Collaboration between U.S. and foreign nations is essential to higher education, said educators meeting this week in Washington.

“We believe always as educators, and as scholars, that we grow from interaction with others,” said Sri Zaheer, dean of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. “We grow from ideas from working off the developments of others. That’s how knowledge advances.”

“We’re not just concerned about a particular country or a particular state,” she added. “We are concerned about our impact on society and our impact on the world. And the only way we can do it is through better collaboration.”

Students adapt better

Mary Dana Hinton, president of College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota, agreed.

“U.S.-China collaboration enlivens our work in higher education, both a professional impact on our students as well as what I would call a peace-building or humanistic impact,” she said.

She noted that 97% of students who study abroad are likely to be employed within 12 months of graduation, according to a study at the University of California-Merced, compared with 49% of the population overall.

“So, U.S.-China collaborations, like other international education programs, equip our students to go out into the world and find employment,” Hinton said.

Another benefit of global education abroad is that 80% adapt to diverse work environments better, and alums of global education programs make at least $6,000 more in starting salaries than those who don’t study abroad, Hinton said.

“So, you can certainly make an economic, business or professional case for the value of global education,” she said.

Humanistic element

There’s a transformational element, too, Hinton said, that comes out of U.S.-China collaborations: a “humanistic and peace-building” component.

She cited the nearly four-decade-long partnership her university has had with Southwest University in Beibei, China, where the two institutions have a robust student exchange program.

“When you have the student exchanges, it creates a climate of familiarity, a climate of trust, a climate of respect, that enables that research dialogue that enables faculty development.”

Hinton quoted slain civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., to buttress her point:

“I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.”

“At its best,” Hinton said, “a U.S.-China collaboration enables us to know each other, to communicate with each other, and to be together in the world.”

Sense of misunderstanding lingers

Kenyon Chan, chancellor emeritus at the University of Washington, said he was a little more skeptical than his colleagues on the panel. He said he feels there’s “a deep sense of disconnection and misunderstanding between the American and Chinese cultures.

“Between America and the rest of the world actually,” he added. “Because we’ve faced hundreds of years of Orientalism where America has viewed the Orient as some mysterious thing and could never understand that thing over there called ‘Asia,’” Chan said. “We always are ‘the other,’ and Asia continues to be, at the very least, a mystery to the American government, a mystery to many Americans, and so the foreignness, the lack of respect for that culture, I think needs to be overcome.

“So, when you do these student exchanges for collaborations, personally I think we first have to get them to confront their Orientalism and go over there with an open mind,” he added.

Reasons for optimism

Sri Zaheer said she feels more optimistic.

“Frankly, the best thing that we can do as educators is to expose young people to international experiences, to have them have international students in their classes, to send them abroad as often as possible,” she said.

Her school, Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, has an almost 100% student study abroad participation, which she feels has given them an advantage.

“We have about 2,700 undergraduates at the school at any time. They cannot graduate unless they have completed an international study experience,” she said.

Carlson started its collaborative program in 1993 with the Warsaw School of Economics in a joint executive master’s of business administration program. They now offer three degree programs in China.

“So our faculty had developed a global mindset” and “they felt that it was really important for our students to have that global mindset as well.”

Employers are positive, too, about graduates with global exchanges.

“They wanted students who are flexible, adaptable, happy to move to other places, comfortable with dealing across cultures, across differences, and there’s nothing quite like a global experience to make that happen,” Carlson said.

Her graduates have had above average job placement, she added.

It’s tough to gain admission to Yale University, and it’s getting even tougher for international students as standout students from around the world set their sights on Yale.

The Yale Dale News, the campus newspaper, takes a look at the situation here.

Read the full story here.

Ruth Chane, a computer science major from Ethiopia, writes about her experiences settling into student life at Whitman College in the U.S. state of Washington.

"The community at Whitman College made sure I felt welcomed even before I stepped foot on campus," she says.

Read her essay here.

In The Student Life, the student newspaper for the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five liberal art colleges and two graduate schools in Claremont, California, student Rochelle Lu writes about readjusting to her Shanghai home after spending a semester in the United States.

Read the full story here.

Cedarville University in the U.S. state of Ohio says it’s got more than 140 international students representing 44 countries.

Here, the school interviews Jonathan Sutton, director of international student services. He talks about his job and the opportunities for international students on campus.

Read the full article here.

Morehouse College, a private, historically Black liberal arts college in the U.S. state of Georgia, offers a guide for international students interested in attending the school.

Among the tips to apply and thrive at Morehouse:

• Take advantage of the school’s orientation program
• Turn to the school’s Center for Academic Success for tutoring, support and more
• Immerse yourself in campus life via clubs and societies

Read the full article here.

The administration of President Donald Trump said on Monday it will review Columbia University's federal contracts and grants over allegations of antisemitism, which it says the educational institution has shown inaction in tackling.

Rights advocates note rising antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias since U.S. ally Israel's devastating military assault on Gaza began after Palestinian Hamas militants' deadly October 2023 attack.

The Justice Department said a month ago it formed a task force to fight antisemitism. The U.S. Departments of Health and Education and the General Services Administration jointly made the review announcement on Monday.

"The Federal Government's Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism is considering Stop Work Orders for $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia University and the Federal Government," the joint statement said.

The agencies said no contracting actions had been taken yet.

"The task force will also conduct a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University."

