American Colleges Don’t Teach Their Foreign Students about America.
Foreign students typically arrive at American colleges knowing little about America’s history and institutions and leave having learned nothing more. Colleges thus squander a unique opportunity to foster greater understanding of America’s institutions in an increasingly hostile world. In 2003, according to the Department of Education, American colleges and universities enrolled 572,509 international students. This influx brought sought-after revenues to schools and businesses. “Any number of marketing efforts are made by colleges and universities to recruit foreign students, whose tuition fees serve to bulk up college budgets,” Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia explained in a 2002 Senate debate on student-visa reform. Foreign students, he said, annually contribute $9-13 billion to the U.S. economy.
In this era, it is fair to note that all Americans bear at least one cost for the benefits these colleges and businesses reap from foreign students: with lax admission and documentation policies, espionage agents and terrorists can enter the country using student visas—as one 9/11 hijacker did.
What, then, is the public good all Americans receive in return for allowing colleges and universities to fill coveted admissions spots with hundreds of thousands of foreign students each year? Is it that we merely want to expose American students to students from other countries? Or should it also be that international students are taught an understanding of America’s history and institutions that in future years makes them more likely to be our friends than our enemies?
If American colleges are even trying to do this, they are failing:
- The average foreign senior scored 2.9 points lower on the American history section of the civic literacy exam than the average foreign freshman.
- The average foreign senior had gained a statistically meaningless 0.2 points in knowledge about America’s relations with the world.
| RESULTS FOR FOREIGN NATIONALS ATTENDING AMERICAN COLLEGES Average Percent Correct by Subject and by Cohort | |||
| Test Section | Freshman Mean | Senior Mean | Value Added |
| Overall | 43.4% | 43.5% | +0.1% |
| American History | 45.4% | 42.5% | -2.9% |
| American Political Thought | 43.8% | 44.7% | +0.9% |
| America and the World | 41.6% | 41.8% | +0.2% |
| The Market Economy | 42.3% | 45.4% | +3.1%* |
| * The difference between the freshman and senior means is statistically significant with confidence of 95% or greater. | |||
| RESULTS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS WITH AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP Average Percent Correct by Subject and by Cohort | |||
| Test Section | Freshman Mean | Senior Mean | Value Added |
| Overall | 50.9% | 55.1% | +4.2%* |
| American History | 57.3% | 60.0% | +2.7%* |
| American Political Thought | 52.6% | 56.2% | +3.6%* |
| America and the World | 47.2% | 51.6% | +4.4%* |
| The Market Economy | 45.3% | 51.8% | +6.5%* |
| * The difference between the freshman and senior means is statistically significant with confidence of 95% or greater. | |||
- The overall average gain in civic knowledge for foreign students was a statistically meaningless one tenth of one point.
- The typical foreign senior had not taken a single course on American history.
While attending an American college, foreign students get plenty of exposure to American popular culture, which doesn’t always reflect our most enduring values. Meanwhile, the colleges they attend fail to give them a healthy exposure to the leaders, values, and ideas that have allowed this republic to thrive for more than 200 years.
