Student Union
- By Esha Sarai
US Universities Struggle to Reimburse Fees as Campuses Close
The priority for most university students in the United States is clear: to move their belongings off campus as quickly as possible and set up to take classes online.
As campuses and their satellites abroad close — many of them incrementally — students and parents are wondering how to pay for this rapid shift in learning.
"They're being very intentionally vague with their emails, because we can tell they don't have much figured out themselves," Lucia Macchi, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, told VOA.
While we spoke, Macchi, who had been staying in Florida with her family over the spring break holiday, was on her way back to her dorm room at the University of Pennsylvania to gather her belongings — especially materials she would need to continue her classes remotely.
But while the University of Pennsylvania, like most schools across the country, is shutting down to quell the spread of the coronavirus, students say the policy on reimbursement for room and board is still unclear.
"They said that they could have a partial reimbursement or credit applied to next year," Macchi said. "They're not sure what exactly their programs are going to look like."
"But it won't be automatic," she said. "It will be something that the students have to be proactive about."
Room and board costs are not the only fees students and parents worry about losing. Besides meal plans, on-campus jobs, and campus activities fees, students also bear the financial burden of storing their items and buying expensive last-minute tickets to go home.
A glance at many university websites about coronavirus shows a number of plans for reimbursements of costs.
American University in Washington, D.C., has detailed its plans to financially assist students.
"Students do not need to apply for refunds. Student accounts will automatically produce an ACH refund to all students with banking information on file," the school's website reads, under a list of which costs will be refunded.
Many students trying to evacuate less-organized universities on short notice say they don't have time to wait in line at the financial aid office to have all their questions answered.
"Going into the financial aid office itself is a very time-consuming and exhausting thing for students to consider right now," Jordan Barton, class of 2023 at Harvard University in Massachusetts, told VOA.
Harvard said it will pro-rate room and board costs for students and apply a $200 credit for storage or travel.
But for students like Barton, who has to purchase a last-minute ticket to Middleton, Texas, $200 won't be enough. He says it's not clear whether students like him will see more of a reimbursement.
"I hope I can shoot an email here in a few days and see if I can get any reimbursement because otherwise it's going to be significantly difficult to have stable income over the course of the next few months," Barton added.
Parent groups on Facebook are sharing advice about how to apply for reimbursements through university websites.
Aside from all the costs and potential reimbursements, college students across the U.S. have taken to social media to remind universities that there are numerous barriers to simply shifting classes online.
"Not every college student has broadband at home. Not every college student can eat without the meal plan/work study," Em Ballou, a junior at Middlebury College in Vermont, wrote on Twitter.
"Coming to college is a source of humongous economic and housing stability for several months out of the year. Going home...puts an enormous strain on our families," Barton said.
Barton is still unsure how his work-study job will be affected at Harvard and is concerned about the burden he will place on his father, a single parent of two, without an additional income.
Some students have noted that online classes generally cost less than in-person ones. A petition started by a student from Indiana's Purdue University to reimburse tuition costs as well as room and board fees has more than 600 signatures.
Of course, in a few rare cases, students are praising their school's quick handling of the situation.
"Gotta say im super impressed with the way @DavidsonCollege is handling this situation," Ashly, class of 2022, wrote on Twitter, detailing that the North Carolina school which serves under 2,000 students is ensuring full pay for work-study students, providing laptops, free storage units, and airport shuttles among other amenities.
In most cases, U.S. universities and colleges followed similar trajectories, first announcing they would move classes online but that campus facilities would remain open, and then either all at once or through a rapid series of announcements, finally deciding the campuses would close entirely.
In the California Bay Area, six counties have issued a shelter-in-place order, meaning that students on campus are encouraged to remain in their dorms as opposed to moving out, even though the University of California, Berkeley has said all instruction will be remote for the rest of the semester.
Still, those choosing to move off campus for the rest of the semester are able to apply for a pro-rated refund of their room and board costs.
How quickly and efficiently colleges and universities will be able to deliver on promises of reimbursement is yet to be seen.
