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For today’s college students, passports are not yet required but certainly recommended.
American students at schools such as Winona State University often have a chance they’ll rarely get later in their professional lives: to spend months in a foreign country. At the same time, students from distant countries flock to the United States, enrolling in colleges and universities, seeking educational opportunities they would never have in their countries.
University officials tout both study-abroad programs and international recruitment as important parts of the educational experience. Traveling in a foreign land opens Americans to a world they haven’t seen but may need to know in an increasingly globalized economy. International students bring a semblance of that experience to a generally homogenous community such as Winona.
Many of the experiences of international students at WSU are shared by Americans when they study abroad. The plane flights, struggle with a foreign language and culture shock are universal. But in many ways, the experiences are also a world away.
International students often have more hoops to jump through than their American counterparts. They have different reasons for leaving their homeland to study. And while those leaving to study abroad often see their experiences as part academic adventure, part extended vacation, international students face stresses and pressures their counterparts don’t.
Bringing the world to WinonaSuganthini Subramaniam wanted to be a doctor since she was a little girl. But that dream seemed impossible if she stayed in her native Sri Lanka.
Though primary and secondary education in Sri Lanka is generally better than in other developing countries, competition to get into its few public universities is intense. To make it harder for Subramaniam, her family is strict and refused to let her leave home to study.
But she had a dream, and she wouldn’t give it up, so she secretly enrolled in classes at the American College of Higher Education. She planned to get enough college credits there to transfer to a U.S. college. But first, she needed to convince her parents to let her go.
“I had to do some tricks,” she said. “I wouldn’t eat or talk to them.”
The silent protests eventually worked, and her parents relented. She applied and enrolled at WSU because the school accepted most of her credits.
Finding enough money to pay for school has been a constant struggle. One hundred Sri Lankan rupees exchange for about $1 U.S. Subramaniam receives about $4,000 a year in scholarships and gets money from home, but spending money is hard to come by because international students generally can only work on campus and are limited to 20 hours a week.
Even harder has been dealing with the culture shock.
Subramaniam’s culture frowns on popular American clothing such as short skirts and disapproves of women socializing with men.
She still gets sick every time the season shifts because her body isn’t used to Minnesota winters. She admits to being “scared of drunk people.”
Every day she talks to her family, either by phone or webcam. Because Sri Lanka is in the midst of a prolonged civil war, she’s used to having her family worry about her, though she relishes the peacefulness of studying in Winona.
If she doesn’t get a job and work visa soon after she graduates, she’ll have to return home. Those stresses can make studying in America for foreign students hard.
“It’s a very difficult journey for international students,” said Terri Markos, WSU’s director of International Services and Cultural Outreach. “It’s a big decision ... but on the other hand, it’s a life-altering experience.”
Despite the challenges, Subramaniam relishes her opportunities here. She has shifted her focus to medical research after she interned at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
“For a person like me, who has struggled to get out of the country, to achieve that was amazing,” she said.
Her brother enrolled at WSU recently, and there are about 20 other Sri Lankan students in Winona, giving Subra-maniam a semblance of a comfort base. Many of those students came to WSU after being convinced by Subramaniam when she returned home and talked about the school.
She has learned how to be independent here, managing her own money for the first time and finding her own apartment. Eventually, after she finishes her studies here — she wants to get her doctorate — she’ll return to Sri Lanka and her family.
Sending Winona to the worldStudying abroad for American students has its own set of challenges but generally is a more relaxed experience than traveling to America.
Carl Soderberg, a WSU student from Evansville, Wis., spent the 2007-08 school year learning Chinese and studying international relations in Taiwan.
“(Studying abroad) is what you make of it,” he said. “For me, it was both a vacation and an educational experience.”
The number of WSU students who study abroad varies between 15 and 20 a semester, said C.K. Kwai, WSU’s director of study-abroad programs. That’s a low number compared with many universities. Winona State is, in many ways, late to the study-abroad table, evidenced by the only recent centralization of its program.
The university is trying to play catch-up, broadening its search for relationships with foreign institutions to give students a more “globalized experience.” Everybody’s experience studying abroad is different, Kwai said. How long students stay, their desire to learn a different culture and their natural curiosity can alter their experiences.
“If you’re only there for three weeks you end up being a tourist,” Kwai said.
But much of the anxiety that can hit international students misses Americans studying abroad. While Subramaniam must rush to get her diploma, Soderberg said he felt no urgency to to do so, and in fact pushed back his graduation date to remain in Taiwan longer.
That’s not to say Soderberg didn’t learn anything in Taiwan. Each day he learned a new word or saw something new, and he wants to see and hear more. He’s traveling to South Korea next year to teach English.
“If you go abroad, you will learn something new every day,” Soderberg said.
It’s just a different experience, and in the end, makes students, from both ends of the international education spectrum, appreciate what they have.
BY THE NUMBERSUniversities such as WSU have long recruited students from foreign places, but a domestic tragedy slowed efforts until recently.
Winona State had its largest foreign class a decade ago, with 362 international students. But the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, made it more difficult for students to obtain visas in order to study at American schools. From the 2002-03 school year to the 2005-06 year, international student enrollment slowed nationally and then sharply declined, according to the Institute of International Education.
That trend has reversed, however, and international student enrollment reached record levels in 2007-08, according to the IIE.
Winona State’s international enrollment numbers are down this fall, at about 260 students from about 40 countries, said Terri Markos, WSU’s director of International Services and Cultural Outreach. The university expects those numbers to increase in the spring and start to approach record numbers by next school year, and WSU has added a position that exclusively focuses on international student admissions.
Most students come from East Asian countries such as Nepal, Taiwan and South Korea, and a growing number of students are arriving from China, following a national trend because of rising demand for education in the rapidly developing country. The university also has about 30 students enrolled in its English Language Center, where students take one or two semesters of intensive English classes before they enroll if their language proficiency is not up to par.
Study-abroad programs at WSU are still, in many ways, in their infant stages. Only a couple dozen students a year spend at least a semester abroad, though more go on brief international education trips of between three and six weeks.
The bulk of WSU students go to its program in Spain, but more are starting to travel to countries such as Taiwan, China, Korea and Australia.
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