Harvard Is Where the Heart Is

America is...

Budweiser and fried food; liberal undergraduate education and cushy investment banking jobs. For Harvard’s international students, the magnetism of the “World’s Greatest University” often lasts longer than just four years.

While a select segment of Harvard’s social stratosphere may have spent the last week mourning the passing of Leverett House’s weekly Thirsty Thursdays party, to its host, Wilson R.S. Prichard ’03, his newly parched weekends are just the latest in a long list of grievances. Hailing from the crisp, pristine streets of Toronto, Canada, Prichard maintains a strong identity as a stranger in a strange land despite the similarities between his homeland to the north—with its drinking age of 18—and the U.S. “The values are better there,” Prichard snips, “and the quality of life is better. I’m a firm believer that despite all of its wealth, the U.S. is not the nicest place in the world to live, nor is it necessarily close to it.”

Prichard is heading to a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., after graduation, but not for long—it’s merely a stepping stone on the way to one of two countries that rarely appear near the top of any quality-of-life ranking: Zambia and Zimbabwe. In the long run, he says he’s headed back to Canada. Like a substantial portion of international students at Harvard, he’s eager to get out of the States as soon as he can.

But another segment of Harvard’s international population doesn’t have the luxury of zipping off to Zambia to work on rural development: those who grew up in places like it. The College is home to students of nationalities ranging from Albanian to Zimbabwean, but most of these students don’t plan to tuck their return tickets home inside their diplomas. While they feel strong personal loyalties to their native countries, the opportunity gap between most developing nations and the U.S. is simply too large to overcome.

Most international students from developing countries say that they plan to go back home eventually, but only after they’ve established themselves in America. In the short run, at least, it seems that Harvard is a primary conduit for the 21st century’s version of the proverbial brain drain, or the relocation to the West of the developing world’s best and brightest.

Coming to America

Over seven percent of the College—489 students in 1999, the last year for which statistics are available—is international. While Westernized nations, especially Anglophone Britain and Canada, and the major East Asian countries such as China and South Korea are strongly represented, Harvard’s entire international community is a pretty strong approximation of the United Nations: including graduate schools, 130 countries have at least one student enrolled at Harvard.

Neither Harvard’s alumni records office nor the Harvard International Office compiles statistics on where international students wind up after they graduate. But international students and professors say that, on the whole, students from richer countries are more likely to return home than those from poorer, less stable countries—which means that the nations which can benefit the most from Harvard graduates receive the fewest.

Few trademarks have a wider global reach than Harvard, and its draw power is even greater in countries without comparable educational alternatives. In addition to the standard lures—faculty resources, a bright student body, prestige, connections, Boston—Harvard is one of the few names in U.S. higher education many international students may be aware of. And for students outside of the most developed nations, an American education, Harvard or otherwise, far supersedes the opportunities at home.

“Educationally, the U.S. is better established and more structured,” says Nitin Saigal ’03, of Bombay, India. “In India, education from a young age is vocational, which is very constricting. American education lets you cover a broader range.”

Moreover, in countries without well-funded higher education systems, the financial burden of college can be overwhelming. The generous financial aid policies of schools like Harvard can make international applications the only option for some less well-off students. “It’s cheaper for an international student to go to school in America because it seems that financial aid programs are better here,” says Shazrene S. Mohamed ’04, who is from Zimbabwe.

But while the College turns away piles of international applications every year, it’s hardly the case that half the globe is beating down Harvard’s door. There are substantial obstacles to becoming an international student at Harvard, most of which stop candidates from even sending out an application.

In many countries, the educational infrastructure is so weak that students don’t even know they can apply to Harvard. “Most Kenyan students are not yet fully aware of how to carry out the application process to U.S. universities, mainly because they have no one to guide them,” says Kenyan Samuel M. Kabue ’06. Even if students plan on submitting an application, differing secondary education structures can put candidates at a disadvantage. “Most people don’t know how an American liberal arts education is structured,” says German student Werner Schaefer ’02-’03. “They don’t know how to get in and what is important when you apply, like extracurriculars, summer experiences and the type of college essay to write. So that only leaves a few people who actually make it.”

“The application process to U.S. colleges is very different from colleges at home,” agrees Rim Abida ’03, the president of the Woodbridge Society, Harvard’s international student organization, who was born in Tunisia and grew up in Syria. “And the required exams often cover different material from what we do in class, especially SAT II’s. Applying to U.S. colleges requires not only having the language level to do it, but also preparing for the application starting your junior year.”

The language barrier in and of itself is especially daunting for students from non-Anglophone countries: without near-fluency in English, it’s practically impossible to do well as an undergraduate. This factor alone can filter out substantial numbers of prospective applicants.