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- By VOA News
International students have options to pay for grad school
U.S. News & World Report tackles the challenges of paying for grad school as an international student with this story giving tips on paying for school. Read the full story here. (August 2024)
- By Tracy Liu
Economics, tensions blamed for Chinese students shifting from US to Australia, Britain
U.S. universities are welcoming international students as the academic year begins. But while the total number of foreign students is steadily growing, the top sending country, China, is showing signs of leveling out or shrinking.
Industry analysts say the negative trend is mainly due to higher costs amid China’s struggling economy, with a growing number of students going to less expensive countries like Australia and Britain, and tense ties between Washington and Beijing.
The number of foreign students studying in the U.S. in 2022-23 passed 1 million for the first time since the COVID pandemic, said Open Doors, an information resource on international students and scholars.
While the U.S. saw a nearly 12% total increase year-on-year for that period, the number of international students from China, its top source, fell by 0.2% to 289,526.
That’s 600 fewer students than the 2021-22 academic year, when their numbers dropped by nearly 9%. The COVID pandemic saw Chinese student numbers drop in 2020-21 by nearly 15%, in line with the world total drop.
While it’s not yet clear if the drop is a leveling out or a fluctuating decline, analysts say China’s struggling economy and the high cost of studying in the U.S. are the main reasons for the fall in student numbers.
Vincent Chen, a Chinese study abroad consultant based in Shanghai, said although most of his clients are still interested in studying in the U.S., there is a clear downward trend, while applicants for Anglophone universities in Australia and Britain have been increasing.
"If you just want to go abroad, a one-year master's degree in the U.K. is much cheaper,” Chen said. “Many people can't afford to study in the U.S., so they have to settle for the next best thing."
Data from the nonprofit U.S. group College Board Research shows that in the 2023-24 academic year, the average tuition and fees for a U.S. private college four-year education increased 4% to $41,540 compared with the previous academic year.
The British Council said three to four years of undergraduate tuition in Britain starts as low as $15,000.
The number of Chinese students in Britain was 154,260 in 2022-23, according to the U.K. Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA, up from 121,145 in the 2018/19 academic year.
Australia’s Home Affairs office said in the 2023-24 program year, China was the top source foreign country for new student visa grants at 43,389, up slightly (1.5%) from the previous year.
Chen said Chinese state media's negative portrayal of the United States and concerns about discrimination have also contributed to the shift.
Bruce Zhang, a Chinese citizen who received his master's degree in Europe after studying in China, told VOA Mandarin he had such an incident occur to him after he was admitted to a U.S. university’s Ph.D. program.
When he entered Boston's Logan International Airport last year, Zhang said customs officers questioned him for more than an hour about his research, and if it had any links to the military, and took his computer and mobile phone for examination.
"Fortunately, I had heard that U.S. customs might be stringent in inspecting Chinese students, so I had relatively few study-related data and documents on my personal computer," he said.
Zhang was allowed to enter the U.S. for his studies in materials science, but the questioning left him so rattled that he has encouraged other Chinese to study elsewhere.
Cui Kai, a study abroad consultant in Massachusetts told VOA Mandarin that experiences like Zhang’s or worse happen for a reason.
"Students who were questioned or their visas were revoked at the customs are usually those who completed their undergraduate studies in China and come to the U.S. for a master's or doctoral degree in a sensitive major," said Cui.
Former President Donald Trump signed Proclamation 10043 in June 2020, prohibiting visas for any Chinese student who “has been employed by, studied at, or conducted research at or on behalf of, an entity in the PRC that implements or supports the PRC's “military-civil fusion strategy.”
The U.S. says China has been using students and scholars to gain access to key technology and, under Proclamation 10043, revoked more than 1,000 visas issued to Chinese nationals and has denied thousands more.
Critics say the policy is costly to the U.S. and is encouraging Chinese students to look to European and other universities.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
- By VOA News
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A report by Duolingo takes a look at the experiences of Gen Z international students studying in the U.S., Australia and the U.K, The Pie reports.
The report, the site says, debunks "characterizations of them as 'tech-obsessed, attention-deficit and self-centered'" and highlights "their emerging role in shaping global politics and economics."
Read the full story here. (August 2024)
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U.S. News & World Report takes a look at them and details how to best use them. Read the article here. (June 2024)
