Hearing of House Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness and Subcommittee on Select Education - Tracking International Students in Higher Ed...

HEARING OF THE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON 21st CENTURY COMPETITIVENESS AND SUBCOMMITTEE ON SELECT EDUCATION: TRACKING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: A PROGRESS REPORT

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Mr. Holt. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, I don't need to repeat, probably, how important this is to us. I don't mean to us here in Congress, but to us as a country. I'm looking at the figures that, despite the improvement, I think we still have some way to go.

The Council of Graduate Schools reported another 5 percent decline in international graduate student applications from 2004 to 2005, following a 28 percent decline the year before. Fortunately, it was not another 28 percent decline.

But I think that 5 percent decline indicates a continuing problem with student interest still low, for a variety of reasons, surely not all of which have to do with your procedures. But I would ask, Mr. Chairman, that the report of the Council on Graduate Schools called ``Findings from the 2005 International Graduate Admissions'' survey be included in the record.

Chairman McKeon. Without objection, so ordered.

[The information referred to has been retained in the Committee's official files.]

Mr. Holt. Thank you. One of the things that you spoke about, Mr. Edson, was some effort to communicate abroad that we
have a more friendly and efficient method now. Can you say a little bit more? I mean, speaking to a couple hundred students
in Beijing is one thing, but reaching out to millions of students in other countries I think is--it is more along the lines of what we'd like to see in an aggressive public relations program, so that students abroad know that the system has improved here.

Mr. Edson. We have asked all of our posts overseas and drawn to the attention for our chiefs of mission, our Ambassadors, the importance of this issue and ask them to seek out opportunities to make these points to speak to not only student but business and tourist community groups as well.

In addition, we've been discussing with the academic community the idea of linking, when they do recruiting or informational visits overseas, making sure that they speak with our consular sections and if the forum is right, providing a consular officer to go out with them and discuss U.S. visa procedures at the same opportunity, sort of to tag team together so they can discuss the schools, we can discuss the way you get into one, or get the visa to get into one.

Mr. Holt. Mr. Cerda, the upgrade to the SEVIS system is certainly welcome. What is the procedure for correcting the data in there? What role can the universities have to accelerate the correction so that we can get--so we can remove any errors in the system?

Mr. Cerda. Data integrity is very critical for the system to work on both sides, for DHS as well as the schools. We are constantly through the help desk, our response teams that we have, working with the universities, with their designated officials, to review cases where if there is a termination that may be overridden by other factors--a change of status, some other information that became available subsequently--we are capable of doing those changes directly through that interaction.

Further, we internally are also reviewing the cases. Prior to a lead being sent out to the field for action, we do our reviews of that information too to make sure that the information is correct. And if the termination is no longer a termination, it's pretty straightforward entry into SEVIS to do that.

It depends, too, on the volume. If we get a university coming with significant numbers of proposed changes on status, we would essentially have to go through each one of those and go through it. But, again, absent anything that is out of the ordinary there, it's a pretty straightforward entry into the system on our behalf.

We are looking at in terms of policy facilitating this process to give the schools more flexibility in correcting some of these issues directly on their own. Things that don't raise issues of integrity, we're looking at to see whether that can also help facilitate the process and make the records, you know, as clean as possible.

Mr. Holt. OK. Thank you. In the few seconds that remain, the NSEERS registration program seems very opaque to universities. And it appears that there might be some changes in the works. Do you have any recent report, or can you make a
report today about whether there are changes either restrictive or liberalizing in that?

Mr. Cerda. On NSEERS, as Secretary Ridge announced in the past, we did scale back the approach that we use NSEERS for. It's still utilized at the POEs, but the call-ins that were out occurring in the communities, those ceased. And we're also
looking at it more in terms of a targeted fashion in certain instances, using intelligence rather than, as we had in the past when we initiated NSEERS, do the massive call-ins for registration. We're now looking at more targeted approaches based on intelligence, lead-driven issues.

We recognize the sensitivities on it. I know CVP is aware of that too, and they've gone through training also in terms of just customer service in terms of processing and communicating the needs of NSEERS. That's where we stand right now though.

Mr. Holt. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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