The agencies did not respond to requests for comment on whether there were similar reviews over allegations of Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias.

Columbia had no immediate comment. It previously said it made efforts to tackle antisemitism.

College protests

Trump has signed an executive order to combat antisemitism and pledged to deport non-citizen college students and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests.

Columbia was at the center of college protests in which demonstrators demanded an end to U.S. support for Israel due to the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's assault on Gaza. There were allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia in protests and counter-protests.

During last summer's demonstrations around the country, classes were canceled, some university administrators resigned and student protesters were suspended and arrested.

While the intensity of protests has decreased in recent months, there were some demonstrations last week in New York after the expulsion of two students at Columbia University-affiliated Barnard College and after New York Governor Kathy Hochul ordered the removal of a Palestinian studies job listing at Hunter College.

A third student at Barnard College has since been expelled, this one related to the occupation of the Hamilton Hall building at Columbia last year.

The Trump administration is opening new investigations into allegations of antisemitism at five U.S. universities including Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley, the Education Department announced Monday.

It's part of President Donald Trump's promise to take a tougher stance against campus antisemitism and deal out harsher penalties than the Biden administration, which settled a flurry of cases with universities in its final weeks. It comes the same day the Justice Department announced a new task force to root out antisemitism on college campuses.

In an order signed last week, Trump called for aggressive action to fight anti-Jewish bias on campuses, including the deportation of foreign students who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests.

Along with Columbia and Berkeley, the department is now investigating the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University and Portland State University. The cases were opened using the department's power to launch its own civil rights reviews, unlike the majority of investigations, which stem from complaints.

Messages seeking comment were left with all five universities.
A statement from the Education Department criticized colleges for tolerating antisemitism after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and a wave of pro-Palestinian protests that followed. It also criticized the Biden administration for negotiating "toothless" resolutions that failed to hold schools accountable.

"Today, the Department is putting universities, colleges, and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued institutional indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses," said Craig Trainor, the agency's acting assistant secretary for civil rights.

The department didn't provide details about the inquiries or how it decided which schools are being targeted. Presidents of Columbia and Northwestern were among those called to testify on Capitol Hill last year as Republicans sought accountability for allegations of antisemitism. The hearings contributed to the resignation of multiple university presidents, including Columbia's Minouche Shafik.

An October report from House Republicans accused Columbia of failing to punish pro-Palestinian students who took over a campus building, and it called Northwestern's negotiations with student protesters a "stunning capitulation."

House Republicans applauded the new investigations. Representative Tim Walberg, chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, said he was "glad that we finally have an administration who is taking action to protect Jewish students."

Trump's order also calls for a full review of antisemitism complaints filed with the Education Department since Oct. 7, 2023, including pending and resolved cases from the Biden administration. It encourages the Justice Department to take action to enforce civil rights laws.

Last week's order drew backlash from civil rights groups who said it violated First Amendment rights that protect political speech.

The new task force announced Monday includes the Justice and Education departments along with Health and Human Services.

"The Department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found," said Leo Terrell, assistant attorney general for civil rights. "The Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism is the first step in giving life to President Trump's renewed commitment to ending anti-Semitism in our schools."

The Times of India breaks down the most popular subjects for international students to study in the U.S.

STEM and business lead the pack. Read the full story here. (January 2025)

U.S. News & World report addresses some of the misconceptions about U.S. colleges and universities, including the difficulty of getting a visa.

Read the full story here. (January 2025)

US News & World Report details the three top factors in foreign students' decision to study in the U.S. They include research opportunities and the reputation of U.S. degrees. Read the full story here. (December 2024)

A British student who did a year abroad at Bowling Green State University in Ohio talks about adjusting to life in America in a TikTok video, Newsweek magazine reports.

Among the biggest surprises? Portion sizes, jaywalking laws and dorm room beds.

Read the full story here. (December 2024)

Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health reaches out to international students by detailing the international student experience at the school.

Learn more about housing, life in Boston and more here.

China issued its first national action plan to build a "strong education nation" by 2035, which it said would help coordinate its education development, improve efficiencies in innovation and build a "strong country."

The plan, issued Sunday by the Communist Party's central committee and the State Council, aims to establish a "high quality education system" with accessibility and quality "among the best in the world."

The announcement was made after data on Friday showed China's population fell for a third consecutive year in 2024, with the number of deaths outpacing a slight increase in births, and experts cautioning that the downturn will worsen in the coming years.

High childcare and education costs have been a key factor for many young Chinese opting out of having children, at a time when many face uncertainty over their job prospects amid sluggish economic growth.

"By 2035, an education power will be built," the official Xinhua news agency said, adding that China would explore gradually expanding the scope of free education, increase "high-quality" undergraduate enrolment, expand postgraduate education, and raise the proportion of doctoral students.

The plan aims to promote "healthy growth and all-round development of students," making sure primary and secondary school students have at least two hours of physical activity daily, to effectively control the myopia, or nearsightedness, and obesity rates.

"Popularizing" mental health education and establishing a national student mental health monitoring and early warning system would also be implemented, it said.

It also aims to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas to improve the operating conditions of small-scale rural schools and improve the care system for children with disabilities and those belonging to agricultural migrant populations.

The plan also aims to steadily increase the supply of kindergarten places and the accessibility of preschool education.

The Open Notebook, a site focusing on educating journalists who cover science, has complied a list of U.S. graduate program financial aid information for international students.

Read it here.