And finally, there is finance. To submit a credible application to Harvard, a candidate has to have attained a sufficient educational level in high school to convince Byerly Hall that he can excel in such a high-powered academic environment. This stiff requirement generally limits applicants to students at a nation’s top handful of high schools, which tend to be comprised largely of comparatively wealthy students who are more likely to have visited America. “This is why a lot of the time, everyone from a certain country will come from the same school,” says Abida.

Getting Comfortable

After passing all of these tests, it’s not surprising so many students are in no hurry to leave America. Predictably, the biggest factor for international students looking to start their careers is financial opportunity—and with the most prestigious degree in the world’s richest country, those opportunities are overwhelmingly in American metropolitan areas. While many students say they would like to return home eventually, most plan on beginning their careers without stamping their passports home.

“There are more opportunities here,” says Abida. “In a lot of countries, especially developing countries, you need to have money to start off. A lot of international students stay here at first to save enough money to return home and establish themselves. As a woman at my stage in life, the work experience back in Tunisia would not be very rewarding.”

After four years of immersion in a liberal arts school like Harvard, many students find themselves interested in career paths that simply don’t exist in their home countries. Mohamed wants to be an astronaut. “My interests are not compatible with home,” she says. “They have bigger things to worry about before starting a space program, like six million people starving. The list doesn’t end.”

Even for students who don’t plan to stay in the States forever, the career incubation period can be quite lengthy. Kabue, from Nairobi, Kenya, says it could take a generation for his home country to reap the rewards of his experience abroad. “I think it will be necessary for me to stay here for a few years, 10 maybe 20 years, to get the experience and money to take back to Kenya,” he says. “Everyone is hoping that I will come back with something new that you could never get from Kenya.”

The lure of the American Dream doesn’t just apply to students from poorer nations. It also applies to countries that, from a cultural standpoint, arguably count as international in cartographic terms only. Namely, Canada. According to Prichard, Canadians in particular are drawn en masse to their larger, culturally dominant neighbor. “Most Canadians get pushed to stay here because of job options,” he says, citing high school classmates that came to Harvard as an example. “I think it’s really sad that a lot of international students stay here because they’re drawn by the money. There’s more money to be had here, especially if someone has debts or student loans. A lot of my friends say, ‘I’ll stay in New York for a while and then go back home,’ but inevitably, it seems like they stay here.”

And American career opportunities are magnified, of course, by the instant foot-in-the-door that a Harvard degree offers. “Harvard, by the nature of being one of the better institutions, gives you more opportunities to stay [in the U.S.], whereas lesser schools don’t provide as many opportunities for jobs and might make it harder to stay here,” Saigal says.

But for a minority of students, the primary attraction of staying in the States is cultural, not economic. After spending four years in college, some students say, they feel more identified with America than their home country—a sort of cultural inertia. “Being at Harvard for four years, you develop a lot of personal ties that make you reluctant to leave America, while at the same time your ties to home grow weaker,” says Schaefer, who is teaching English in Shanghai while waiting to hear whether he has been accepted to American graduate schools. “I don’t think it’s the University so much as the fact that you are living in the U.S. during very formative years, that build your networks here,” Schaefer says. “By being a very attractive place to study, the University is causing a brain drain after all.”

Finally, especially after Sept. 11, tightened security and immigration policies have made some international students wary of leaving the country. According to Abida, international students receive a year-long “practical training” visa to gain job experience after graduation, but cannot return if they leave the U.S. “If I leave the country, I can only go back to Tunisia,” she says. And even for students still in college, re-entry to the U.S. is no sure thing. At the beginning of this academic year, a few Harvard students were temporarily not allowed back into the country, delaying their studies. “For most international students, such as myself, it’s become significantly harder to get back into the U.S. post-9/11,” says Faisal Khalid ’02, a native of Islamabad, Pakistan, currently working at a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.

Homecoming

Yewhile the brain drain phenomenon is widespread, it’s far from an absolute rule. For reasons ranging from national loyalty to a distaste for American culture, Harvard students like Prichard are eager to leave. Especially for students from Westernized countries, a Harvard diploma can offer similar advantages at home as in America. According to Courtney S. Kirshner ’79, president of the Harvard Club of Ireland, the College’s 300 alumni living in Ireland and Northern Ireland “are in the highest tiers of their professions. A Harvard diploma gives immediate recognition of excellence and luster that encourages these elite to return to their home countries and participate in their nation’s life at the highest levels.”

Even if economic opportunities abroad are not identical to those in America, other students say they are drawn to big-fish, small-pond status. “A Harvard grad at home in their own country has a much better opportunity to rise quickly to positions of great importance there,” says Prichard. “This implies a great opportunity to shape the future of that country, which may not be a reality in the U.S. to the same extent. The idea that influence in the world can only be had from within the U.S., I think, is an illusion.”

