In a Lab With No American Graduate Students, a Professor Stresses Assimilation

By ROBIN WILSON


State College, Pa.
Inside Room 212, where graduate students sit huddled before computers, the scene looks like any physics laboratory at an American research university. The only thing missing from the room is the Americans.

Here at Pennsylvania State University,
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A University Uses Quotas to Limit and Diversify Its Foreign Enrollments

Citizenship of Ph.D. Recipients in 2 Disciplines, 1997


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all six of the graduate and postdoctoral students in Room 212 of Osmond Laboratory are foreign. Two come from China; the others are from Colombia, Israel, Korea, and Taiwan. Even the Indian professor who runs the lab was once a foreign student, although he is now a U.S. citizen.

While the vast majority of American scientists have been of European descent, the only such face in this room belongs to Albert Einstein, himself an immigrant, who watches over the laboratory from a huge poster tacked to a door.

Odds are you can visit any physics laboratory at a U.S. research university and find as many foreigners as Americans. This academic year, the American Institute of Physics estimates that, for the first time, the majority of first-year doctoral students in physics are foreign. Twenty per cent of all international students studying physics in the United States in the 1997-98 academic year came from China alone.

The heavy reliance on foreign talent has worried legislators and educators for years. Is it smart to spend taxpayers' money for research completed primarily by foreigners, many of whom may return home with knowledge that will allow their countries to better compete with the United States? Equally important, Why are so few Americans interested in the sciences, and in physics in particular?

Room 212 is the laboratory of Jay S. Patel, a professor of physics and electrical engineering, who is not at all pleased that his research group is stocked with foreigners. Although no one at the university has ever complained, he calls the scarcity of Americans a problem. "I am unhappy that I have so many foreign students," he says. "As a state employee, it is my job to educate Pennsylvanians and Americans, and I am acutely aware of that."

Just this year, Mr. Patel turned down a Chinese student who wanted to join his research group. Already, two students in the group are from China, and Mr. Patel did not want to tip the scales with one more. He would like to add an American student to the mix; he lost the only American in his laboratory last semester when she left after earning a master's degree.

There is a reason why Mr. Patel's lab is filled with international students. Unlike their American counterparts, who generally are more keen on theoretical research that will help them land academic jobs, foreign students are often attracted to applied research and careers in the business world. For them, Mr. Patel is the perfect mentor. He joined the ranks of academe only three years ago, after a 15-year career in industry at Bell Laboratories and Bellcore. And his research into faster switches for the next generation of the Internet is considered very practical.

Mr. Patel's research focuses on liquid crystals, which can be reoriented using small fields of energy. The lab is manipulating them to see how they might best be used in devices that make optical switches. Such switches typically are used in advanced telecommunications technology. The lab is financed primarily by $400,000 in grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

His laboratory might resemble a mini United Nations, but Mr. Patel has tried hard to make sure that it doesn't sound like one. He enforces strict rules -- some might even consider them insensitive -- to insure that his students assimilate into American culture. Graduate students must speak English in the laboratory so that everyone can understand what is being said. The professor even encourages students to speak English at home with their families.

"If you cannot communicate with me, then the rest of it is all useless," Mr. Patel observes. "Interacting with people is something we don't do enough of in an academic environment."

This semester, Mr. Patel went further than any other professor in the physics department at Penn State and used some of his grant money to hire an English tutor to help his students improve their ability to put ideas down on paper. Although he can understand their speech, he says, reading their prose "is painful."

When students use the lab's computers to read on-line newspapers in their native languages, Mr. Patel looks the other way. But that is about as much as he'll tolerate. Otherwise, he watches the students closely, encouraging the Asians to socialize with the rest of the group, for example, rather than form a clique. On a recent tour of the lab with a visitor, the professor bristled over a small picture of the Israeli flag and a note written in Hebrew tacked to a computer. Such displays are unnecessary, says Mr. Patel, and risk alienating other students.

Mr. Patel's radar is particularly attuned to such issues because he was once a foreign graduate student. He was born and raised in Kenya as a British citizen before moving to India to earn his bachelor's and master's degrees. He came to the United States to attend the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1981. "When I was a graduate student, I never associated with Indian student groups," he recalls. "I didn't think I would be absorbed into society as well if I did."

