US News lists Northeastern at 19% international students. I think that Northeastern’s international student population is probably more Chinese than other schools- but the total international is not that high. My daughter (graduated in 2016) felt there were lots of Chinese from China and very few American Chinese. She did not feel that the campus overall was very international.
She did take a senior thesis course (required to graduate) which had a block of these Chinese students who in her description could barely speak English (something like 4-5 of them in a class of about 20 students). Their English was so poor she wondered how they had gotten this fair (you were required to be a Junior or Senior to register for the class). The class required writing a paper and presenting it as you went along (several iterations over the semester.) After the first few class sessions these students did not show up for class again for the rest of the year. The teacher mentioned that he was baffled as the students didn’t withdraw from the class and he was going to have to give them all F’s and a couple of them were doing this for the second consecutive semester. Looking back now, I wonder if it was their plan all along, a way to remain a student and not graduate and keep their student Visa (GPA wouldn’t matter to them and they didn’t care about continuing to pay tuition)?
On top of Northeastern having one of the ugliest campuses in the USA, this thread makes me wonder if the administration cares about the students at all, or just manipulating rankings and the almighty dollar!
I don’t want to bash Northeastern - my daughter had an exceptional experience there - graduated with a 4.0, made wonderful lifelong friends, matured tremendously, learned lots across a broad spectrum of subjects (double major with a minor and wonderful electives), landed an excellent job (which she excels at given how well NEU prepared her), loves Boston (stayed there), loved the campus (the dorms, the food, the location, the spring flowers, the clubs, etc.) The class I described was an abnormality, most of her classmates were intelligent and hard-working.
I don’t know about NEU, but getting too many Ds or worse, Fs means one’s on a quick road to being placed on academic probation or sometimes even immediate academic suspension.
And if the latter happened, wouldn’t that mean the suspended student’s student visa’s automatically in jeopardy as they are no longer a full-time student per the terms of the visa and must go back to their country of origin and reapply for said visa once the suspension is finished? Especially if one’s a junior/senior and thus, no longer has the excuse of “first-year adjustment issues”?
“They weren’t admitted because of their tuition dollars, though. The Ivies/equivalents could fill their entire class with (less famous/connected) full-payers, but they do not.”
@PurpleTitan – they were admitted for money (successfully) – money greater than tuition – and for maintaining close ties with the monied elite that has always matriculated, and supported, these schools.
“If the likes of Harvard and Brown whore themselves around for celebrity/donor/developmental admits, it doesn’t mean ‘PodunkU’ should do likewise for foreign $$$$ at the expense of US students.” @elguapo1 – You call it whoring… they call it investing. Whether or not it’s “wrong” it’s the reality. The Ivies have done very well for themselves by aligning themselves with the wealthy for the past 300 years. And PodunkU has to get money from somewhere since states won’t support them. Do I think that’s wrong? Of course. But it’s the reality, especially in today’s political climate.
Cheating has been an issue since I was a TA 32 years ago. I don’t think any specific group is innocent. All that changes is the modus operandi.
Foreign students spoke bad English in my time (and I was one of them :)) and they still do. And I’m not buying the ‘former colony’ part because between bad accent, bad grammar, and relative cultural isolation it was invariably bad regardless of country of origin.
People are simply too optimistic when it comes to how much of the language they think they need to know before coming here. Hint, folks… It ain’t as easy as you think. It may be if you’re like my younger daughter who has been doing a second language since middle school with a tutor and in school, did study abroad while in high school, the works. But parachuting with an F-1 into a college and not knowing the language well… Monumentally bad idea.
I studied 6 years of high school English + 3 in prep school, did quite well on the TOEFL (610 back then when schools wanted 500-550) and still it was a challenge for the first year. But I persevered, and being from Elbonia meant very few fellow Elbonian students along the way. After a year or two I really learned not only to read and write like a native - or better - but also to think in English, something that, sad to say, I did not see among most of my fellow foreign students back then.
Between cultural isolation and taking little interest in American culture, these folks simply learned enough English to scrape by. This defeats the purpose of coming to study in America.
That used to be the case in the past, agreed. But nowdays (and even back then) it’s all about getting the elusive Green Card. Interestingly enough, what you describe was the case for groups known to return (Middle East, Latin America) while Indians and the few Chinese students I remember were actually pretty good.
Green card is easy to get via EB-5 program which President Trump just extended. His son-in-law’s sister was in China this past weekend to promote their real estate property in the US. Pay $500k and up, you are good. Google EB-5 and the news is still hot.