COVID19 and US Students Abroad

Not enough media coverage has been devoted to the impact of COVID19 on our students abroad. Our intern, Gabriela, has done a terrific job providing some timely information.

Gabriela Paiva de Toledo PhD student in Art History Southern Methodist University March 20, 2020

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-03-12/coronavirus-reroutes-international-students-as-study-abroad-programs-shut-down

Coronavirus Reroutes Students as Study Abroad Programs Shut Down. The numbers of students studying abroad may be modest, but the disruptions they face when their programs are canceled are not. Chloe Tan Was three weeks from the start of her semester abroad in Shanghai when she got the email from her program organizer: Her overseas classes were canceled because of the coronavirus. That left the Georgetown University junior with two days to decide where she would spend the next four months studying among a handful of alternative international locations – with limited details about each of them. Adding to the already stressful situation, a few days earlier her mother got stuck in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the potentially deadly COVID-19 virus, while visiting her father for the Chinese New Year. "That was not a fun week for me. I was so stressed the whole time," Tan says. She chose London. And she's making the best of it. She feels lucky that she isn't in Italy, where many students have been sent home from their programs when the virus spread rapidly in that country. But her experience is emblematic of that of students from universities across the U.S. who were rerouted or asked to return home during their semester overseas. Tan had hoped to use the experience to go somewhere she could see herself living in the future. She says she was hoping to evaluate potential career prospects in the Asian financial hub and to improve her language skills. Now what should have been the academic experience of her lifetime is marked by a series of lost opportunities. "I had wanted to go not only to improve my Mandarin but to see if it's a city I could see myself living in," Tan says, adding that she's now looking into master's degree programs where she could live in China. Because of the planning that goes into international learning, disruptions can be especially significant – even if the population of students abroad is only a fraction of those enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. The State Department in 2018 estimated that more than 330,000 students were studying abroad in the 2016-'17 school year and that as many as 10 percent of students have studied overseas during the course of their undergraduate college years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a statement Monday urging institutes of higher education to "consider postponing or cancelling student international travel programs" because of the coronavirus. The CDC added that schools should also consider asking students who are currently studying abroad to return to their home country. Many schools have already sent students home from countries with a "Level 3" or "Level 4" travel alert, including China, Italy and South Korea. Sean Burnett, a graduate student studying public policy and urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan, says his two-week trip to China was canceled. Burnett has been taking a course this semester under the university's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, where students learn about China's political structure, culture and history. Following the course, the students, who were selected through a competitive application process, were to spend two weeks in China. "Part of the selling point was not only the fact that you get to go to China and it's this fascinating experience, and I have a particular interest in China as per my policy field … but one of the big draws to this is (the school) pays for your flight there but then they basically allow you credit for your return flight," Burnett says. That lets students keep their plans open ended, to travel more widely in the region before ultimately returning home on a ticket that the university has paid for. Burnett, who is set to graduate this spring, says he hasn't done a lot of things for himself throughout the three-year program since he is trying to minimize his loans and has worked full time over the summers, so he was looking forward to taking an extra week to visit Japan before returning home. "It was going to be this really cool thing to get to do at the end of what has been a really long process for me. And now – poof – it's gone," he says, adding that he is still more concerned about the public health implications of the virus than he is about his trip. He adds that his programs at the University of Michigan have several Chinese exchange students who don't know when they can return to China – which is worrisome, given that their study abroad visas will expire soon. Even students in the U.S. are facing increasingly uncertain situations. Universities around the nation are also starting to close their classrooms on campus and develop plans to shift coursework online. The Ohio State University, Harvard University and Columbia University were among the first to announce the suspension of in-person classes. But since then, the entire New York university network – with 90 campuses and 700,000 students – has asked students not to return, and a growing number of institutions are taking similar steps to address the rapidly evolving public health crisis. Burnett says he's nervous about the fact that University of Michigan's classes will transition to online for the rest of the semester. The university announced Wednesday that classes are canceled the rest of the week before moving online next week. Burnett says he had a lead on an on-campus job that he thinks likely won't work out now, and he's working on a thesis planning project that involves eight to 10 students that will be much more difficult to coordinate. "I think it's likely correct to be safe, but I feel like very little thought has gone into how to support students now that we are at this point," Burnett says. