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U.S. Consulate in India Investigated Student-Visa Applicants

September 7, 2011, 1:48 pm

Two years before U.S. authorities shut down Tri-Valley University, in California, the American consulate in Mumbai conducted an investigation into student visas, according to a December 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, reports The Economic Times. Tri-Valley, which enrolled mostly Indian students, is accused of exploiting U.S. government regulations to commit visa fraud.

The cable says consular officials in the Indian city expressed concern about Tri-Valley and the increase in visa applications, generally from poorly qualified Indian students. “Many of these applicants state that they found the school on the Internet, but when pressed during the interview acknowledged that they applied based on a local recruiting agent’s presentation,” the cable said.

The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi reported in August that visa applications from Indian students were up sharply. And several American colleges say they have seen an uptick in visa denials among Indian students seeking to study at their institutions.

 

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  • 22113683

    @cardinef: At my institution (a small private liberal-arts college, ca. 80 FT faculty), where teaching loads are typically heavy compared to well-heeled universities public or private, I did an analysis several years ago of faculty productivity in research and publication, and found that our tenured faculty FAR outpaced the non-tenured and tenure-track faculty.  That was also true for committee work (the actual writing of reports and proposals) and for faculty governance work (Faculty Senate), AND for community service.  That study gave the lie to the rumors about tenured slackers, and helped to persuade our administration and trustees NOT to tamper with the tenure system.

  • mwilsonk

    Many universities do collect data on how hard faculty (and yes, this includes tenured faculty), work.  For example, I’m aware of a large state university where yearly reviews reveal that faculty work 55-60 hours a week on average.  At many institutions, post-tenure review now documents the research produced, the students mentored, and the service rendered (which can increase drastically post-tenure). If the general public is upset about “faculty salaries” perhaps they ought to get accurate data about salaries at different kinds of schools, in different locations, and in different disciplines.  Many professors in fields like social work, the arts, and the humanities, make good, but not exorbitant salaries.  Professors at rural state U or small, not-well-known liberal arts college for the most part will not have extravagant salaries.  Perhaps the public should be upset about the salaries of administrators at many educational institutions instead, as well as by the increasing size of the administrative class in academia.

  • jameswilliams

    My first observation is that only someone with a blue-collar mentality believes that compensation should be linked to hours worked.  Professionals (with the obvious exception of attorneys who must obsess about billable hours) don’t punch a time clock; we are paid largely based on what we know, not how many hours per week we work.  My second observation is that, after 40 years in education at universities large and small, I have not encountered any productive faculty who work a 40-hour week.  Sixty seems to be the average, with some working much more.  

    Perhaps in the distant past professors had a more leisurely lifestyle, but that hasn’t been true during my career.  I recall a graduate seminar on Milton in which my professor remarked with amazement that Milton never went to bed before midnight.  My fellow students and I looked at one another and shook our heads, all thinking the same thing:  Who in the world does?

    Productive faculty are not only conducting classes, holding office hours, conferring with students, attending faculty meetings, and grading exams and papers but also are attending conferences and publishing research.  All this translates into people who leave campus around 4 p.m., go home, turn on the computer, and work until late at night.  They also tend to work at least part of the day on Saturday and Sunday.  I suspect that there are few journalists who keep such schedules.

  • lindarabbit

    Why are you paying any respect to someone who is as obviously ignorant as Mr. Levy?  To Mr. Levy, I say: “show me the data, show me your sources!  Doesn’t the Washington Post employee ‘fact checkers’ anymore?”  I became a full-time, non-tenure track faculty member almost 8 years ago after spending over 25 years in a variety of sectors (private, non-profit and government).   I would relish having a job that only required 40 hours a week of my time (or less)….but this position requires much more than that.  My spouse, who has been retired for the past 12 years, describes himself as the “academic widower” for 10 months of the year.  He has never seen me as full-filled in my career, however.   I feel blessed, despite the long hours, to have the opportunity to return to a university setting after the awarding of my Ph.D. in 1978.  Life couldn’t be better, except for the pay which is $25K less annually than it was in 2003.  

  • skeletonsincloset

    I read Mr. Levy’s piece after logging 69.5 hours this week. Pre registration starts next week, and since at my institution, faculty are responsible for advising students, I am looking at an additional 15.5 hours of work, giving a grand total of 85 hours next week. Oh. And the low end of his salary range provided for professors is over a full third higher than what I make. That’s with teaching through the summers.

    And, which jobs that he uses for comparisons dictate when “time off” is taken? If I could afford to go somewhere tropical, I’d want to do so in February. My only week off in the year is in August.

  • bookishone

    Your depiction of ‘slacker’ professors is nothing like any professor I know in my R1 institution. In our large department, only one or two are not regularly publishing interesting work. Because of post-tenure review, these have higher teaching loads and have also won teaching awards. They’re also highly active in service and advising. Not slackers at all, in fact. 

    Slacker professors must exist, but I’ve never met one. My experience at four different schools suggests that they’re very rare — certainly not worth all the hot air generated about this supposed plague. 

  • newyorkyankees

    Apparently, Levy has a lot of time on his hands to worry about what we as professors may or may not do. Let’s see if he is man enough do a professor’s job for a semester and then see if he feels the same way. I doubt it.