Although Mr. Patel is Indian, an accent creeps into his speech only occasionally. It is an accomplishment he is proud of. Because he has lived in so many places, Mr. Patel says he has learned how to acclimate rapidly to the "local culture." With his dapper peach dress shirt, his office full of mahogany furniture, and a wall dotted with certificates of the patents he has earned, he appears the typical American businessman. His successful adjustment has helped him do well in this country, he believes.

The professor wants the same kind of success for his students, and he gives them a push whenever he deems necessary. When Mr. Patel's Korean postdoctoral student, Young Jin Kim, arrived at Penn State last academic year, Mr. Patel asked him to choose an American name. Now, everybody here calls Young Jin "Jim." Mr. Patel explains that people in the lab had had difficulty pronouncing the name of a previous Korean student.

As "Jim" explains it, "Professor Patel named me." The postdoc says he doesn't have a problem with that, although he says his parents back home in Korea do not know about his new name. Mr. Kim says he wants to become friends with Americans, and if changing his name helps, so be it. (Mr. Patel shortened his own first name from Jayantilal to Jay when he enrolled in graduate school at Stony Brook.)

Getting a read on how the foreign students view Mr. Patel's rules is difficult. All of the students seem reluctant to say anything that might offend their professor. The furthest they would go is when Zhizhong Zhuang, a second-year student from China, confessed that he did not abide by Mr. Patel's request that he speak English at home with his wife.

Foreign students in the United States know that they must keep their sponsoring professors happy, or risk losing their visas. As a result, foreign students have a reputation at Penn State and elsewhere as more diligent and less likely to protest assignments than U.S. graduate students.

Mr. Patel hopes that at least some of the students in his research group will decide to stay here, as he did, and "generate intellectual property in this country and promote U.S. competitiveness."

Most of his students, however, have yet to decide. Xin Zhu, a second-year student from China, says he would like to work in the United States for a few years before returning to his country. "The U.S. is the most advanced country technologically," he says. "I would like to experience working for a big company."

Over all, half of those enrolled in the graduate physics program at Penn State are foreign students, and half are U.S. citizens, approximating the national average. The department regularly receives many more applications from international students, however, than it does from Americans. For the coming academic year, 200 foreign students applied, compared with 130 Americans. So far, the department has accepted 16 Americans and 15 international students.

To try to lure Americans, Penn State offers U.S. students special fellowships of $8,000 a year on top of the money they get from teaching assistantships, says Vincent H. Crespi, an assistant professor of physics who is responsible for graduate-student admissions in the department.

Because Penn State can be more selective when it comes to admitting foreign students, they often have better credentials than their American counterparts. While the university may immediately reject a foreign student with modest credentials, it might accept an American student with such qualifications, or at least give that student a careful look. "If we feel they can succeed and be productive, we'll make every effort to get them here," says Mr. Crespi. "We look a little closer at them because they are precious to us."

According to the American Institute of Physics, 1,200 U.S. students entered graduate programs in the field in the fall of 1997, fewer than at any time in the last 30 years. Although the total number of students enrolling in physics is down by 26 per cent compared to a decade ago, the number of foreign students entering graduate physics programs has been on the rise.

The students in Mr. Patel's laboratory feel something is missing here because of the lack of Americans. Many of them would like a colleague who could advise them on American culture. When they have questions about interpreting American phrases or movies, there is no one to turn to, they complain. They have, however, learned about one another's cultures.

Mr. Kim, the postdoc from Korea, occasionally discusses his Christianity with Yaniv Barad, the Israeli postdoctoral student who has taught his colleagues a bit about being Jewish. When Mr. Barad brought snacks to the laboratory during Passover this year, Han-sheng Cheng, a graduate student from Taiwan, got his first lesson in kosher food.

Although disappointed by the paucity of Americans in the lab, the foreign graduate students say they had been told to expect that before they left their own countries.

Asked what he thinks of the scarcity of Americans in physics, Mr. Cheng, the Taiwanese student, replies matter-of-factly, "We know Americans don't pursue higher degrees in this field."




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A University Uses Quotas to Limit and Diversify Its Foreign Enrollments
By ROBIN WILSON

Knoxville, Tenn.

One of the top Ph.D. students in chemistry at the University of Tennessee almost didn't make it into graduate school here -- not because of his qualifications, but because he is foreign.

Over the strong objections of professors, Tennessee administrators
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In a Lab With No American Graduate Students, a Professor Stresses Assimilation

Citizenship of Ph.D. Recipients in 2 Disciplines, 1997


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rejected the student, citing a unique policy that limits the number of international students on the campus.

