One local public university suddenly had a 10% budget cut in funding from the state, to which their response was to stick thumbs in the dam: get more international students to pay the full tuition.
However, many smaller universities are very inexperienced with regulations governing I-20s, and outsource to services involved in getting Chinese students into American colleges. What is referred to in the article as companies that "help students contrive their entire college application" are more commonly referred to as recruiters. Recruiters get students in the door, often by any means necessary. They are often the only way for Chinese students to access info about American universities at all: blocked websites, inability to pay online, and a host of other problems guarantee that recruiters will continue to exit.
Another contracted service is transcript verification, also too expensive a resource to hire on campus and often outsourced to companies outside the USA. I've seen presenters at NAFSA on this topic, the difficulties translating degrees from one country to another, and hiring someone knowledgeable, authentic and with local connections is expensive. So many universities will again default to contracting out to---you guessed it---Chinese 'educational' groups that work with recruiters.
Finally there's what's commonly called an IEP (Intensive English Program), that gives out I-20s to 'study English' for a certain length of time. In desperation, universities co-opt IEP programs onto their campuses to test and assess student English levels once they're on campus to avoid the Chinese educational link. This often fails too. I know one IEP that was creative with the truth in order to cut through the DHS paperwork to issue IEPs, that never checked transcripts and paid kick backs to recruiters as well as administrators for every kid that got into college.
The recruiting industry is so corrupt that universities that care have a very short list of trusted recruiters. The shocking truth here is that many don't. I know of two students who ETS caught cheating on their TOEFL tests--the university accepted them based on this score. Sadly it was not a surprise to me that when the university was notified of the cheating by ETS, they did not rescind their admission to the school. Many unis would rather take the money and look the other way.
> I know of two students who ETS caught cheating on their TOEFL tests--the university accepted them based on this score. Sadly it was not a surprise to me that when the university was notified of the cheating by ETS, they did not rescind their admission to the school. Many unis would rather take the money and look the other way.
Yikes. I hope news like what happened at Iowa gives schools the kick in the butt they need to either (1) be more strict in who they accept or (2) provide some additional English training for these incoming kids who supposedly know English but really do not
However, many smaller universities are very inexperienced with regulations governing I-20s, and outsource to services involved in getting Chinese students into American colleges. What is referred to in the article as companies that "help students contrive their entire college application" are more commonly referred to as recruiters. Recruiters get students in the door, often by any means necessary. They are often the only way for Chinese students to access info about American universities at all: blocked websites, inability to pay online, and a host of other problems guarantee that recruiters will continue to exit.
Another contracted service is transcript verification, also too expensive a resource to hire on campus and often outsourced to companies outside the USA. I've seen presenters at NAFSA on this topic, the difficulties translating degrees from one country to another, and hiring someone knowledgeable, authentic and with local connections is expensive. So many universities will again default to contracting out to---you guessed it---Chinese 'educational' groups that work with recruiters.
Finally there's what's commonly called an IEP (Intensive English Program), that gives out I-20s to 'study English' for a certain length of time. In desperation, universities co-opt IEP programs onto their campuses to test and assess student English levels once they're on campus to avoid the Chinese educational link. This often fails too. I know one IEP that was creative with the truth in order to cut through the DHS paperwork to issue IEPs, that never checked transcripts and paid kick backs to recruiters as well as administrators for every kid that got into college.
The recruiting industry is so corrupt that universities that care have a very short list of trusted recruiters. The shocking truth here is that many don't. I know of two students who ETS caught cheating on their TOEFL tests--the university accepted them based on this score. Sadly it was not a surprise to me that when the university was notified of the cheating by ETS, they did not rescind their admission to the school. Many unis would rather take the money and look the other way.