Two-thirds of colleges maintain flagrantly unconstitutional speech codes, imposing restrictions that “would be laughable if they were not such serious violations of the right to free speech,” according to an annual report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The advocacy group reviewed the policies of 390 institutions and gave 261 of them—67 percent—a “red light” rating. The proportion of FIRE-identified worst violators has steadily declined (in 2007 the organization found that 75 percent of colleges seriously infringed upon students’ First Amendment rights) but is still alarming, the organization said.
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41 Responses to Most Colleges Restrict Free Speech, Says Advocacy Group
firestaff - December 20, 2010 at 3:45 pm
The 93 percent figure cited here is not the correct percentage of schools to receive a red-light rating in 2007; that percentage was in fact 75%. The drop from 75% to 67% is substantial and very encouraging, but not as dramatic (or, perhaps, difficult to believe) as suggested here. The 93 percent figure may refer to the combined percentage of schools receiving a red-light rating and a yellow-light rating, since many yellow-light policies also restrict protected speech, just to a lesser degree. (In 2007, however, that combined percentage was 96 percent; this year it was 94 percent.) All of FIRE’s previous speech code reports are available at http://www.thefire.org/code/speechcodereport/.
slipka - December 20, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Thank you to FIRE for that clarification. The initial reference to the 2007 report did combine “red light” and “yellow light” figures; I have since updated the post.
Sara Lipka, staff reporter, The Chronicle
22057479 - December 20, 2010 at 4:56 pm
FIRE’s claims are fraudulent this year as they have been in the past.
FIRE claims responsibility for settling a dispute between the Student Government and student newspaper! See
http://www.thefire.org/article/9033.html
where FIRE falsely claims: “The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has successfully intervened to protect the rights of student groups at New Jersey’s Montclair State University.”
This is a fraud. the settlement had nothing to do with FIRE, which wrote one letter.
FIRE’s fraud goes further. This issue had nothing to do with any restriction on freedom of speech by Montclair State University. It was the Student Government Association that stopped funding of the student newspaper. The SGA is independent of the university.
Since the SGA is not legally a “government” in any case, the issue had nothing to do with the First Amendment.
Grover Furr
English Dept.
Montclair State University
steiny - December 20, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Hate speech is not free speech no matter what this organization tries to do.
jerryvandesic - December 20, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Steiny: “Hate speech is not free speech …”
The problem is that “hate speech” is an undefined concept that can be used to suppress anything those in power don’t like to hear about. It can range from complaints about how a university is spending money to discussions about religion to pulling funding from a student newspaper that investigated hiring practices.
Steiny might not like what he is hearing on campus, but in many cases (state universities, plus private universities that contractually obligate themselves to free speech principles) that speech cannot be supressed. Fear and ignorance are all too common on campuses, and FIRE does an admirable job protecting the right to free speech.
11223435 - December 20, 2010 at 6:34 pm
FIRE is BS.
I’ve had to sit with the then-leaders of FIRE at a meeting in NY.
FIRE is BS.
jerryvandesic - December 20, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Grover Furr: “Since the SGA is not legally a “government” in any case, the issue had nothing to do with the First Amendment.”
Grover, unfortunately the law is not on your side. The tight relationship between the SGA and the unversity, including how funds flow from university fees to the SGA, makes your point meaningless. You might want to investigate this topic a bit — you will find that courts consistently view an organization like the SGA as a simple extension of the unversity. As such, the SGA is obligated to uphold consitutional principles.
mutualrespect37 - December 21, 2010 at 1:46 am
Many schools disingenuously treat speech as a form of behavior. Should a student or even TA or adjunct protest the fact that school officials are not following civil rights or due process policies or laws the student herself rather than the dishonest or incompetent official at fault will soon become the object of an “investigation” often leading to harsh discipline and misrepresentation of facts– all stemming almost wholly from mere speech(even mainly emails) that any reasonable professional would recognize as a good-faith request for those in charge to do the right thing. The harassed party gets framed as the harasser.
