Toah Nipi, InterVarsity’s training center in New England, recently gathered international and American graduate scholars for a retreat. Leading a panel discussion on the topic of simplicity as seen through the lens of faith and culture were scholars from Nigeria, Korea, Australia, and the Netherlands. The scholars were studying at Harvard and MIT, specializing in Law, Physics, and Public Health. One speaker was born in Korea, grew up in Japan, and had an Australian citizenship. Another, of Dutch parentage, grew up in South Africa. The conference was an example of how global citizenship among today’s internationals has become fairly common.
For the first time in U.S. higher education, the number of international graduate scholars and faculty has risen by almost 10% between 2004-2005. The April 2006 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education highlights the increase in overseas applications to American graduate schools for Fall 2006, with growing numbers from China (at 23%) and India (at 20%.)
These are the statistics for 2005, as recorded in Open Doors, the publication of the Institute for International Education:
A total of 89,634 international scholars are teaching or conducting research in U.S. campuses – an 8.1% increase from the previous year. The leading countries of origin are China (17, 035), Republic of Korea ( 8,301), India (7,755), Japan (5,623), and Germany (4,846). Of these, 75.8 % are in research, 13.4% are in teaching, and 5.9% are in combined research and teaching. The major fields of specialization are Health Sciences, Life and Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, Social Sciences and History.
Leading the host institutions are Harvard (3,367), UCLA (2,159), UC Berkeley (2,107), UC San Diego (2,075), Columbia (1,991), University of Pennsylvania (1,938), and MIT (1,687). Among the other top 25 institutions are many universities where InterVarsity has ongoing ministries.
This growing number of international graduate scholars and faculty will continue for as long as the U.S. stays competitive as a destination of choice for research and teaching. InterVarsity will need to be proactive and strategic in its ministry to older, highly-credentialed scholars from overseas. For example, many who are currently in Boston area schools are mid-career professionals already holding positions in government, education, business, and industry in their home countries.
On a typical day at Harvard, Boston University, and MIT, three of the top host institutions, graduate scholars may represent the defense ministry of Nicaragua, the education ministry of Sweden, the environmental program of Costa Rica, the state department of Ghana, or the non-governmental institutions of Thailand. This is the new profile of internationals at the graduate level — more globalized, usually upwardly mobile in their careers, and already engaged in nation-building in their home countries.
Thus, InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry, side by side with the International Student Ministry, will increasingly be challenged by this unique segment of the university population. “The world at our doorstep,” currently represents 90,000 international graduate scholars and faculty in U.S. campuses. The magnitude of these numbers, higher than at any other time, makes a statement about InterVarsity’s role in reaching out to academics and professionals from other nations who are already here on campus today.
Priscilla Lasmarias Kelso (second from right in photo) was a Philippine international graduate scholar in English and American literature at Stanford University, a director for international programs at the University of Pennsylvania and Northeastern University, and is currently guiding the international outreach of Boston’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry. She served for 10 years on InterVarsity’s board of trustees.
