myUface Blog

For any student interested in study at a U.S. University, it’s a good idea to spend some time reading about ongoing changes in the U.S. higher educational system.  The better you can understand the way in which that system is changing, the better you can determine how you’ll fit into it – or even whether you should try to fit into it.

A great example is this article about the University of Iowa.  It demonstrates how many public universities in the U.S. are responding to decreased funding, and also how student expectations are changing.  These two influences – funding and student expectations – will have a huge impact on the way U.S. universities interact with international students over the next ten years.

The parts I highlighted:

As state funding becomes a smaller portion of UI’s budget and UI tries to become more self-reliant, pulling in more money from tuition has become a target. This has meant raising tuition — which has doubled in 10 years — but also boosting the mix of out-of-state and international students, increasing enrollment and improving retention rates . . .

[S]tudents have a more specific focus than in they have in the past. In 1999, 28 percent of first-year students came in as open majors, but now only 18 percent of students do, he said.