Lack of legally required minimal due process by colleges and universities before yanking away student and worker rights is even more concerning than free speech violations in my book, but often the two issues are intertwined. The lack of due process happens after someone has shown the kind of integrity of principled speech that puts blackguard power-hungry school officials to shame. We are talking government employers in the case of state schools too,which doesn’t bode well for the future of democracy. Such has been my unjust experiences at Mizzou and KU.
jffoster - December 21, 2010 at 8:29 am
Steiny above says:
“Hate speech is not free speech no matter what this organization tries to do.”
Yes it is, Mr. Steiny. “Hate Speech”, whatever that is, is not illegal in the United States of America and protected by the First Ammendment. “Blasphemy” isn’t illegal either, nor is ridiculing of religion or religious beliefs, nor is ridiculing of a public person.
snwiedmann - December 21, 2010 at 9:09 am
To jerryvandesic et al: “Hate speech” may have some fuzzy borders, but that does not mean there are no clear-as-crystal cases. For one student to constantly use the N-word every time she encounters an African-American student in their dormitory falls under the heading of “creating a hostile climate.” That is illegal. For a group of male students to repeatedly call out offensive terms (bitch, the C-word, etc.) addressed to a particular female student likewise crosses the line. Why should ‘legal’ be the only acceptable guideline? What about caring about decency and civil conduct?
jamary - December 21, 2010 at 11:51 am
snwiedmann self-contradicts; it seems snw does want “‘legal’” guidelines, because snw is defending such, as the grounds for exercise of institutional executive authority. There is a want of deep appreciation of government by law as established under the US Constitution – which (as many of us aptly applaud) – caps a hierarchy of principle in which process, not content, rules, as the Supreme Law of the Land.
Next point: a student who follows and harasses another with nasty words may be engaging in conduct (civil assault – ie threat of force) which is punishable not as speech. There are ways to deal with such sustained conduct, using the same genre of discipline as the genre of community retribution snw prefers to “law” and “legality”. That is to say, a student who deliberately and persistently exhibits racial animosity can be taken to task in a friendly manner with the end of inducing the student to understand the hurtful nature of his or her words and as well, necessarily, the structural injustice of such hurt, as well as the reflexive context of the student’s felt need to engage in the same. Caution is necessary here, because commentators of the character of snw often are inclined to want to punish others, not merely for expressing animosity based upon ‘race’ or other “minority status”, but for any deprecating remarks – such as “you’re fat!” This presents the towering irony seldom recognized by some speech code advocates when they say that abstract Constitutional principles of law and due process should be trumped by rules that protect persons from being made to feel bad, and in pursuit of such advocacy, they develop draconian ‘rules’ that carry the impact of biblical law in the force and fury by which they destroy the lives of those apprehended for trangressing them – for instance, by expulsion from the University. (Alas, I recall the puerile outcry of a generation of youth decades ago that nobody should ‘judge’ anyone else.)
Last point. It has become well known that American education, in terms of the achievement of our youth in the cognitive realm, has fallen far down the list of that of youth in other nations; and it is equally well known that American education, in the past 40 years, has become more focused on soothing the feelings of fragile youth – who cannot be told that they do not know what they do not know, or have it let on that they are more ignorant then they or their parents believe, or that some students are indeed more intelligent than they. I assume for this argument that all reports of the ‘emergent’ and non-constant nature of intelligence are true. Nothwithstanding this, indeed in utmost pursuit of it, objective critique including self-critique are necessary for learning. This leads to the recognition that not everyone achieves equally in the realm of learning; indeed, that if intelligence is ‘fluid’, there are behaviors and environments which are less or more conducive to its development. This may, for example, entail an admission that teaching ‘classical’ music involves learning about a more complex and intellectually as well as emotionally rewarding art form, one which relatively few Americans are prepared to appreciate – not (as some of those few, in grandiose and sanctimonious hypocrisy aver) that such music is merely the conceited realm of an elite consisting of “Eurocentric (white) males” without any value (indeed less, in the campy view of some cultural ‘theorists’) over hiphop or rock – ‘country being another matter since it is favored by red-, er, -staters. Yes, I threw in that last jab, to make a point: that when it comes to their own quasi-political preferences, the cultural left can be as damningly judgmental, as harsh in old-testament terms, as punitive and unforegiving (as this returns to the speech-code controversy) as the most rebarbative authoritarian targets of their usual rhetoric.
