Via The Los Angeles Times: International students respond to new regulations announced by the Trump administration. Excerpt and then a comment:
Unlike many international students, Grace Wang of Claremont McKenna College opted against returning to Beijing and moved to a friend’s home in March when her campus switched to online classes and sent students home amid the coronavirus emergency. She felt it was best to stay in America.
But as Wang awaited news of the college’s fall reopening policies, her plans were further upended when federal officials announced new visa guidelines that prohibit international students from staying in the U.S. if they continue to take all of their courses online.
“If we go online, I don’t have a choice but to go back to China,” she said Tuesday.
Wang is among the more than 1 million international students whose lives — already thrown into turmoil by sudden suspensions of classes, campus closures and sealed borders — suddenly became more complicated and uncertain by rules widely condemned by many higher education leaders.
“We couldn’t have envisioned the situation getting worse but somehow it did,” Wang said.
If she is forced to return home, the rising senior majoring in international relations and economics is particularly worried about being able to excel in online classes during her final year of college with a 15-hour time difference. Plus, she will begin work on a research thesis this fall, requiring access to American search engines and scholarly databases.
“For me to be inside the borders of mainland China ... within the firewall ... the quality of my thesis will not be close to the quality of research I will be able to conduct within the States,” Wang said.
Ordinarily, Canadian schools would leap at this opportunity to recruit still more international students. But given the present tensions between Canada and China, and generally uncertain economic situation, I doubt that we'll be able to do so.