It's not unusual for public universities to be concerned about how legislators and taxpayers view the use of federal dollars to educate a growing number of foreign students. But the University of Tennessee's Knoxville campus is thought to be the only institution that has responded with a written policy restricting their acceptance. While professors at other universities focus mainly on attracting the best and the brightest, faculty members here are also required to think about where students come from.

In the case of the chemistry student, the answer is India. Because administrators felt that enough Indian students had already been enrolled, and because of a glitch in the student's application, he made it here a semester later, and only after transferring from another U.S. institution. The student, whom the chemistry department did not want to name, is graduating from Tennessee this year with an award for the quality of his research and a citation recognizing his "professional promise."

"This whole thing darn near cost us one of our best students," says Fred M. Schell, a chemistry professor.

According to the university's policy, international students can represent no more than 20 per cent of the enrollment in any graduate program. Nor does Tennessee want to enroll a total of more than 75 foreign students from any one country. Right now it is close to its limit on students from India, and already over the limit for China, with 114 students, and for South Korea, with 92.

C.W. Minkel, dean of the graduate school here, crafted the rules 17 years ago, in the wake of the Iranian revolution, which raised the issue of foreign students studying in the United States. When he arrived on the campus, in 1979, he says, some graduate programs in engineering were filled by foreign students. He imposed the limits because, he argues, the university has a primary responsibility to educate the people of Tennessee.

"We have the taxpaying public of Tennessee to think about, and if we asked them if we should concentrate our efforts on training the Chinese, they probably wouldn't like that," he says. "I don't want anybody pounding on my door and saying, 'What are you doing here?'"

Many on the campus say what he is doing is shortsighted and xenophobic. Why pass up international students -- many of whom are highly talented -- just because they are foreign? some professors ask. The restrictions have hit hard in science and engineering, where about two dozen graduate programs have consistently run afoul of the 20-per-cent limit.

"Trying to recruit domestic students in physics is harder than recruiting football players," says Lee L. Reidinger, chairman of the physics department, where 47 per cent of the graduate students are foreign.

Department heads complain that the limit on international students leads them to admit mediocre Americans to fill their graduate ranks and to turn down more-qualified foreigners. "I am very uncomfortable with the role we have chosen of being the Department of State," says Mohammad Karim, chairman of the electrical-engineering department.

Mr. Minkel says that his "guidelines" limiting foreign-student enrollment are just that, and he contends that his office is flexible. "We try to be realistic and not force it down anybody's throat," he says.

In fact, 22 graduate programs at Tennessee, primarily in the sciences, engineering, and agriculture, are over the enrollment limit. Most of those are in the 20- to 30-per-cent range -- in chemistry, for example, the graduate program is 21-per-cent foreign. A few are way over, including management science, at 60 per cent; polymer engineering, at 57 per cent; and textiles, retailing, and consumer sciences, at 50 per cent.

"We could put them out of business and say, If you go over, we won't allow it. But that would be rather shortsighted," says Mr. Minkel. Instead, the administration keeps a close eye on departments that overrun the limit, and tries to restrict further growth in their foreign-student ranks.

In all, only 8 per cent of the master's and doctoral students at Tennessee are foreign. By comparison, foreign students earned nearly 27 per cent of all doctoral degrees awarded by U.S. universities in 1997, and nearly 37 per cent of all science-and-engineering doctorates.

For the vast majority of graduate programs at Tennessee, Mr. Minkel says, the enrollment limit is not an issue. Some graduate programs, including English, speech pathology, and educational psychology, have no foreign students at all.

That is just as much a problem as an overreliance on international students, says Mr. Minkel, who is a Latin Americanist with a Ph.D. in geography. He has tried just as hard to diversify some programs on the campus as he has to limit the concentration of foreign students in others, he says. He has pressed departments in such fields as theater and advertising to give professors more international experience, in the hope that they would then attract foreign students. In addition, when the dean came to Tennessee, only 18 per cent of the international students here were women. Now, nearly 40 per cent are.

Allowing foreign enrollment to grow unchecked would ruffle fewer feathers on the campus. But "what we're trying to do is not easy," he says. "That's why other universities don't do it."

Graduate-school deans at other public institutions say that they, too, are concerned with the issues that Mr. Minkel raises, but that limiting international enrollment isn't the answer. Rather, it is educating the public about the benefits of an internationalized campus.