steiny - December 21, 2010 at 11:55 am
Real colleges control hate speech and hold everyone accountable from saying anything racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. This speech is not used in education and learning. Schools like Liberty University and other conservative right wing schools might allow it, but they are a different form of “higher education” and not respected institutions.
steiny - December 21, 2010 at 11:58 am
Is it legal to make verbal threats against the President of the USA? The same applies at colleges. You make threats or hate speech and then you are held accountable. Colleges don’t need the same racism, sexism, and homophobia we see in politics and outside the college campuses.
jerryvandesic - December 21, 2010 at 12:38 pm
snwiedmann: “Why should ‘legal’ be the only acceptable guideline? What about caring about decency and civil conduct?”
For state universities, the constitution and laws guide what can be done. There are a very limited set of circumstances that would allow the university to punish speech, and your example of a hostile enviroment might or might not cross the line. But most speech, even speech that we all agree is despicable, is usually protected. The constitution protects indecent and uncivil speech.
That being said, the best way to challenge hate speech is with more speech. Lift up your voices and challenge incivility. Enter into a dialog, and change people’s opinions. It’s a bit more work than trying to supress speech we don’t like, but that work is part of living in a free society.
jerryvandesic - December 21, 2010 at 12:44 pm
steiny: “You make threats or hate speech and then you are held accountable.”
I think you are confusing threats and hate speech. Threats need to be specific and imminent to be actionable. If a threat is made against someone they can be arrested. But the bar is set pretty high and making general statements about not liking someone, even when put in a hateful way, does not typcially cross the line.
jerryvandesic - December 21, 2010 at 12:56 pm
steiny: “Real colleges control hate speech and hold everyone accountable from saying anything racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.”
Actually the key distinction is whether a university is a state university, which would mean that constitutional protections exist for speech. For private universities, things are a bit different. Some private universities explicitly say that they do not support free speech, and are for the most part free to supress speech that they do not like. Other private universities explicly say that they do support free speech, and that guarantee can be construed to be a contractual obligation against supression of speech.
You are correct in your statement that religious schools are more likely to explicitly say that the don’t support free speech. But at least they are up front and you know what you are getting if you decide to attend. The problem is with private universities that claim to support free speech but then don’t live up to their claim. Places like Duke and Tufts and Yale that fail to live up to what they say to their students.
steiny - December 21, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I wonder if the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education FIRE is for racism, sexism, and homophobia? I mean we must find ways to limit racist, sexist, and homophobic speech on our campuses. FIRE seems to want to respect the rights of people to say such negative comments.
mikep - December 21, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Steiny: *** I mean we must find ways to limit racist, sexist, and homophobic speech on our campuses. FIRE seems to want to respect the rights of people to say such negative comments.***
I think the simple truth is that you jsut don’t get it. Finding ways to limit racism, sexism, and homophobia are NOT the same thing as limiting racist, sexist, or homophobic speech.
People have zero/none/no RIGHT to NOT be OFFENDED. Sorry. The Constitution does NOT protect you from having your feelings hurt. So, while we might want to end jerk behavior, we can’t limit people using words to share their thoughts that way.
I can call you whatever name I want, or talk all I want about how I think you and/or your kind (whatever “kind” that might be) are inferior/less intelligent/less capable/etc/etc, and that is legal.
Yes, exactly as you put it, (whether you prefer this reality or not), there is a need to “respect the rights of people to say such negative comments”.
mutualrespect37 - December 21, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Most people just want to be treated like everyone else; to this end silence can act as a welcome bandaid and even feel at times like a version of decent and good-faith collegial acceptance. In some cases privacy/silence about protected( or perceived protected)class status is actually mandated by law. For example, you can’t, especially as member of a college staff or faculty, go around campus wondering outloud about someone’s HIV status.
