Foreign students begin looking outside America
The US is in danger of losing its status as the first choice destination of international students, according to a new report.
The report, by the Amer-ican Council on Education, an industry research group, said that while the country was still the most populardestination, other countries - namely Japan, France and Germany - were outpacing US growth in that market.
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Margaret Spellings, US education secretary, said she was "very concerned" about the report's findings.
"International students are a huge asset for US higher education and US higher education is a huge asset for international students," she told the Financial Times. "We want these students, we welcome these students and we need these students."
In response to the problem, Ms Spellings has convened a delegation of a dozen US college and university presidents who will travel to Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and central Europe to promote the US as the premier destination for study abroad.
Ms Spellings and Dina Habib Powell, assistant secretary of state, will lead the first delegation to Japan, South Korea and China in November.
The presidents will be ambassadors for US higher education as a whole, rather than representing their individual institutions. The delegation will meet students and university officials, and government and business leaders to discuss the future and importance of international education.
"We've come to a point in time in this flattened world where we have a lot to learn from each other," said Ms Spellings.
According to the report, the US increased its international-student enrolment by 17 per cent from the 1999-2000 academic year to 2004-05, compared with gains of 29 per cent in Britain, 42 per cent in Australia, 46 per cent in Germany, 81 per cent in France and 108 per cent in Japan. Some observers claim the slow growth is due to the perception that the US is unwelcoming to international students. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the US State Department imposed tougher standards on foreign students seeking visas to study in the US, which made visa processing times slow to a crawl.
But Ms Spellings noted that the State Department recently made significant changes to its policies that had expedited visa processing times. "Generally speaking, American schools are very welcoming, but we can always do better," she said.
美国留学首选地位岌岌可危
一份新的报告显示，美国正面临失去其外国留学生首选国地位的危险。
行业研究机构美国教育委员会(American Council on Education)的这份报告显示，尽管美国仍是全球最受欢迎的留学目的地，但其它国家――例如日本、法国和德国在这一市场中的增长速度正超过美国。
为此，由12位美国学院院长和大学校长组成的代表团将前往拉美、中东、亚洲和中欧地区，推广美国作为留学首选国的地位。美国教育部长玛格丽特?斯佩林斯(Margaret Spellings)和助理国务卿迪娜?哈比卜?鲍威尔(Dina Habib Powell)将于今年11月率领第一个代表团出访日本、韩国和中国。