In the least developed countries, however, the primary motivating factor for students who return seems to be patriotism. “I think that you cannot achieve much physical wealth because you went to Harvard, considering the current economic status of a country like Kenya,” says Kabue. “Those Harvard graduates who go back to Kenya do not do so with an aim of gaining anything. They usually go back with the purpose of serving the country.”

Foreign students say returning home with altruistic intentions often entails major personal sacrifices. “When job opportunities and the salary levels do not compensate students for their sacrifices, financial and personal, of having left home and lived thousands of miles away,” says Rayd Abu-Ayyash ’01, who claims both Germany and Jordan as his home countries, “it requires an idealist, economically secure, well-connected, or a courageous optimist to return home straight after university.”

Yet most international students from developing nations are convinced that their countries need them, even if they are not willing to return home just yet. “[Harvard graduates] can directly attempt to spread the Harvard methods of learning in the educational institutions in their home countries, and thereby improve the educational standards at home,” Abu-Ayyash continues. “Many developing countries face a greater scarcity in human resources than natural resources. Harvard graduates are often both well equipped to impact their field of work and highly motivated. This is a valuable combination that many people cannot offer.”

Saigal agrees that Harvard teaches a valuable approach to life that is tough to obtain outside of a world-class university. “Harvard provides academic exposure to different strains of thought and social exposure to different cultures and personality types,” he says. “International students who have experienced this are thoroughly enriched and are able to understand the academic, social, political and corporate institutions that prevail around the world, and draw upon these in a manner that suits their country best. The ability to make an informed decision, be it in business or politics, is strengthened by Harvard’s emphasis of diversity of thought.”

The Brain Drain

But do international students really have a responsibility to their native countries? According to Assistant Professor of Sociology Jason A. Kaufman ’93, a comparative cultural sociologist, even the worst traditional cases of brain drain may not be so bad for less developed countries. By increasing the economic, cultural, and social linkages between first-world and third-world nations, he says, ex-pats in America can still be doing a service to their countries. “In many cases, those students who stay here end up sending business to their home countries, which is beneficial to them,” says Kaufman. Especially for developing countries, he says, international students who settle in the U. S. or in other developed countries create connections for people and businesses in their home countries that can prove valuable and foster progress.

Yet this is the best-case scenario. To develop these linkages, foreign students say they need guidance. One Jordanian graduate, Mohamed Al-Ississ ’00, is enrolled at Harvard Business School but is unable to matriculate due to heightened post 9/11 customs procedures for Arabs and Muslims, and is currently working in Amman in the Jordanian Ministry of Industry. “It would be extremely [helpful] if the Office of Career Services (OCS) actively [sought] to help students find adequate employment opportunities in their home region,” he says. “I personally was seeking that so much from OCS, but did not find any serious resources that helped me with that.”

Al-Ississ suggests that Harvard could help international students with the financial challenges of returning home by forgiving international student loans for those who seek employment in their native countries, a suggestion seconded by Abu-Ayyash. “The financial compensation has to be adequate to secure a decent standard of living,” Abu-Ayyash says. “Universities can help by helping students find scarce opportunities at home, and perhaps even offer a Harvard loan reduction for indebted students from developing countries if they return home, similar to the new system put in place by the university to encourage students to take up careers in public service.”

But most international students recognize that there is only so much Harvard can do to address the worst consequences of the brain drain phenomenon. They say the onus should be on foreign governments to take advantage of their students in America and make a return more economically palatable, rather than depending on 22-year-olds to sacrifice personal career opportunities for intangible national benefits they may never be able to take advantage of.

Most governments make little outreach to their students abroad. “It is very hard to maintain ties with German institutions if you leave Germany to study as an undergraduate at Harvard,” Schaefer says, “and it would probably be better if these channels were not closed to us. Scholarships and programs in or by the home country for those who study abroad would greatly strengthen the ties.”

Kabue agrees that governments need to step up their efforts to take advantage of what Harvard graduates can offer. “The biggest player in this respect is the home country,” he says. “Once graduates have experienced the freedom of working and earning what you deserve, [they] look back at their countries that are corrupt and unconducive for any personal business activities [and] will never look forward to going back. Why [would they], when you know that your hard work and effort will be frustrated by an uncaring government?”

From the perspective of poor countries, the accessibility of institutions like Harvard is a double-edged sword. It offers their youth opportunities far beyond what their infrastructure can offer, but it also leaves them little incentive to return and become the leaders of development efforts that could begin to bridge international inequalities. Whether they plan to stay in America or head home, Harvard’s international students largely agree that better incentives and more favorable job markets in their home countries are needed to fight the Cambridge brain drain. The irony is that many of them are the people most capable of instituting those incentives, so that the next generation of international Harvard students don’t have to make such difficult choices.