Yet time-warped places like KU exist and boast ignorant Human Resources staff who go around violating these laws by ignorantly and insultingly referring to workers and students IN PUBLIC in ways that violate equal treatment( and decent human dignity) under the law.
Very often women and people of color in academia become offended and alienated because their bodies are disrespectfully made the subject by people not sharp and perceptive enough to appreciate intellect and spirit staring them in the face if it doesn’t come in the normative white, male, able-bodied package. Even someone of Byron’s unique physique and charisma would soon get pegged as a second-class citizen in places like KS and MO by the patronizing “down-south” hospitality that is all about aggressively imposing impossibility thinking on others in the name of hypocritically bragging about one’s own charity.
More speech is not going to solve a situation like this, and responsible, ethical professional HR people would not go around violating the same laws it is their duty to protect. In Southern justice venues, however, where the victim often gets misrepresented as the perpetrator, this is the kind of thing that goes down as following the rules, “investigating,” and even enforcing the law.
Said victim complains and the same staff who violated her privacy rights at first now accuse her of making a tacky cursing and mildly racist comment for which no witnesses were present but two are speedily invented. In fact, the victim herself had been presumptuously approached and offensively stereotyped right off the street by another “minority” who had yet to learn the moral of her own story enough to realize how her own behavior might be seen as expressing hurtful prejudice.
School policy states persons accused of racial or ethnic harassment should be informed of any proposed punishment before it happens and are entitled to a hearing; however, as Tom Stoppard says, “People do bad things to one another all over, but it’s worse in places where everything is kept in the dark.” No due process rights are accorded and a wrongful termination occurs– even though said victim has more teaching experience and publications and higher test scores by far than any peers.
In truth, the victim was wrongfully chosen out for biased treatment and then accused of the same when she protested her own mistreatment. Requests for a grievance hearing were misrepresented as harassment and logged as such by conflict-of-interest school cops who never bothered to investigate both sides of the story. Most people perceived as making threats would expect to get a visit from a cop before they received a summons to criminal court, no?
Not exactly Plato’s definition of civilization here in which conflicts are supposed to be settled by rational speech and argument versus might-is- right fiat, huh? Someone whose academic speciality involves carefully honed argument skills will hardly relish the cruel irony of being made the butt of ignorance and bad faith when she is used to the tolerance and heightened awareness of the West Coast. On the West Coast it’s possible to actually enjoy being a minoriity Caucasian and in turn to be perceived and judged on the basis of abilities and qualifications rather than becoming pigeon-holed by small minds in terms of surface differences.
steiny - December 21, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Now the question is, do people who make hateful comments on college campuses belong there in the first place? College is for education and learning, not hateful people who support hate speech. Hate speech is not free speech no matter what FIRE says.
mikep - December 22, 2010 at 2:07 am
Steiny, you don’t get it. Hate speech isn’t a real term. It doesn’t exist. It’s a made up idea, without true legal definition and context.
So, unless it constitutes a threat or harassment by law, whatever you are considering “hate” speech, Constitutionally, IS free speech.
steiny - December 22, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Hopefully, colleges and universities will take out FIRE and be allowed to ban all racist, sexist, and homophobic speech on college campuses. Organizations like FIRE are the reason why we still have hate crimes, racism, sexism, and homophobia in our society. People need to fear committing these acts and hate speech.
The constitution was written by white, heterosexual, Christian, men who owned slaves. Why should you respect it? It needs to be changed to make hate speech illegal.
steiny - December 22, 2010 at 1:11 pm
How can there be laws in a land that was already stolen? Native American POWER!
dank48 - December 22, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Steiny, among the other things the Constitution is good for is protecting your right to say things that make it clear you don’t get it. You want some authority (who? what?) to forbid certain speech (defined by whom?). What if I profess to be shocked, horrified, offended, etc. by your speech? As a matter of fact, I am, but so what? You have the right to express your opinion, even though (or perhaps especially because) I and others may find it offensive.