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/13/amid-coronavirus-cutting-international-students-jeopardizes-colleges.html Stemming the flow of international students could cost US colleges $41 billion PUBLISHED SUN, MAR 15 202010:16 AM EDT Many international students are not able to come to the U.S. and that could cause a significant disruption in our college system. For years, there has been a major influx of students studying in this country, particularly from China. In fact, one-third of all the international students in the U.S. come from China — more than any other nation, both in sheer numbers and as an overall percentage, according to the Institute of International Education. Prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus, the number of Chinese students in America was roughly 370,000, according to the latest data. But those numbers had been falling more recently due to more restrictive student visa policies in the U.S. and changing attitudes abroad about studying here. The coronavirus outbreak “throws fuel on the fire,” said Hafeez Lakhani, the president of New York-based Lakhani Coaching. International students in the U.S. contributed nearly $41 billion to the national economy in the 2018-2019 academic year, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators. (By other accounts, the number is even higher.) A survey by the Institute of International Education revealed that more than one-third of all colleges have already said that some students were unable to come or return to the U.S. from China because of coronavirus-related travel restrictions. Roughly three-quarters said that outreach or recruiting events in China had been affected by the spread of COVID-19. The institute polled 234 institutions from 43 states in February. New York University is home to the highest number of international students in the U.S., with nearly 20,000 students coming from around the world. The university, whose main campus is in Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan, this year received more than 85,000 applications for admission — a record, according to NYU spokesman John Beckman. However, “at this juncture, given what we know about the worldwide focus on addressing COVID-19, we have no reason to believe it will be other than business as usual come fall,” he said. The bottom line If fewer international students do decide to forgo studying here, it could spell trouble for the colleges that bank on them. Over the last decade, deep cuts in state funding for higher education have put pressure on schools to admit more students who need less aid, which is why so many schools have come to rely on the revenue from foreign students who typically pay top dollar. “Those students are also, by and large, paying full tuition to study in this country,” Lakhani said. “That’s a really valuable tuition base.” Mid-tier, private universities dependent on international enrollment will be particularly hard hit, according to Lakhani. “It really does impact the bottom line,” Lakhani said. “In this climate, any school that’s reliant on full-pay students is going to have a challenge,” said Joe Giacalone, executive director of international admissions at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. “Any time you have a pipeline of talented students that can afford tuition that’s going to be cut off, that’s absolutely cause for concern.” Further, “not every school has large endowments and funding from other resources,” he added. As a result, colleges and universities “will be looking for more domestic students paying full tuition,” Lakhani said. That means those schools may not be able to be as generous with their financial aid offerings, he added. (Currently, about two-thirds of all full-time students receive aid and it is the single most important factor in determining access to a college education.) “Universities have a tough equation to balance,” Lakhani said. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/03/13/i-need-leave-right-now-american-students-rush-out-europe-amid-covid-19-pandemic/ ‘I need to leave right now’: American students rush out of Europe amid covid-19 pandemic By Susan Svrluga March 13, 2020 at 7:20 p.m. CDT Orly Levy was fast asleep in the middle of the night in her Prague apartment when the building, full of American study-abroad students, erupted. She could hear people screaming and crying, yanking drawers open to throw their belongings into bags. A friend rushed into her room to tell her they couldn’t get back into the United States. Half the people in the building had already bolted for the airport. President Trump had just given a speech from the Oval Office announcing that he would ban travel from continental Europe to the United States beginning Friday at