Colleges will no longer be able to grant visa documents to degree-seeking foreign students who first need to brush up on their English skills, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a change that could affect an increasingly common route into American institutions.
The Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or SEVP, the arm of the Homeland Security Department that oversees and ensures compliance with the student-visa system, is signaling that it will require universities to issue separate I-20 forms, the immigration documents needed to apply for student visas, to students who need to improve their English before beginning regular academic courses. Only after they demonstrate proficiency will they be granted a second I-20 for academic study.
Currently, many colleges issue just a single I-20 to students who meet academic but not linguistic requirements, an increasingly popular practice known as conditional admission.
Officials with SEVP emphasized they were not putting in place a new policy but rather enforcing existing federal guidelines. “Per federal regulations, conditional admission is prohibited,” said Ernestine Fobbs, a spokeswoman with the Department of Homeland Security. The rule in question requires prospective students to meet all standards for admission before they can be given an I-20 to pursue academic coursework, with no exemptions.
The SEVP decision to enforce the regulations, first made public during a meeting of an association of English-language programs last month, came as a surprise to colleges and language programs. “It happened without warning,” said Patricia Juza, a member of the executive board of the American Association of Intensive English Programs, at whose meeting the policy was announced.
More Than Just Paperwork
While some colleges do issue separate I-20s for language and academic study—including Ms. Juza’s own institution, the City University of New York’s Baruch College—she pointed out that I-20 forms now allow institutions that grant a single visa document to note that students don’t yet have language proficiency but will receive language instruction.
Technically, of course, the federal government cannot dictate admission policy to colleges, so they can continue to provisionally admit students. But they will be able to issue initial I-20 documents only for the time students will spend in English courses.
The policy will create more than just extra paperwork, said educators, who argued that having the imprimatur of a university, rather than a language program, was important for several reasons.
For one, many students think a conditional-admission offer will help them get an American visa more easily than if they applied to go to the United States for language study only. Directors of English-language institutes said that, in the past, U.S. consulates in a number of countries had balked at granting visas to intensive-English students, not viewing them as serious students.
Conditional admission has also proved a potent recruiting tool, particularly in the booming Chinese market, where students are frequently strong academically but need extra English help. Provisional admission also is attractive to students who do not have time to sit for the English test as well as their high-school exit exam and China’s rigorous national university-entrance exam.
Role of Pathways Programs
For universities, which have grown wary of cheating in overseas applications, conditional admission can be a fail-safe, giving institutions the opportunity to assess students’ English ability firsthand, once they’ve arrived on campuses and before they enroll in courses.
And a small but growing number of institutions offer conditional admission to students who must first complete “pathways,” or “bridge” programs, that combine language study and regular freshman coursework. In fact, it was the rise of pathways programs that led SEVP to take a closer look at conditional admission, Ms. Fobbs said. Government officials hope to issue draft guidance for the programs, and for conditional admission, for public comment early in the new year, she said.
But SEVP appears to be already moving ahead to remind institutions of the rules. Administrators at several universities currently going through recertification in the student-visa program said materials from SEVP included a notation that students should hold I-20s from the English-language center, if that is where they are attending a majority of their classes.
Ms. Juza said she wished the agency had reached out to colleges and language programs first to better understand current practice. This is not the first time the Homeland Security Department has caused consternation among international educators because of unexpected policy shifts: Earlier this year, federal regulators suggested university-run English-language institutes would have to be separately accredited, before backtracking to say proof of institutional accreditation would be sufficient. And customs officials sowed confusion when they abruptly changed how they processed visas for incoming international students, just as the academic year began.
“SEVP keeps us safe, makes sure we’re all following the rules, but they’re not experts on education policy,” Ms. Juza said. “It would be helpful if they asked for feedback.”