US campuses chase foreign students

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Daar zullen onze eigen universiteiten dan ook wel last van hebben/krijgen.
Een goed tijdstip om het dienstbetoon in de procedures te checken?

Heb zelf vorig jaar een Chinese studente geholpen, die na haar aankomst
op Schiphol de richting naar Erasmus Universiteit kwijt was en géén
kontakt kon krijgen met de kontaktpersoon, omdat het Rotterdamse
telefoonnummer in haar documentatie niet werkte.
Om over huisvesting e.d. nog maar niet te spreken ;)

Groet / Cees

PS. Day wordt dan natuurlijk wél nummertjes trekken voor onze eigen
jongens en meisjes?

US campuses chase foreign students
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/us-campuses-chase-foreign-students/
     * Guy Healy
     * From: The Australian
     * March 24, 2010 12:00AM
SCORES of cash-strapped US state universities are preparing to open
their doors to foreign undergraduates, posing a serious challenge for
Australian universities, US Studies Centre chief Geoff Garrett has warned.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, US state universities were
turning to foreign undergraduates for the first time to compensate for
funding cuts, Professor Garrett told the HES.

"The obvious implication is the market for foreign students will become
more competitive because you will have a lot of large and high-prestige
universities competing for the students," he said.

"University of California, Berkeley, is an extremely powerful global
brand and Berkeley now wants to attract a lot of foreign undergraduates."

As well, the cheaper US dollar, plenty of student accommodation and
faster visa approval times should give the US an edge.

Professor Garrett said American state universities had been told "they
can fish in the global market and charge the global price. That's a very
important revenue stream for cash-strapped universities."

The US universities were adopting a strategy that Australian
universities had pursued for more than a decade.

"That's a big change," Professor Garrett said. "The University of
California has 10 campuses, including Berkeley, Los Angeles and San
Diego; top-ranked universities. Until the financial crisis, they weren't
in the market. After the crisis they will be."

US universities - unlike their commuter-based Australian counterparts -
also could offer foreign undergraduates established residential
infrastructure, he said.

"If you combine their brand power plus their big residential services,
that'll make them very competitive very quickly in the foreign
undergraduate student market."

The US is the world's dominant player, capturing 20 per cent of the
three million strong global student market in 2008, and shares source
countries India, China and South Korea with Australian universities.

The challenge to Australian universities, which rely on foreign
undergraduates to fund one-quarter of their teaching, was made more
acute by the attractiveness of the weak US dollar, Professor Garrett said.

"It will create problems for the English-speaking countries that have
been more successful in Asia: Australia, England, Canada and New Zealand."

None of Australia's Group of Eight overseas offices reported any direct
effect from the US push yet.

However, the University of Melbourne's China contacts said the US had
reversed its student visa regime to the point that it was "much faster"
to get a US student visa than an Australian one.

University of NSW international director Alek Voninski said most US
student visa applications from China, Australia's No 1 source country,
were being approved, up from 10 per cent just five years ago.

Mr Voninski said projected growth in overseas student numbers during the
long term was likely to cushion Australia from potential losses to the
US. However, marketing Australia as an affordable destination compared
with the US was likely to be a "real challenge", as local tuition fees
rose, housing affordability issues continued and if the Aussie dollar
reached parity with the greenback.

He pointed out Go8 universities required a foundation year for many
international students, while US universities accepted them directly
into year one.

Australian universities could not compete with US universities on
scholarships for research students, he said.

"If Australia begins to lose both significant amounts of pre-university
and research international students, it will be only the short-term
postgraduate coursework that remains, leaving Australian universities
more exposed," Mr Voninski said.

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