And if you’re wondering what you’ve said that hurts my precious feelings, well, I’m white and male, even if I’ve never owned anybody. I find your attitude toward the Constitution truly appalling. But, thanks to Constitutional protection, you have the right, as I believe you certainly should, to say things regardless of my feelings.
No one has the right to spend their lives playing Princess and the Pea about other people’s speech, so long as that speech is not overtly threatening or otherwise an endangerment to public safety.
If I’ve misstated the case, I hope some Constitutional scholar will set me straight, but that too provides an instructive example: I have the right to be wrong, without prior restraint merely because I might well be.
steiny - December 22, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Racism, sexism, and homophobia still goes on each day in the USA and the constitution is not helping one bit. Gay marriage should be legal, but for some reason, the constitution and people try to abuse it to not be legal.
Also, people try to use this constitution to abuse their white, male, Christian, heterosexual privilege.
steiny - December 22, 2010 at 10:04 pm
I never saw so many people protect racism, sexism, and homophobia. Europe and Canada have it way more clear than the USA. Maybe this is why Socialism is better than Capitalism?
dank48 - December 23, 2010 at 9:59 am
Is this some sort of psychological experiment? I just find it difficult to believe Steiny is for real. Perhaps it just means I’m more out of touch with campus life than I realize.
Steiny, you ain’t God. The world is not set up for your personal convenience, comfort, and satisfaction, any more than it is for mine. People have conflicting needs, wants, and so on. This leads to conversation. Not everyone agrees with you about e.g. same-sex marriage. Some people may even express their opinions, convictions, and beliefs in such a way as to make clear to you that they don’t agree with you. This does not constitute trespass on your rights.
Nobody has the right not to be offended. Forbidding everyone who disagrees with you from speaking is no solution to any problem. Free speech can include debate, discussion, and argument, and once in a great while that leads to people thinking about matters and (gasp) changing their minds.
I’d suggest that in re homophobia, you’ll make more progress pointing out that all the antihomosexual verses in the Bible add up to about 0.05% of the whole book than you will trying to silence everyone who fails to agree with you.
And for the record, I’m at least as offended by your cavalier attitude toward the Constitution as you are by privileged white heterosexual males. Trashing the Constitution because it’s imperfect in its attempt to govern an imperfect society of imperfect people makes as much sense as removing the roof from your house because there’s a leak . . . during monsoon season.
We need that roof. It’s always monsoon season.
rambo - December 23, 2010 at 1:50 pm
FIRE is correct. The conservative Republican view is wrong. only the liberal left-wing Democrat view is right and correct. Students just learned one-biased side. Universities tolerating suppression of unpopular views on campus on straight, white, military, sports, etc. Really intellectual balkanization.
steiny - December 23, 2010 at 2:23 pm
FIRE is still an unethical organization. Colleges teach diversity and have every right to stop hate speech. FIRE only encourages bullying.
steiny - December 23, 2010 at 2:30 pm
I just find it interesting how FIRE supports hate, racism, sexism, and homophobia.
graddirector - April 5, 2012 at 5:58 am
Excuse me… Does this article really say “Further compounding the problem is that in parts of Africa the math
section of the GRE is intimidating. Some African cultures do not value
the mathematical thinking found on the test (i.e. algebra and geometry)
and many school systems have not rigorously countered this problem. As a
result, a considerable number of Africans score low on the math
section.”
We are talking ALGEGRA here that is at the level that most college students worldwide are exposed to in the 10th grade or earlier. Are you really saying that being able to solve simple algebraic equations should not be a criteria for grad school? Even discounting STEM programs and economics for which the math tested on the GRE is a joke compared to the needs of the program, how will a social scientist (or even many historians) be able to do the statistics necessary to analyze their project if they can not even handle high school level algebra.
