International Students

For the 10th year in a row, USC held on to a championship that has nothing to do with sports: The Los Angeles campus once again enrolled the most foreign students of any college or university in the United States, according to a new study. UCLA had the sixth-highest international enrollment, up from seventh place the year before. Across the country, the ranks of international students enrolled in American higher education last year increased 5%, to 723,277, according to the annual report by the Institute of International Education, a New York nonprofit, in partnership with the U.S. State Department.

For the last decade, USC has enrolled the largest number of international students of any college in the country: 8,615 last year. The Los Angeles university worked hard to achieve that - recruiting students from China, India and South Korea, among 100 countries in all, and providing services for the foreign students once they get here. Now campus officials are faced with the slayings this week of two graduate engineering students from China in a shooting about a mile off campus.

It's a holiday that has something to do with turkey. That much they knew. As the UCLA campus all but shut down, and classmates hoisted baskets of dirty laundry into their cars and motored off to see family and friends, a small group of international students remained behind to hold a Thanksgiving potluck and ponder the peculiar American holiday. "I just know turkey," said Edward Chang, 23, a graduate student from China. "Turkey and family," offered Laura Crothers, 28, another graduate student from Australia.

Last year, Ming Qu and Ying Wu set off on a well-trod path for success-seeking Chinese. They left their native country, enrolled at a prestigious American university and plowed toward degrees that could ensure them respect - and a better future - when they returned home. The USC graduate students, focused intently on their electrical engineering program, hunkered down in a neighborhood just west of campus. It was quieter, a better atmosphere for studying, residents said. But it was also widely considered less safe.

Host families are needed in Orange County for international students during the 1997-1998 school year. As it has for more than 50 years, the American Field Service chooses students from 50 countries based on academic standing, personalities and their interest in American culture. Each student is from 15 to 17 years old, and speaks adequate to excellent English. Students will arrive in August, in time to enroll in high school by Sept.

For the seventh year in a row, USC has enrolled more students from outside the United States than any other American college or university, according to a report being released today. USC hosted 7,189 international students last year, followed in the top five by New York University, Columbia, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Purdue, according to the annual Open Doors study by the Institute of International Education. UCLA ranked seventh, with 5,557 foreign students.

About 200 international students at the University of Massachusetts have refused to pay a new $65-a-semester fee, a protest that could result in dismissal and loss of their student visas. The fee was designed to compensate for cuts to the university's international programs office. Part of the fee will help pay for a tracking program called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems, created by Congress.

Orange Coast College enrolled a record number of international students--615 out of a total population of 24,000 students--for the spring quarter. The school has increased the number of international students enrolled at the Costa Mesa community college by 154% over the past five years.

Last year, Ming Qu and Ying Wu set off on a well-trod path for success-seeking Chinese. They left their native country, enrolled at a prestigious American university and plowed toward degrees that could ensure them respect - and a better future - when they returned home. The USC graduate students, focused intently on their electrical engineering program, hunkered down in a neighborhood just west of campus. It was quieter, a better atmosphere for studying, residents said. But it was also widely considered less safe.

Roger Pinto is a whiz when it comes to electrical engineering. But Heisman trophies, Tommy Trojan and a horse named Traveler? No clue. Which is why Pinto and about 30 other first-year USC international students participated in a football seminar on Thursday to become acclimated with a certain American sport, which engulfs the university each fall. "It was quite interesting," said Pinto, a 23-year-old native of India who begins classes on Monday. "I knew a little bit about American football from the New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers, but that was about it."

Society trusts teachers and school administrators to deliver a lesson arguably more important than reading and math: Cheating is not only forbidden but dishonorable. How discouraging and frustrating it is, then, to discover yet another instance in which an institution itself has been caught violating the rules. On Monday, Claremont McKenna College announced that an official there inflated the SAT scores of incoming students to make the school look good in national rankings, including the overhyped lists published annually in U.S. News & World Report.

