International students can be an enormous boon to your private-independent school, but are you taking full advantage of the opportunities they offer? Read on if you’d like to find three reasons why your foreign students’ presence can give your private-independent school a boost.
Increased Diversity
International students provide a perspective to your school’s community unavailable to students in schools without such programs. Today's kids are already connecting with students around the world on the internet—and as powerful as the Internet is for communication and education, experiences are still limited. When your school hosts international students, it fosters varying perspectives on important issues. Students can develop their own opinions while learning to respect the differing views of their peers.
Such diversity efforts can grow beyond anyone’s expectations. For example, after sending Palestinian and Jewish students to a conference in Illinois, the Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, California, will host the “Hands of Peace” conference this summer, welcoming international youths from the Middle East and the United States to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and attempt to understand their cultural “enemies.”
Josh Kahn, a Jewish Pacific Ridge student who attended the Illinois conference, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that “growing up, I had a very black-and-white opinion that Israel was never wrong. Now I’d say my opinion is very much gray”—an outcome that is as fine an example of open-mindedness as any diversity program could ever hope for.
Marketing Benefits
From a marketing perspective, international students can give your educational program serious clout in the eyes of potential parents. In recruiting efforts, fund raisers for international programs, and special events featuring foreign students, international students can provide extra media exposure for your school at both local and national levels.
After all, would we have mentioned Pacific Ridge in this article if the school not hosting international students this summer? No matter how excellent their program may be or wonderful their community, this one act of outreach has given them a powerful marketing opportunity.
In an interview with USA Today, Newcomb School District Superintendent Clark “Skip” Hults, a champion of international students in his own schools, adds that the publicity goes both ways. Students who study abroad in America return home, he says, "very much friends and allies of America. It really does help us do away with the stereotype of the ‘ugly American.’”
As the international student program grew in his schools, families moved to his district because of the school’s newfound diversity. By making the international program a public effort, Hults has doubled the number of students in his schools—a tangible benefit to the “free” marketing provided by foreign exchange students.
Financial Gain
And, of course, there is the fiscal benefit of enrolling international students. Student exchange programs are enormously profitable. International students contributed more than $20 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2010-11 school year through tuition and living expenses, making education for foreign students the fifth-largest U.S. service export. And, according to a study by Foreign Affairs and International Canada, international students added $8 billion to the Canadian economy for tuition, housing, and tourism, making Canadian educational services Canada’s number-one export to China.
Any student who studies abroad in America must, according to federal law, “pay the full, unsubsidized per capita cost of education,” with the estimates for public school costs ranging from $3,000 to $10,000.
In Newcomb public schools, Hults estimated that the international student program brought in a quarter of a million dollars during the 2012-13 school year—and that’s just from students paying $5,000 in tuition! While your school should stay true to its financial aid policies, the prospect of filling full-tuition seats at your school with mission-appropriate students should make anyone excited about expanding the international student program.
International students offer a myriad of opportunities for your school by diversifying your academic community, presenting chances for organic media coverage of your school and its mission, and bolstering your school's income to fund mission-appropriate projects. This specialized segment of the student population is worth cultivating for the immediate return, as well as beneficial in the years to come.
Additional ISM resources:
ISM's International Student Accident and Sickness insurance
ISM Monthly Update for School Heads Vol. 11 No. 5 Public Schools Recruit International Students for Income, Diversity
ISM Monthly Update for Admission Officers Vol. 8 No. 4 More International Students Are Finding Their Way to American Campuses
ISM Monthly Update for Admission Officers Vol. 12 No. 3 Developing Your International Students’ Networking Skills
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 37 No. 13 The Student’s Role in Re-recruitment
I&P Vol. 37 No. 4 Look Beyond Your Traditional Marketing Allies
