Americans, it seems are not as intent as foreigners, when it comes to getting into a top-notch college. It could be that some of our most successful entrepreneurs — Bill Gates and Steven Jobs to name but a few — exceeded their wildest financial dreams without ever obtaining a college degree.
However, in some countries, students denied acceptance into the college of their choice committed suicide. In Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior (Winter, 1991), authors George Domino and Yoshitomo Takahasi point to the fact suicide is an honorable act in some cultures. Similar research conducted by Dr. Adityanjee shows that academic pressures and low grades on examinations are the cause of suicides in India.
Fortunately, there is an alternative for students not accepted into top colleges in their native countries: America. Nearly half of India’s 1 billion people are under the age of 25, and the schools simply cannot accommodate everyone who wants to enter the halls of knowledge. In fact, the cutoff rates in some colleges now near the 100 percent level.
Competition is indeed fierce, and American colleges actively recruit students from abroad including setting up offices in foreign countries, especially China and India, who send the largest number of students to American schools.
For the 2009/2010 school year, the enrollment of foreign students in America schools grew by 3 percent over the previous year, totaling nearly 691,000, according to the Open Doors report. This record high was in large measure due to a 30 percent increase in the enrollment of Chinese students, who numbered 128,000 students. India’s students — over 100,000 of them — represent 15 percent of the international enrollment in American universities and colleges.
The intellectual quest is nothing new, of course, but for Vinod Luthra, an Indian expatriate who undertook postgraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering in 1968, says the difficulties he remembers most were those involving comprehension of the American culture. His studies posed no problem — the textbooks were the same in both countries. But the American value system differed considerably from that in his native country. Fortunately, he had a host family who helped him understand the differences, and soon engaged in social interactions, and began to understand the expectations others had of him.
Luthra uses the phrase “a great run” to describe his life following his American education. He retired in 2005 from Mobil Chemical as a general manager, but continued to work and receive honors for his contributions as a community leader in the Indian community in Rochester, New York. (www.barringtonresidential.com). Asked why he continues to work as hard as he does, Luthra acknowledges that his behavior may simply be the result of the immigrant mindset.
That mindset is discussed by Daniel Cubias, who asks in The Hispanic Fanatic (November 10, 2009), “Should Americans Adopt the Immigrant Mindset”? He opines that fifth or sixth generations don’t seem to have that “willingness to strike out and explore.”
The home country’s loss is America’s gain: those foreign students who remain in America contribute mightily. Economists tell us that a mere 1000 innovators/explorers, half of whom were immigrants, contributed to the $10 trillion in revenue growth during this nation’s last quarter-century.