuing a policy
of "skilled migration" by luring exceptional students to
their universities for advanced study and then encouraging
them to stay. Others, like Australia and New Zealand, are
primarily encouraging foreign students as a means of
generating additional revenues. Meanwhile, developing
economies, and in particular India and China, are making
huge investments in their universities to keep their finest
students at home and build a more educated work force.
In the United States today, our system of higher
education performs all three of these tasks. Foreign
students generate significant revenues, contributing more
than $13 billion to the U.S. economy annually. Foreign
students also bring critically needed skills into our
country, accounting for nearly half of all graduate
enrollments in engineering and computer science at American
universities. And many of them stay permanently:
Foreign-born scientists make up more than a third of
engineering and computer science university faculties, and
nearly the same portion of our science and engineering work
force.
Finally, foreign and American students together help
fuel our university-driven leadership in science and
technology, which has made us the world's economic
superpower.
The trouble is, in our radically new interconnected
world, we are not giving any serious thought to which of
these three functions is most important to our nation's
future.
Not to ignore our homegrown talent, but the future
skills and the future jobs in information technology are no
longer a driving interest among students. At Johns Hopkins
this year, only 4 percent of our freshmen are interested in
studying computer science and computer engineering. Also,
our engineering school enrollment in these areas has been
falling significantly during the past few years. In fall
2001, there were 266 declared computer science majors, but
only 206 in 2002, 163 in 2003 and 120 this year.
From where I sit, the answer is clear. We must
recognize, like Singapore, that we are now in a global
competition for high-tech talent, and that talent knows no
national boundaries. While we make every effort within to
leave no child behind, we need also look without and
continue to welcome the best and brightest young minds to
our shores — they, too, are part of America's
future.
Tens of thousands of bright students who used to come
to America to study science and engineering now have many
other options. Last year, foreign applications to American
graduate schools declined 28 percent, and actual foreign
graduate student enrollments dropped 6 percent — the
third year in a row to see a decline.
Some of the decline can be attributed to post-Sept. 11
American visa policies that are reversing decades of
openness to foreign scientific excellence. And
unfortunately, once students are here, we have no coherent
policy of trying to keep them. Incentives to encourage the
best and brightest students to stay might include extending
visas to immediate family members, coordinating career
planning and placement or establishing campus mentorship
programs among faculty and students, thus encouraging
students to grow roots and remain.
In the new global economy, American competitiveness
depends upon an ample supply of the brightest minds, from
home and abroad. It's time to make bringing them here
— and keeping them — a national priority.
William R. Brody is president of The Johns Hopkins
University. He wrote this article for The San Jose
(Calif.) Mercury News.
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