Also, are you really saying at the same time that our MS programs should be watered down because those from some commonwealth countries are? We have even stopped accepting students into our Ph.D. program from many UK MS programs since we have found that students graduating from them are often less prepared than a typical US undergrad and have a high chance of flunking out of our program.
I am overall not a big fan of the GRE as a predictor of success in graduate school since we generally dont find a ton of correlation between that measure and completion rates. That said, it is a way to gauge academic preparation when you have no measure of the rigor of the prior education and is a reasonably good predictor of deficiencies in preparation (particularly writing skills and ability to do quantitative data analysis).
BemusedObserver2 - April 5, 2012 at 6:45 am
We have the model we have, and it’s a great model. We change the model, at least at the margins, to redress injustices in our own society. We shouldn’t even consider changing it because there’s some part of the world outside the US that doesn’t much care for our model.
BemusedObserver2 - April 5, 2012 at 6:47 am
That last part is key. Africa is precisely the region for which we need the GRE, because the value of an African undergraduate degree is unknowable in the United States outside of a small list of well-regarded institutions.
vceross - April 5, 2012 at 7:48 am
It would be a good thing if US higher education returned to its task of evaluating the quality of candidates based on courses, grades, letters, personal statement. I recall my first experience on a graduate admissions committee. It opened with a discussion of how the department had never found the GRE predictive of success and from there proceeded to sorting the applicants by GRE scores.
The GRE is a fiction, a superstition: It provides the illusion of objectivity. Spare everyone the grief and expense of an unnecessary test and send a message from the highest ranks of education about the limitations of testing, something our nation sorely needs to hear as our educational system guts itself in the name of standardized tests.
Scott Cunningham Sr - April 5, 2012 at 8:22 am
Actually, there is an equally significant problem facing potential African students – the difficulty of obtaining student visas to the US. This is true even if they have admission and full-ride scholarships. To prove to the US State Department that they will return to their home country after graduation is almost impossible because of the income disparity between their home country and the US – even if they leave their family behind and are promised jobs upon their return. In my experience length of programme is not a deterrent to those who wish to come.
mutapa - April 5, 2012 at 9:00 am
The GRE Math section is the easiest section in GRE and as a former Grad student who helped people prepare for GRE i would say that part is the least of our worries. Where is the data that africans score poorly on the Math section? I am a Physics Prof now … and so i may be biased but most of the guys i interacted with when i was a grad student in Africa were intimidated by the vocabulary section not the MATH section. I am fine with alternative ways of gauging how a student is prepared for Graduate school but to say that african students struggle with the math section to me is just suprising.
Rita Thissen - April 5, 2012 at 10:29 am
Very interesting, and a topic worth exploring. The authors might have added a couple additional common barriers, some of which are noted in the comments already posted. Some of African students’ difficulties can be traced to the under-developed nature of their countries.
Challenges include
- the dependency of application forms on the availability of reliable and fast internet service, which is challenging for areas using 2G or 3G networks, cyber-cafe connections, and intermittent electricity
- the barriers presented by US universities for the authentication of transcripts, requiring signed sealed copies by paper-mail, from countries where mail service is minimal, unreliable and expensive
- the US Immigration Service’s high rejection rate of college-age singles in visa applications
- language barriers
The
comments about math are interesting. Apparently many of the
schools have tracked curricula that start early, and large numbers of
students take little or no math due to not being on a science or
engineering track. And as the article points out, the branches of math
that are emphasized differ: set theory and logic may be taught more than algebra
and geometry.
