Study Sees 'Critical Junction' In Foreign-Student Education

The guiding, screening, and selection of foreign students in American colleges and universities have come under sharp review in a report released recently by Education and World Affairs, a non-profit organization established in 1962 by the Ford and Carnegie Foundations. The report calls the present period "a critical junction" in the education of foreign students in the United States and asks for careful policy-making and planning on the part of all institutions that deal with foreign students.

Noting that there were more than 75,000 foreign students in attendance at U. S. institutions last year, 75 per cent of them from emerging countries, and that the foreign student population is expected to double in the next decade just when the enrollment of U. S. students is due to reach a new peak, the report points out that foreign students are a heavy drain on U. S. educational facilities.

The report estimates that about a third of the students from the developing countries do not know enough English to understand the substance of classroom lectures during their first term and require special counseling and orientation to American customs, often more than they are given. All this calls for more staff and increased investment by the admitting institution.

A major recommendation of the report is that informational and pre-admission resources overseas be strengthened.

Among the report's other recommendations are:

(1) that U. S. institutions formulate policies toward the admission of foreign students, these policies to be based on how foreign students will fit in with the basic educational purposes of each institution and how relevant an education it can offer, particularly to students from developing countries.

(2) that the U. S. government make greater efforts to encourage foreign governments to assume more responsibility for students who come to this country and for their return home.

(3) that receiving institutions in this country be very clear about standards they wish to impose on nationals of various countries. Many students admitted to U. S. colleges have been rejected by their local institutions for inadequate achievement. Others, the report states, could be educated more profitably at one of their local institutions, especially at the undergraduate level where the problem of "clustering" of foreign students at a few well-known institutions. Twentyfive per cent of all foreign students at a few well-known institutions occur.