"Foreign graduate students contribute to the State of Wisconsin," says Virginia S. Hinshaw, dean of the graduate school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "They are the colleagues of the future." With a global economy, she says, it only makes sense to internationalize Madison's campus, where foreign students make up 20 to 25 per cent of graduate enrollment.

At Tennessee, professors say the 20-per-cent rule would be fine if there were an adequate supply of U.S. students. In many fields, that just isn't the case. "This formula is guaranteeing failure for hot areas," says Mr. Karim, the electrical-engineering chairman. In his own field, he says, "The U.S. student body has dried up."

Because of the university's guidelines, he goes on, departments must either watch their graduate programs shrink, or turn to less-qualified Americans to fill the graduate ranks. The number of graduate students in the College of Engineering, for example, fell from 777 in 1994 to 502 by 1998. At times, Mr. Karim says, he finds himself wistful for an economic downturn, which might send some Americans back to doctoral programs.

Right now, 31 per cent of the 78 graduate students in electrical engineering are foreigners, putting the department well over the university's limit. The largest numbers of them come from China and India.

Mr. Karim and professors in many other science and engineering departments resent the heavy-handed role they say the graduate school plays in screening foreign applicants, particularly those from Asian countries. At many universities, graduate-school administrators merely check to insure that a student's application is in order before sending it on to a department. But at Tennessee, the graduate school routinely rejects applications from foreign students before department heads have even seen them.

Just this spring, Mr. Schell, the chemistry professor, says he had to visit the dean's office to persuade administrators to admit two Chinese students that the graduate school had rejected. Because the university already enrolls 114 graduate students from China -- 39 more than it would like -- Mr. Schell had to make a special case. He was successful primarily because he argued that bringing in the two new Chinese students would not add to the university's total, because the chemistry department is graduating two Ph.D. students from China this year.

He respects the administration's enrollment goal, but he wishes that administrators would trust the department to make its own decisions. "I had to go over there and sacrifice myself," he recalls of the effort he made for the Chinese students.

Many professors worry that administrators are not savvy enough to choose the best foreign students for a particular program. "The graduate school looks at numbers on a piece of paper," says Joseph E. Spruiell, head of the department of materials science and engineering. "If a Chinese student doesn't have above a 90 G.P.A., they won't send the applications down here." The graduate school may not know that some Chinese universities almost never give out 90s, and that a given student has excellent qualifications, he notes. Meanwhile, Americans need only a 2.7 grade-point average to be accepted by the graduate school at Tennessee.

Like engineering programs at other universities, Mr. Spruiell's faces a shortage of U.S. students. Typically, the department ends up with 75 applications from foreigners each year, and accepts 30 of them. It usually receives only 12 applications from U.S. citizens, and accepts six of those.

Because of the limit on the number of foreign students it can accept, the department has had some close calls. Last academic year, it almost did not have enough students to stock professors' research programs. "At the last moment, we ended up with two American students walking in," says Mr. Spruiell. Their qualifications have turned out to be "reasonable," he adds, but he worries that the university's limit on foreign students "tends to make us accept American students who are less qualified than we'd like."

Because Tennessee is so choosy about the foreign students it accepts, their abilities sometimes overshadow those of their American counterparts. "The foreign students you get are the very best students, the most ambitious, and the most daring," says Michael J. Sepaniak, chairman of the chemistry department. "Domestic students span the range."

That perception is not lost on graduate students.

Wei Ku, a doctoral student from Taiwan who will receive his Ph.D. in physics next year, says the university's rule on foreign-student enrollment "limits the potential" of his department. It also frustrates foreign students, many of whom come here with master's degrees and find themselves more advanced than their U.S. counterparts. "You can't start with a high standard, and you must be more fundamental in course work," says Mr. Ku. "Some foreign students will feel this is a waste of time."

Samuel Held, a U.S. student in the master's program in physics, responds that American students often simply have different strengths from those of foreign students. "Many U.S. students come from small liberal-arts colleges and don't have as much of a theoretical background as foreign students. But they may have a stronger experimental background."

Korey Sorge, an American student in the Ph.D. program in physics, says the first couple of years of a graduate program can be overwhelming for Americans. "Many foreign students come in with a master's degree, so it is review of course work for them, while it is brand new for Americans," he says. But after a few years, he believes, the differences between Americans and foreigners even out.

In physics, the award for the highest-achieving doctoral student this year went to Lilia M. Woods, who is from Bulgaria. Last year, Mr. Ku won the prize.