  • nyhist

    Just tonight I was complaining to a friend that I haven’t had a weekend day off all semester. I spend most of each Saturday and Sunday preparing for classes in the coming week. And I’m tenured.

  • wolf359

    There is dead wood in every university. These slackers might not be the plague some trumpet them to be, but even if just 15% of academics fall into this category, that’s a lot of tax dollars being used inefficiently (speaking of public schools here). And as a previous poster said, the real savings can be found in curbing and trimming administrative bloat.

    Much or all of the data on this phenomenon probably comes from self-reporting. So we’ll probably never really know how much “work” the “average professor” actually does.

  • tuxthepenguin

    It never ceases to amaze me that those who claim “the market” is the solution suddenly become card-carrying Marxists when the market gives an answer they don’t like. Are professors overpaid and underworked? No, they’re not, because their wages and working conditions are determined in a market. No need for further discussion.

    His entire argument rests on a comparison of the private sector versus the (apparently public) education sector. The private sector gets it right because wages and working conditions are set in markets, as opposed to the education sector, where wages and working conditions are set in markets, which for some unstated reason doesn’t work for the education sector. The answer, of course, is to privatize all education, so that markets can determine wages and working conditions.

    There’s no need to debate his “data”. Writing this stuff is how he makes his living. How much does he make? The most popular right wing pundits make eight figures. I’d be happy to have the opportunity to spend a couple hours a week making things up in exchange for an eight figure salary.

  • segads

    Actually, I’ve never heard a member of the “general public” complain about faculty salaries. This seems to be a non-issue, created by the same “education experts” (those who have never actually worked in education) who have declared that our very national security is at risk because our high school seniors don’t perform well on standardized tests. Now that’s the job I want!

  • segads

    A keen example of data examined out of context. Why is American post-secondary education now, suddenly, “mediocre”? Why are “too many high schools” failing “to teach essential skills”? Fact is — they’re not. More students are going on to college than ever before. Many of these are the young people who, throughout high school, never studied, did not attempt to learn from their teachers, and have still been encouraged to go to college because it’s necessary in today’s global economy.  I have seen students with “D” averages accepted into state colleges. I have a student now who works, at best, on an 8th grade level (don’t get me started on how he made it to 12th grade — we all know that academic ability is only a part of grades in K-12), who has a college acceptance in hand.
    Yes, we do need to reassess the postsecondary model. Make it harder to be accepted; make students in high school really work to get there, and then keep working hard to succeed there. Make students truly appreciate higher education again.

  • graddirector

    I agree with bookishone completely.

     Be careful about the term “dead wood”.  Faculty members that  some (or even most) would call “dead wood” since they are no longer that scholarly active are the ones that take on the teaching load of an R1 university department, advise the students, set up the undergraduate research program, serve on the university senate, and serve on other important but time consuming committees.  I know my department simply could not run without these folks and it is scary to see most of these in my department at retirement age since we have no one in line to replace their lost work when they do decide to leave

    Also, about the “tax dollars”….  What public university now is getting more than a small percentage of its income from tax dollars?  It basically just helps defray the differential between in and out of state tuition..

  • yellow1

    I think faculty are 100% on board for this reassessment, but the skyrocketing costs of higher ed are not because of increasing faculty salaries, and it certainly isn’t because of increasing pay to adjunct faculty. 

    You can’t knock the self reporting of faculty on one hand as being less than accurate and then turn around and make this generalization: ”Try knocking on the doors of faculty offices in most institutions at any time during the day, and you’ll be amazed at how few are occupied.” I work in a 2 year system where teaching load has increased as well as class size. The faculty haven’t received a cost of living raise in 4 years, we aren’t unionized, and there is no tenure.

  • englishwlu

    “Try knocking on the doors of faculty offices in most institutions at any time during the day, and you’ll be amazed at how few are occupied.”
    Yes, you’d be amazed unless you remembered that those faculty have to leave their offices to teach their classes–9-12 hours a week in my world–to attend committee meetings–for me that’s typically at least 2 hours a day, 8-10 hours each week–to venture to the library–to attend public lectures, senior thesis presentations, and performances–in short, to do our jobs.  At small liberal arts colleges, we do spend 4-6 formal office hours per week meeting students, more when paper deadlines approach, but it’s a mistake to imagine that most faculty work all takes place in offices behind closed doors.  The campus is my workplace. I don’t even know how to account for the email office hours I conduct on my iPad while at a weekend basketball tournament, or the inbox clearance I do at 6:30 am before I go to work.

    I do know that in the original Washington Post article I laughed out loud at the reference to the “myth” of the 40 hour work week.  It’s mythical to me, since my entire career has required 60 hours weekly. I grant you that during sabbaticals and my one 6 week maternity leave I worked less.  Maybe down to 35 hours a week at some points during those “breaks.”  

    All this quantification misses the point that tenured faculty are professionals, who put in the hours required to accomplish the tasks at hand.

  • texasguy

    I m in a research university where the typical teaching load is six hours per week.  I have occasionally thought  twelve hours a week during a summer session and can tell you it is a full-time workload.

    First, teaching is tiring.  Good teaching is not very different from acting.   Second, there is the issue of course, homework and exam preparation.  The current PowerPoint craze does not help us at all here.  Finally, there are all the student emails.

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