Thanks to the Internet, Long Island Colleges Are Enrolling More International Students

By Claude Solnik

Antoniya Kaneva is your typical college junior, except for one regard.

She considered schools such as George Washington University, Trinity College and Fordham University, but wound up enrolling in a school she never visited. In fact, the first time Kaneva came to Adelphi University in Garden City, she was on her way to class.

While she hadn’t visited the campus, the Bulgarian student had seen Adelphi, at least virtually. By visiting the school’s Web site and other informational sites such as Collegeboard.com, Kaneva got a good look at the campus that would become her home away from home – even though it was thousands of miles away.

For Kaneva, coming to the United States was “kind of my dream,” and she’s not alone; in fact, she’s one of about 40 Bulgarians currently enrolled at Adelphi, part of a growing wave of international students washing up at Long Island colleges and universities.

While their bread is still buttered by Nassau and Suffolk county residents, Island schools are reaching out more aggressively than ever for recruits from abroad – and thanks to the Internet, reeling in ever more international students.

How hard is the push? Consider Oakdale-based Dowling College, which offers sections of its Web site in Chinese and Korean.

Richard Garner, dean of the honors college at Adelphi University, said search engines let schools market worldwide more easily.

“The Internet is a terrific tool,” said Garner, citing search engines that help schools reach international markets with a few simple clicks.

“They type in ‘small liberal arts college, Northeast’ and there we are,” Garner noted, leading directly to situations like Kaneva’s – students enroll without ever seeing the place with their own eyes.

“When they get off the airplane at the end of August,” Garner added, “it’s their first time to set foot on U.S. soil.”

Despite recent uproars over immigration, more international students are studying at U.S. Schools than in 2000-01, when 548,000 students from abroad were enrolled in America, according to the Open Doors International Student Census by the Institute of International Education. Such enrollment rose to an all-time high of 586,000 in 2002-03. It was still up in 2004-05, the last available numbers, holding at around 565,000 – including 62,000 foreign students in New York State schools, second only to California’s 75,000.

According to the institute, the numbers dipped after 2002-03 due to tougher visa application reviews and concerns abroad over whether the U.S. would welcome international students, in light of strained international relations. Also contributing to the decline were rising education costs and competition from other nations, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, the institute noted.

Today, several Long Island universities report growing global enrollment. Stony Brook University, as of fall 2006, had 2,345 international students; that number was down around 1,876 in 2001 and 1,496 in 1996.

Stony Brook spokesman Patrick Calabria said students from around the globe are buying into Stony Brook’s wide program of scientific studies. “These students came from virtually everywhere – Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America,” Calabria said. “They’re interested in a wide range of disciplines, but certainly engineering, computer sciences and languages are among the most popular.”

As for where America’s international students come from, India leads the pack. About 80,000 Indian nationals studied stateside in 2004-05, up 14.2 percent from the prior year, followed by 62,000 from China, up 11.1 percent from the prior year, according to the Institute of International Education.

Another 53,000 came from the Republic of Korea, 42,000 from Japan, 28,000 from Canada, 26,000 from Taiwan and 13,000 from Mexico, the institute said.

That’s fairly consistent with rosters at local schools. Stony Brook’s foreign enrollment is led by Chinese students, followed by Indians, Koreans, Taiwanese, Japanese, Turks and Canadians.

Dowling’s largest international contingency is the 56 students from Turkey currently roaming its hallowed halls. All told, roughly 285 students from 60 countries study at Dowling, up from about 200 five years ago, according to the school.

Yu-Wan Wang, Dowling’s director of international student and scholar services, said word-of-mouth works best when it comes to attracting students from abroad.

“When we have a group of satisfied students, more come,” Wang said, citing specifically the 38 students Dowling has welcomed this year from China.

“They found that I speak the language and understand the culture,” she said, “so there are more students.”

(c) 2007 Long Island Business News. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.