By SHAWN DIXON
Advertising Manager
At The College of Saint Rose there is a growing initiative from the college administration to make the campus more global. In the undertaking of this initiative it is crucial to understand what motivates international student’s decisions on school selection. There are many factors that international students consider before choosing the country they will study in. With the recent numbers of shootings on college campuses nationwide, and the mass shootings elsewhere that have become all too common, safety is arguably on their minds. After speaking with campus officials and international students it quickly became apparent that the factors influencing students to study here are much more complicated than just safety concerns. These concerns ranged from academic offerings, to things such as cultural understanding, job placement, and the price of tuition.
According to the Saint Rose website the College currently enrolls students from more than 25 different countries. Andrea Haynes, the College’s Director of Global and Field studies, states that “The College of Saint Rose aims to quadruple international enrollment in three years…And the College also wants to triple the number of students on study abroad.” With a current enrollment of approximately 100 international students that would rise to 400 by the year 2016. Colleen Thapalia, Director of International Recruitment and Admission, says that in recent years Saint Rose usually enrolled about eight new international undergraduate students a year. Goals call for that number to increase to about 40 by 2016. With numbers like these if international students fear coming to the U.S. how would the College attain those numbers?
Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking about international students, recently said, “They think they’re not safe in the United States and so they don’t come.” He made the comments after hearing concerns from parents in Japan about sending their children to study in the United States due to safety issues. State Department spokesman Patrick H. Vendrell has since admitted that Kerry was just, “…relaying an anecdote he had heard…”
Anecdote or not comments by the Secretary of State have important implications. Haynes also summarized the importance of word of mouth, and connections to friends and family, in students’ choice to study in the U.S. “You’re not going to apply to eighteen different schools typically, so any type of word of mouth is huge.”
Michaelle Mughisha, a graduate student from the African country of Burundi, applied to Saint Rose on the recommendation of her cousin who had previously attended. Yi Zhang, a graduate student from China, applied to Saint Rose because his family had moved to Albany. Api Sandrine Ohouo, a graduate student from the African country Ivory Coast, came to the U.S. because “all of my friends were here”, and her brother was also in upstate New York. Keiko Mimuro, a graduate student from Japan, first came to Union college for undergraduate studies because of friends and chose Saint Rose for graduate studies because of flexible application process and program offerings.
After word of mouth the choice primarily comes down to academics and the competition is becoming steeper. Other countries such as China, India, Australia, and Canada have been making large strides to attract international students.
Mughisha said, “It’s not about the violence itself but there are other features to the reduction of percentage of people coming to the U.S. because there are other countries doing very well in education”. Mughisha went to India for her undergraduate degree in computer applications because she says, at the time in 2005, they were reputed to have the best program and they were much cheaper – $5,000 per year there in India compared to $20,000 per year here in the U.S. As far as safety she says, “I come from a country that has been ravaged by war, for 13 years. I don’t feel threatened at all by gun violence here… Any country has its dark side or places”.
Zhang had similar sentiments. “I think it depends on the district. Everyone knows the NY subway at night is not safe. It is the same in China. I feel safe in America because I stay in the safe districts”.
When asked if safety concerns turned international student away from coming here Thapalia responded that, “I haven’t had anyone ask me directly about gun safety.” She said for international students, and their parents, a bigger concern is, “How do I respect my traditions and values while living in a secular multicultural country?” This, she says, “includes housing concerns with co-ed dormitories, culturally accepted foods, and available worship spaces…but it’s primarily academics”.
Mughisha agreed and said that other students, “when they come home they forget all about themselves, they lose their culture, it doesn’t work so when you go back to your country your people feel like you are lost.” She says it is better, “…when a college reaches out to a student and they feel safe, they feel home, it should feel like a home away from home.” She says that if a College does that, “I will call my brothers, I will call my sisters, I will call my cousins, to come to this college.”
Mimuro raised another valid concern that before coming here, “I didn’t feel any feelings about safety, but now I am very scared, not of everything, but I am very careful of what I do…I’m really questioning to stay in the states.” She says this is because of all of the stories she sees on the news and because of what has happened to her friends here. One of her friend’s apartments were broken into and some of her friends were at the Boston Marathon during the bombing. Talking about the Aurora movie theatre shooting, “We saw Colorado, we watched everything for three hours. After that we decided we didn’t want to go to big events like concerts…”
Despite the news coverage of high profile events like Boston, Aurora, and Newtown, a new study recently put out by the Pew Research Center found that gun homicides, “…peaked in the 1980s and the early 1990s, and then plunged and leveled out the past 20 years”, and that this drop “…parallel[s] an overall decline in violent non-fatal crime, with or without a gun”.
Ohouo brings another perspective to the U.S. image problem when she says that at first she was scared to come here, “…because how do we know about American culture? Through pop culture, movies, music. I used to listen to a lot of R&B and it was bad words and guns saying I killed that guy, I did that.” Now that she has been here she feels much safer, saying that the America shown on TV and in pop culture is very different from what she has experienced. Her advice? “Since we watch TV to learn American culture I think the government should emphasize everything else to change the view we have of the country.” This shows that, much like the selling power of word of mouth, the image international students have of the U.S. greatly influences them. Even with that in mind violence is still not their top concern. As Zhang emphasized, “U.S. universities are the top in the world, everyone knows this. Most Chinese students like to choose U.S. They are well known, they are top level.”
How can the Saint Rose community help create a better image and generate positive word of mouth? The students and faculty have some advice.
Mimuro thinks that, “Saint Rose should focus on small classes, we can nurture your knowledge. It is different than big universities like SUNY Albany. They have no relationship with the kids. Here the school has values as a small university, they should advertise that.”
Adding to that Thapalia says, “Americans are perceived sometimes by international students as being very friendly on the surface but that doesn’t go much further beyond that and there. People are looking to connect.”
Mughisha agrees that the community do more to reach out to international students, “My encouragement is to the domestic students to get involved with the international students.”
While this is good in theory it often falls on Haynes and her one person office to encourage campus engagement, “That’s why we started the international orientation leader programs for the fall semester. We’ll see how it goes, this first year. But any student involvement is better than none. Other opportunities for students to be involved could include mentorship or orientation and if some of the international students launch an international student association, I would love to see domestic students be a part of that.”
Overall, Kerry’s off-hand comment about students’ perceptions of safety in the U.S. put the issue on the international stage, and highlighted the role of the media and pop culture in creating a negative image of the U.S. Here at Saint Rose, with a goal of making the campus more global and increasing positive word of mouth, the campus community can play a part by becoming further engaged with international students and helping them adjust. Whether it be with language, directions, studying, or just a cup of coffee, every interaction can help dispel negative stereotypes or fears and bring our community closer together. And international students have just as much to give in return, we just have to ask.
