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<p>Something I discovered last night at an exchange student event is that it is apparently becoming more and more common for Korean parents to send their high school kids to the US to live with a succession of "host families" and attend a succession of schools in a quest to jump the stats-and-memorization obsessed Korean school systems and get their kids into American colleges. This can start as young as 14. If the kids are in public schools, they usually have to change schools and families every year, and the parents do not pay tuition OR a living stipend, since the kids are ostensibly "exchange" students. If they are in private schools, they do pay tuition and they are likely to have to pay a stipend to the host families. I'm astounded, really.</p>
<p>As an English teacher, I have taught more than one Korean mother who is living in the US for the duration of the child(ren)'s high school education. These women are married to successful professionals who continue to run the business or medical practice back in Korea while the family lives in the US. If there is enough money, the family goes to Korea for the summer and winter holidays, Dad comes to visit for a week or so in the spring and fall. One of my students who was very much in love with her husband was literally counting down the days remaining to that date two years in the future when they could finally be together again for more than a month at a time. By the time the last child would graduate, that mother would have been in the US for seven years.</p>
<p>My exchange student's father wanted his wife to do precisely that.</p>
<p>My son's roommate at Carnegie Mellon's Mom lived in the US while he attended a well known boarding school. His Dad runs a business back in Korea. I have to admit I was surprised the Mom stayed in the US since the son was in boarding school and the daughter is already in college.</p>
<p>A colleague who teachers in a very well reputed public hs told me they have a serious problem with such kids living alone! The parents pay for an apt in the distrist and ostensibly maintain residency, but there is not even a host family.</p>
<p>A foreign student with a US HS diploma residing in WA for 3 years used to be given state resident status for tuition purposes at U-Dub. I wonder if that is still true and if other publics use similar criteria. It is possible that some of these long-time exchangers were aware of this. The tuition difference is quite significant (>$10K/yr).</p>
<p>A local private school has purchased several houses next to the campus where students from out of the country (read "Korean") can live during the school year. Each house has one or two resident adults and the Korean students. It sounds like a money-maker for private schools. This school is not otherwise a boarding school.</p>
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If the kids are in public schools, they usually have to change schools and families every year, and the parents do not pay tuition OR a living stipend, since the kids are ostensibly "exchange" students.
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<p>Are you sure about this?? Link?</p>
<p>Can we in US do this for our kids as well in other countries?</p>
<p>A link? To what? I talked to host parents of several of the kids themselves on Monday night at an exchange student event! So yeah, it's a real phenomenon. I've also heard about several different versions of the "group homes" in a number of states: in some cases run by Korean adults, in one case home to several high schoolers presided over by a Korean college student. </p>
<p>I have been hosting a kid this semester whose parents have arranged for him to attend a private, non-boarding school in another state for the next 3 years, during which he will be living with one or more host families. Hopefully they will be paid a stipend. We hosted for free, as did our public school, only to discover that he was not in fact an "exchange student" but on the first leg of a three year stay in the US. (Our HS is overcrowded and does not accept tuition students, so he could not have come here if his true status had been revealed. He, very innocently, kept telling me that he couldn't understand why people kept referring to him as an "exchange student.") Meanwhile, the parents are being charged a large sum by a Korean "exchange" agency, who are, I have grown to feel, taking financial advantage of all concerned while giving the kid and his family very poor advice. At some point during the semester, I explained that he is our guest: neither we nor our school were being paid to take care of him. He was astonished. He said that his parents were paying a substantial sum to the agency, and that he thought we were being reimbursed. </p>
<p>Many of the kids around here are starting off at a (free) public school, then being steered to the same selection of obscure private schools in other states that will apparently accept almost any kid who can pay the tuition, without regard to the kids' level of English or preparedness. I doubt that they have the resources to get these kids through the coursework they need to get into the top US colleges that the kids think they are going to be able to attend. My student is doing very poorly in a very light schedule, mostly because his English is grossly inadequate to the task. There is no way he could take a full program of honors courses and pass, much less get good grades. </p>
