DIVERSITY | Offering a place for everyone
16 December 2008
Learning About American Life
This article is excerpted from the IIP publication Sketchbook USA, a richly illustrated volume that depicts Americans at work, at play, in their communities, and engaging in civic life. View and download the fully formatted Sketchbook.
Foreign students have long been a familiar and vital element of American higher education. In the past seven years, the United States has hosted more than half a million foreign college students each year, according to the definitive annual report Open Doors, published by the Institute of International Education.
For the 2006-2007 academic year, Open Doors reported that almost 583,000 international students enrolled in the more than 4,000 colleges and universities U.S. colleges and universities – a 3.2 percent increase over the previous year. India continued to be the largest single source of foreign students (83,833), followed by China (67,723), Korea (62,392), and Japan (35,282).
The most popular fields of study for foreign students are business and management, followed by engineering, physical and life sciences, social sciences, and mathematics and computer sciences.
The University of Southern California in Los Angeles hosts the largest number of foreign students (more than 7,000), followed by large public and private universities in New York, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Texas.
International students attend U.S. institutions of higher learning for the same reasons that Americans do: academic excellence, unparalleled choices in types of institutions and academic programs, and flexibility in designing individual courses of study.
Surveys of returning exchange students consistently show that their greatest adjustment in American-style classrooms is a communication style that allows students to ask questions and to state and defend their points of view. Students are also encouraged to challenge and defend one another’s papers in graduate-level seminars. Learning these ways of creative thinking was the greatest reward of their study time in the United States, according to student reports.
American higher education can be expensive. But with schools offering a wide range of tuition and living costs, plus opportunities for financial aid, a U.S. education can be affordable as well.
International secondary school exchanges also have been growing. Since the late 1990s, according to the U.S. Department of State, the United States has issued student visas for approximately 30,000 secondary school students annually.
The secondary school programs come in all shapes and sizes, but all provide an opportunity for teenagers from other countries and cultures to live with host families, attend school, and participate in the varied experiences of American life.
Tathmina is a student from Tajikistan who lived with a family in Alabama for a year, and he comments on just how different U.S. schools are from what he knows back home.
“The biggest surprise was that you have a lot of clubs and teams. At home, we just have lessons and go back home,” Tathmina explained in an interview. “The most fun and best things are the clubs, where we can find friends. German club, drama, yearbook, and Asian clubs.”
Aya is from Iraq and stayed at the same home in Alabama with Tathmina. She too comments on the many differences in U.S. schools. “Classes are really different. At home we just read, memorize the book, write it down. Here we have more projects, we do things.”
Tathmina hopes to take some U.S. school customs home to Tajikistan. “I want to start clubs at schools back home, more like we do here. I’m also interested in volunteer work — with my host family, every week we go somewhere to help someone. When I get home I want to open clubs, then get students interested in volunteer work.”
A Pakistani youngster who stayed in Florida says, “I would recommend that my friends come here and have this great experience.” Mohammed said, “You learn a lot of things. You learn about the American life.”
The State Department counts 107 current secondary school exchange programs: 76 operated by private volunteer organizations (some with government funding), 12 by individual school districts, and 19 by Rotary International, which has sponsored international exchanges since 1927.