midnight. Many students, nervous about the novel coronavirus, had stayed awake into the middle of the night to hear his address — and didn’t hear the clarifications that followed, including that American citizens were not part of the exclusion. Even the timing was unclear to the students: Did midnight mean the first moments of Friday, or the end of that day? And in what time zone? “It was so vague and there was so much panic,” Levy said. “People were like, ‘I need to leave right now.’” It was a week when the virus hit home for many in the United States. This week, colleges sent students home, cities canceled events, and libraries and museums closed as case counts and death tolls mounted. For Ofer Levy, who has been racing to combat the virus as director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, it was the moment when the pandemic hit him personally, as a father. It was also the week when covid-19 hammered study-abroad programs. Hundreds of thousands of Americans study abroad every year, and though many students have returned to the United States from their programs, especially in hard-hit areas such as China and Italy, many were still in Europe at the time of the president’s speech. The State Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued sharply escalated warnings this week. That set off a wild scramble among students in Europe — and among universities and other study-abroad programs. The situation is unprecedented in recent memory, experts said. People from 400 institutions took part in a virtual meeting about the issue Thursday, said Brad Farnsworth, vice president of global engagement with the American Council on Education. Johns Hopkins University suspended all of its spring undergraduate study-abroad programs worldwide Thursday and advised students to use the university’s travel service for help with limited flight availability. University System of Maryland Chancellor Jay A. Perman said in a statement Thursday, “In light of President Trump’s new travel restrictions, I’m advising USM universities to recall all students studying abroad, including those not currently in Europe.” New York University urged its 800 students studying in continental Europe to return and dispatched staff to each location to help with travel plans and other logistics. Canceling a program launches a host of problems, Farnsworth said, including how to get students home, the question of whether flying exposes them to more risk than staying where they are, where to quarantine them if needed, and how to continue the studies for which they have already paid. “We understand it’s a complicated situation,” said Levy, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “Restricting travel is one way to the reduce the spread. I am an infectious-disease doctor, after all. We’re also parents, and we were worried about our daughter.” Sharon Levy, who also is a pediatrician and has a master’s degree in public health, said she wasn’t terribly worried that her daughter would become sick. But the president’s speech concerned her. “The idea that your kid is trapped in another country — that feels entirely different,” said Levy, director of the Adolescent Substance Use and Addiction Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. Orly Levy has always loved traveling, and knew, even when she was a little girl, that she wanted to study abroad in college. “This is something that I had looked forward to, really, almost my entire life,” she said. As soon as she got to Prague in January, the University of California at Santa Cruz junior began taking classes on the politics and economics of the European Union and the rise of populism, and traveled to Rome and London and Budapest on weekends. She planned to spend the summer in Israel. As covid-19 spread, her parents kept monitoring risk and weighing that against the richness of the experience their daughter was having. They knew young people were less likely to become seriously ill with covid-19. Ofer Levy’s lab is working to develop a vaccine targeting older populations, those at greatest risk — and a population with a different immune system from younger adults'. Harvard and the hospital announced the novel effort this week. But as more cases popped up, she began to limit her travel. Still, she was determined not to leave Prague. “This is my one chance to be abroad,” she was thinking. “I’m going to do whatever I can to not come home.” This week, Czech officials took sudden measures to combat the virus. Then Trump spoke. As Ofer Levy woke at 3 a.m. Thursday for another long day in the lab chasing a vaccine, he saw flashes of light in the bathroom: His phone was lighting up with messages from his daughter.She told her parents: "‘It’s time for me to come home.’” Ofer Levy said they set up a command center of sorts at their home in Cambridge and tried to find flights out of Prague. A travel agent found a flight that could get their daughter to Boston this weekend — but she would have had to leave her dorm within 10 minutes to get to the gate, and she hadn’t begun to pack. The race against the clock was too much, Levy said, and they chose a flight to London, and then from there to the United States. “Things can change so fast,” Orly Levy said. “I can’t even process how fast everything has come.” Suddenly, adventure and travel and independence didn’t sound so idyllic. “In times like this when things get so scary and you feel like the world is turning upside down,” she said, “you