<p>In addition, the emotional toll on many of these kids is appalling, to be frank.</p>
<p>Consolation - </p>
<p>What is the sponsoring organization on your end? Does their governing body know that this is happening with the Korean kids? Is there anything that organization can do about this kind of systematic abuse of its volunteer network?</p>
<p>There is no sponsoring organization on this end for our kid. The Korean organization uses a local coordinator who has been involved in exchange arrangements for many years. (She seems to have been bamboozled by these people also, and has worked to straighten the situation out.) Some of the others are here through another organization that I will not name because I don't know whether they are complicit in this stuff. They seem to have their act together: they place kids at private schools and pay tuition and stipends. Whether it is a good parenting decision to send your kid off to a foreign country at the age of 14 and leave it to a succession of host families to essentially raise him or her through adolescence is another matter. IMHO, the kids would be better off at a good boarding school. The reason that is not done is quite simply to save money.</p>
<p>"IMHO, the kids would be better off at a good boarding school. The reason that is not done is quite simply to save money."</p>
<p>I fully agree with you here! The only "cheap" boarding schools I've ever heard of are those run by the 7th Day Adventist churches. I don't know if they take international non-Adventist students.</p>
<p>If your local coordinator likes doing international exchange work, maybe she (and the people at your HS) could get in touch with one of the longer-standing programs such as AFS (AFS</a> Intercultural Programs) or YFU (Youth</a> For Understanding) and shift in that direction?</p>
<p>Until you posted this, I hadn't really thought about the total number of Korean students and families affected by this practice. I thought it was just a regional thing here in Maryland. Thanks for all the information.</p>
<p>Another questionable phenomenon is the 3-week summer exchange program. A number of French kids were placed with families in our area last summer. Apparently the parents of the kids are paying thousands of dollars for this. What for, I do not know, because the "exchange" program arranged NO activities for the kids and certainly paid no stipend to the host families. The host families make all the arrangements for the kids, and pick up most of the expenses. In a semi-rural area with no public transportation, providing a bed and meals isn't really adequate. The host families in this case all had teens and knew each other, so they managed to put together a stream of activities to keep everyone amused. The kids are supposed to have money to pay for things, but they seem to concentrate on shopping for clothes and electronics and expect the host families to pay for their meals and transportation on trips, take them to events of all sorts, and so on. Finances are very tight for a number of the people I know who have hosted, so when they found out that the parents of the kids are being charged big $$ for this they are not very pleased. It seems like a bit of a racket.</p>
<p>There are indeed a whole bunch of "exchange" rackets. My parents were involved with AFS for years, and consequently got onto the radar scope of some of the "racket" type organizations. The did do one special French summer exchange in '76 that was somehow linked to the US Bicentennial Commission (Dad was on the local committee), but after that experience had nothing whatsoever to do with anything that was not AFS or Rotary (YFU wasn't in our community). </p>
<p>Legitimate student exchange programs can be really wonderful things. They offer training for the volunteers, support for the hosting families here, and good orientation for the students who are enrolled. CSIET publishes standards for HS level student exchange. Maybe your community could start with this?</p>
<p>CSIET</a> Standards (2)</p>
<p>Their list of approved programs is at:</p>
<p>2008-2009</a> List - NEW</p>
<p>In the past we hosted a student through YFU. They were fine. The finding of host families is a chancy thing, though. It seems that they have more kids who want to come than families to host them.</p>
<p>One thing that YFU has started doing recently that seems to be against the rules is send pictures and information about prospective exchange students out to recruit hosts. But we are a former host family, so perhaps that's okay.</p>
<p>AFS is doing the photos thing too - at least with families that are already in the system. When my sister was interested in hosting about three years ago she was sent fairly complete dossiers of two or three students that the regional office thought were a good fit for her family, and she was able to choose the one that she thought would work out best. They had a fantastic year together.</p>
<p>Back when my family applied to host an AFSer for 72-73, I don't remember seeing any paperwork with a photo until the placement had been actually made, but then again, I was one of the "host siblings" so my parents may have been given more info. than I was aware of at the time.</p>