For the 10th year in a row, USC held on to a championship that has nothing to do with sports: The Los Angeles campus once again enrolled the most foreign students of any college or university in the United States, according to a new study. UCLA had the sixth-highest international enrollment, up from seventh place the year before. Across the country, the ranks of international students enrolled in American higher education last year increased 5%, to 723,277, according to the annual report by the Institute of International Education, a New York nonprofit, in partnership with the U.S. State Department.

As their countries headed toward victory and disappointment in the final hour of the much-anticipated Cricket World Cup 2011 semifinal match, Waleed Ishtiaq and Nikunj Jajodia were dozing side by side. Wearing their respective countries' team colors — green for Pakistan and blue for India — the 20-year-old USC students had nodded off in their chairs at an on-campus screening of the game. Not even the intermittent cheering of their compatriots could rouse them. It was past 10 a.m. Wednesday in Los Angeles when India took the prize, after a nail-biting eight-hour contest.

Lee Bregman was hoping to reconnect with his favorite childhood sport and feed a case of World Cup-induced soccer fever in 2006 when he posted an Internet ad seeking players for a Sunday afternoon kick-around. Little did the Irvine resident know that his game would turn into something of a United Nations of pickup soccer, a weekly collision of cultures, religions, personalities, generations and playing styles that has helped more than a few international students assimilate to the U.S. The game also provides a refuge for older immigrants and second-generation Americans who love playing the sport but are leery of playground piranhas who can disrupt the action.

It's a holiday that has something to do with turkey. That much they knew. As the UCLA campus all but shut down, and classmates hoisted baskets of dirty laundry into their cars and motored off to see family and friends, a small group of international students remained behind to hold a Thanksgiving potluck and ponder the peculiar American holiday. "I just know turkey," said Edward Chang, 23, a graduate student from China. "Turkey and family," offered Laura Crothers, 28, another graduate student from Australia.

The United States attracts more international college students ? 691,000 last year ? than any other country. Recognizing a chance to plug some financial holes, the University of California system is attempting to boost enrollment of non-Californians by recruiting some of those foreign students ("UC campuses move to recruit more out-of-state students," Nov. 14). California is a particularly attractive option to international families seeking to send their children to world-class universities.

The United States attracts more international college students ? 691,000 last year ? than any other country. Recognizing a chance to plug some financial holes, the University of California system is attempting to boost enrollment of non-Californians by recruiting some of those foreign students ("UC campuses move to recruit more out-of-state students," Nov. 14). California is a particularly attractive option to international families seeking to send their children to world-class universities.

Lee Bregman was hoping to reconnect with his favorite childhood sport and feed a case of World Cup-induced soccer fever in 2006 when he posted an Internet ad seeking players for a Sunday afternoon kick-around. Little did the Irvine resident know that his game would turn into something of a United Nations of pickup soccer, a weekly collision of cultures, religions, personalities, generations and playing styles that has helped more than a few international students assimilate to the U.S. The game also provides a refuge for older immigrants and second-generation Americans who love playing the sport but are leery of playground piranhas who can disrupt the action.

From Boston to China and across the Internet, University of California campuses this year are taking unprecedented and potentially controversial steps to recruit out-of-state and international students for the extra revenue and geographic diversity they bring to the cash-strapped system. Most of the nine UC campuses that enroll undergraduates report sending admissions staffers more often this year than in previous years to visit high schools, college admissions fairs and other events outside the state.

Its basic outlines are familiar to even the most casual student of American history: the marches, the mass arrests, the church bombings. But seeing the actual footage that makes up "Eyes on the Prize" -- the heralded documentary about the civil rights movement, coming to DVD for the first time -- can still startle for its rawness and drama. Seeing a suspender-clad man describe how his 14-year-old nephew, Emmett Till, was kidnapped and killed by Mississippi racists for allegedly whistling at a white woman, or watching teenage girls in cardigans walk past angry mobs to attend their Alabama school makes not only for powerful history, but gripping television.