just want to be home.” During her flight Friday from Prague to London, she got an email from the airline announcing a new travel restriction and advising her to book a different flight to the United States. Her parents — who along with working intensely were also trying to figure out what to do with her younger brother, whose school had abruptly shut down — quickly found her another flight. Orly Levy ran through the airport, lugging her bags, packed for months away, dropping things and then, of course, having to frantically repack because the bags were overweight. She made it. “My line to check in to my flight to Boston was literally all American study-abroad students,” she said, “trying to get home.” https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2020/03/02/texas-universities-cancel-study-abroad-programs-recall-students-amid-coronavirus-concerns/ SMU among schools canceling study-abroad programs, recalling students because of coronavirus. University of Dallas also bringing home about 100 students from its Rome campus. By Jesus Jimenez 2:39 PM on Mar 2, 2020 As the coronavirus spreads around the world, North Texas universities are beginning to cancel study-abroad programs and making plans to bring home students who are overseas. Southern Methodist University announced Monday that it was suspending all university-related travel, including study-abroad programs. Over the weekend, the school began informing students that it was canceling programs that were scheduled for the summer, including one in London. “Any member of the SMU community who chooses to disregard university recommendations for international travel must understand they will do so at their own risk and may face difficulties in return travel to the U.S. and/or possible restricted access to the SMU campus,” a statement issued by SMU said. The university has a study-abroad program underway in Milan, and the school is assessing how it will bring those students home. Lizzie Loftus, a SMU junior, is among the students in Milan, where students are taking classes online in the meantime. “I am trying to ride the wave and stay in Milan,” she said. “My parents are concerned because of flight cancellations and suspensions. The main worry is that I wouldn’t be able to return to the United States on my own terms.” Schools across the country have begun canceling study-abroad programs and bringing students home, and the University of Dallas is following suit. The University of Dallas announced Monday that about 100 students in Rome will return to the U.S. No cases of the virus have been reported in Rome, but more than 2,000 cases have been reported in Italy, many of them in Milan. “We are confident our students remain safe on our Rome campus due to its remoteness from affected areas,” the school’s president Thomas S. Hibbs said in a written statement. “However, given the fluidness of the situation in Italy, we will begin to repatriate students immediately.” Schools across the country have begun canceling study-abroad programs and bringing students home, and the University of Dallas is following suit. The decision came after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention upgraded a travel alert for Italy to Level 3, warning Americans not to travel to the country. China, Iran and South Korea are also under Level 3 travel alerts issued by the CDC. “This past week has been a huge rollercoaster ride, but we’re glad the university has taken this decision,” said Elizabeth Villafranca, whose daughter, Natalie, is among the University of Dallas students in Rome. Classes at the school’s Rome campus were canceled Monday as school officials began figuring out the logistics of bringing the students back to Dallas. “This move is intended ... to ensure — beyond any reasonable doubt and with a realistic estimation of risk — your continued good health and welfare in the weeks to come, just in case its spread and impact reach levels that are beyond our control, beyond our ability to take care of you,” Peter Hatlie, dean and director of the Rome campus, wrote to students in an email. Students who come back to the U.S. will not return to classes at the school’s campus in Irving. They will finish the semester online. “I was pretty devastated,” Natalie Villafranca said. “Mostly because we have to leave our beautiful campus, our classmates, the faculty, and staff. Over the past eight weeks, all of these people have become like my second family, and it’s really sad not only to have to leave everyone, but also to have to leave this incredible city." The University of North Texas told students on Tuesday that it was canceling all study-abroad programs to Japan through the end of the summer. As students come home from overseas, it is unclear whether they will need to be quarantined — either by their schools or government agencies. The University of Texas at San Antonio recently brought back about 40 students and faculty and staff members from visits to China, South Korea and Japan. None of them showed signs of the virus, but they were self-isolated off campus for 14 days after their return to the U.S. UT-San Antonio also is recalling about 70 students and faculty and staff members in Italy. All of them were asymptomatic before leaving Italy, but they will be required to be in a 14-day self-isolate as a precaution. The Texas A&M University System also has suspended school-related travel to China, Italy and South Korea, including its study-abroad programs.