[ALBSA-Info] Good news for foreign undergrads

[Kreshnik Bejko]

Foreign Students Find U.S. Colleges
To Be More Forthcoming With Aid

By DANIEL GOLDEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL




Until recently, U.S. colleges had this message for high school graduates 
abroad: only the rich need apply.

Of the more than 250,000 foreign undergraduates in this country, only 8% 
receive financial aid from their college or university, while 81% rely on 
family money to pay their way. That compares with about one-third of U.S. 
students getting such aid. But, faced with growing competition for the 
attractive international market and reluctance among foreign students to 
venture here after Sept. 11, more U.S. colleges are rethinking the longtime 
practice of charging them full tuition.

These colleges have begun stepping into the breach left by the federal 
government, which restricts its financial aid to domestic students. Often 
criticized for allocating seats to foreign students that could be filled by 
Americans, colleges are starting to hand them merit or need-based 
scholarships out of institutional funds -- again, arguably at the expense of 
domestic students.


Because foreign students generally achieve higher grades and graduation 
rates than their domestic counterparts, colleges are turning to these 
scholarships to boost enrollment without harming academic standards. While 
this spending is still a small fraction of overall aid, it represents a 
significant departure from the traditional treatment of foreign students as 
cash cows.

"For any middle-class family in India, it's impossible to afford U.S. fees," 
says Rashna Patel, an 18-year-old freshman at Trinity University in San 
Antonio, which began providing aid to foreign students last fall. Ms. Patel, 
a Bombay resident whose parents are both flight attendants for Air India, 
was one of four students awarded $10,000-a-year merit scholarships -- almost 
two-thirds of the school's $16,410 annual tuition.

"The [college] fees back home, for all students, amount to less than $10 a 
year including books," she says. "Because of this scholarship, and the way 
my family saved up all these years, we were able to squeeze through." Ms. 
Patel adds that the increased aid brings another benefit: It is diversifying 
campuses. "You're not just getting spoiled brats from each country anymore," 
she says.

While the general public may be warier of foreign students in the wake of 
reports that several hijackers attended U.S. flight schools, and the 
government now tracks the movements of foreign students more closely, 
colleges fearing an application drop-off are courting them more assiduously 
than ever.

Boston University will offer half-tuition merit scholarships to 90 foreign 
applicants this fall, expecting about 20 to accept. Foreign students make up 
7% of its 15,000 undergraduates, and a higher proportion of tuition income. 
Paul Greene, director of international admissions at the private university, 
says the scholarship program was "in the pipeline" anyway but was 
accelerated after Sept. 11. Even though paying just half of BU's 
$27,000-plus tuition, the students "still add significantly to revenue," he 
says.

Trinity, a private liberal arts college, is also expanding scholarships in 
reaction to the terrorist attacks, which imperiled its goal of increasing 
its foreign-student population to 7% from 3%. The school, which has 2,400 
undergraduates, intends to give out six $10,000-a-year scholarships to 
foreign students this fall and another half-dozen for lesser amounts.

"Like most institutions with an active international recruitment program, we 
were set back this year by the fact that travel was largely canceled," says 
international admissions coordinator Mark Moody. He says the scholarships, 
which are intended "to give some incentive to students to consider Trinity 
over another school they might know more by name," don't affect aid 
available for domestic students because they were approved separately by the 
university administration.

Some critics don't buy that argument. "As a father who's trying to save 
money for my older daughter's college education, I can't understand why 
universities think the public would or should accept that," says Daniel 
Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform 
in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit advocacy group that seeks to restrict 
immigration. "If you're charging U.S. citizens full freight and giving 
foreign students scarce subsidies, you have a fundamental fairness issue."

U.S. universities have long provided fellowships and other aid to foreign 
graduate students, since competition for these students is greater. Today, 
about 40% of the country's 240,000 foreign graduate students receive such 
help. But the impetus for financial aid for foreign undergraduates has been 
quietly building for several years, as U.S. colleges lost market share in 
the face of aggressive recruiting by schools in Britain and Australia, and 
as economic collapses from Asia to Argentina impoverished potential 
applicants.

At Yale University, which last year began admitting international students 
regardless of need, the proportion receiving aid jumped to 62.1% in the 
class of 2005 from 24.7% in the class of 2004. Both Emory University, in 
Atlanta, and Mount Holyoke College, of South Hadley, Mass., initiated merit 
aid programs for foreign students last fall.

Even some taxpayer-funded state universities are aiding foreign students -- 
though many others are forbidden to do so. Michigan State University offers 
$1,000 merit discounts off its out-of-state tuition rate to 40 foreign 
freshmen, up from 10 when the program started in 1994.

Write to Daniel Golden at dan.golden at wsj.com1



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