grandim - April 5, 2012 at 3:39 pm
I am an African who did his GRE and passed with flying colors
and got admitted in American universities where I did my graduate studies and successfully
completed both Masters and PhD in record time. My experience in America makes
me understand why other Africans are not keen on pursuing their studies in
America. To put it mildly, I would state
that America has become an unfriendly destination for immigrants especially Africans
in the recent years. Those of us who came here within the last 10 years have
had to endure an immigration regime that deems foreigners as criminals until
proven otherwise. Further we have to deal with Americans who think if you are
an African even one with doctoral degree you are a charity case. The nature or
racism that is deeply embedded in America even among the so called tolerant
liberals in universities is totally dehumanizing to Africans. In my current
university which is in the South where I am a faculty member I have endured total
misery. Why would anyone who understands
what happens in America seek to join such place even for studies? Africans are
being rational. The idea that African culture is anti-math as claimed by the author
is total hogwash. We have heard these stereotypes since the days of
colonialism. Whenever any African in Africa contacts me seeking more
information about attending graduate school in America I give them the facts as
they are. Many of them end up in other
destination. Luckily the world has changed so much although there are those who
still think they are the destiny’s only gift to humankind.
mutapa - April 6, 2012 at 9:53 pm
You are spot on Rita. The internet situation has improved greatly let me speak of East Africa (Kenya). I would not consider the internet as big a problem as say GRE fees. When I came to the US I already had a masters and I would not have paid for GRE ( a friend of mine offered to foot the bill for me that’s what most of us do for our colleagues back in Africa). The transcript verification issue is a real problem and African institutions do not help a bit because getting transcripts from these institutions can be exhausting.
My guess is the math problem may be with people in the humanities not the sciences because GRE math to Kenyans is pretty close to high school math.
The decline in applications could very well be the fact that more institutions of higher learning in Africa are opening up to Africans: South Africa is a big draw to African students. The Physics Dept. I was in Kenya has had close to 4 PHDs graduating from South Africa. US universities are doing a better job at recruiting students from Asia (India, China,S. Korea etc) and it is paying off. I would even say that Asian students face quite some competition in Asia so going to Grad school and College in the US is a lot easier if they have the money.
statethenji - April 12, 2012 at 12:07 am
GRE is mystified as a monster, which is more so for those who are already in the US but not really people in Africa. There is no difference between GRE and TOEFL requirement for aspiring students in that they both require the same financial investment. There are various challenge. One is financial. One needs a solid financial support to execute application process. There is also need for guidance and information. Most African students I know ended up applying because they had a point-person in form of a teacher, colleague or secondary connection. As someone who have been encouraging many young people from my country to apply, there is a common assumption that getting a scholarship is an impossibility. Other people have different priorities and aren’t willing to go abroad.
The author should also be aware of the opening up of higher-ed institutions in Africa. In countries such as Kenya (which have traditionally sent large number of students to the US), opportunity have expanded tremendously and are affordable for most. For those who are already working, it makes more sense to take part time programs than travel. With limited funding in the US, people are opting to stay home. The reduction of funding opportunities is a big factor too.
I don’t really buy the argument about the extended amount of time spent in the programs. If anything, almost everyone I know to have done a master’s program in my country didn’t finish it in two years– One reason that made me decide to come for graduate school in the US. Yes, the UK programs might be shorter but even then, the traffic to the US is usually higher.
There is a need for more institutional connections and beyond. I am also not convinced that institutions have done much by themselves. Rather, they have highly depended on funded students (Ford Fellows, Fulbright Fellows, USAID Fellows etc) to populate their institutions with African students.
elen3124 - April 24, 2012 at 10:58 pm
There are many barriers, both academic and cultural, for any non-native American to overcome in the current American university system. One possible solution that I think has worked for many is to attend an international college such as the UWC system (which has colleges all over the world) which helps secondary students to develop into people who can be reasonably at home in any university system. This system has the added advantage of teaching first-worlders a little bit of what the world beyond their national boundaries is like through getting to know students from all over the world and visiting them in their homes.
As far as graduate school programs go both American and international students could benefit from courses that address incoming deficits in subjects such as statistics as well as academic writing. They are after all not hard-wired into the student but without help they can construe a real drag to progress. Also, academic mentors are NOT chosen for their ability to help underrepresented or international students but for their subject expertise. It is essential for specialist advisors who can address the problems of these groups to be available to them right through their program, through the thesis and/or orals and dissertation processes.