Interview with Karin Fischer, The Chronicle of Higher Ed's International Reporter

Who do you turn to for some of the best information about international education? There are thousands of people posting stories, opinions, and interviews on this topic. I spend a lot of time searching for sources I can trust and Karin Fischer has earned her spot. Her stories for The Chronicle of Higher Education have educated me about many issues and topics I knew little about. Perhaps more importantly, she taught me to question and rethink some of my views on issues that I often address here and in conversations with many people around the globe.  I think anyone who reads her interview, no matter if she is a university president or someone just starting out in the field, will come away well informed and better prepared to approach some of the thorniest issues in education.

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I always ask my interviewees to talk a bit about their own path through education. You attended Smith and then went out into the journalistic world. Did your interest in journalism start prior to Smith? How did Smith prepare you for the real world of journalism?  

I had a classic liberal-arts education – I studied government, basically political philosophy. I think there’s real-world value in that kind of education. It helped me hone skills in writing, argumentation, analysis, the synthesis a lot of complex information – what I do day in and day out as a journalist. But I also was editor of Smith’s newspaper and had a number of jobs and internships at papers and magazines throughout college. I knew when I came to college that I either would be a reporter or a doctor. To my mother’s disappointment, I chose the former.

A lot of students don’t look closely enough at women’s colleges. Why should they? Did you have a mentor there? Smith has certainly increased its percentage of international students somewhat recently. Were there international students you got to know and did this help spur your interest in this area?

While international enrollments at women’s colleges have certainly soared in recent years, there actually were quite a few students from abroad at Smith during my time there, and I got to know and become friends with a number of them. It would be disingenuous of me to pretend that meeting those students set me on my current career path, but I’ve always been incredibly interested in learning about, studying in, and exploring other cultures, which dates back to my time at Smith.

I think conventional wisdom is that women’s colleges appeal to students and parents from more conservative cultures, but I’d argue that one of their real strengths is their size. Smith has just 2,500 students, about 330 from overseas. That means the international-student office can get to know each and every foreign student. They’re also focused on the challenges particular to undergraduates. Not all students need this, but the environment may benefit those who do.

 While you have worked at a number of places prior to The Chronicle I would like to focus on your position there since what you do ties directly to many of the issues I write about here. Can you give an overview of what you cover and how you decide which things to cover since international education in all its forms is a nearly overwhelming large landscape?

The international beat encompasses all aspects of global higher education, including study abroad, the internationalization of American college campuses, U.S. programs and campuses abroad, and the business of international education. I also write about developments in education overseas that would be interesting to a largely American audience. In practice, however, the topic that I devote more time to than any other is global student mobility. Foreign students are frequently the most visible aspect of internationalization – and today they mean so very much to colleges’ bottom line.

In terms of story choice, there’s certainly no science to it. One guiding principle is that the piece should be broadly interesting to people across higher education, not just those directly engaged in, say, international admissions. My goal always is to write something that a college president will put down and call up the head of the international office to say, “Did you see this article? What are we doing about this issue?”

Are there particular media, educational organizations and other sources that you most often turn to find out about what stories are most pressing and current?

I keep an eye on publications both here in the U.S. and in key countries, like China and India, and am also in regular contact with associations that advocate for and study international education, like NAFSA and the Institute of International Education. I follow listserves, am active on Twitter, etc. There’s also a small but growing group of researchers at universities around the world doing work in this field, and I love to geek out and discuss their findings. In general, though, my most valuable sources are those on the ground, doing the work. I talk to people constantly, whether at conferences or a quick note or phone call to check in. That helps me spot trends. I have a story list a mile long.

If you had to pick 3 or 4 stories that you are proudest of could you list them and talk briefly about why you think they are important?  (If you could give links that would be great too.)

The piece I’m proudest of is a feature about the freshman year of three Chinese students at Michigan State University. I followed the students through their entire first year – I went to East Lansing eight times, for about a week at a time – and wrote about the experience through their eyes. What I was really trying to do was to portray them as people, not as part of some big, faceless trend.

I also feel good about an investigation we did of sham universities in the U.S. that operate as visa mills; it was, in many ways, an expose of the loopholes in the American visa system. The other article I’d mention is one of the first pieces to seriously look at admissions fraud in China. I’ve lost count of the number of conference sessions I’ve seen named after the piece, which – I hope – means it had some impact. (Some of these pieces are behind a paywall, unfortunately, but email me and I can send a temporary link.)

Since you have been covering the international landscape there have been a number of dramatic changes. What are a few that you think readers should be paying attention to now?

It feels like for the past several years the debate over ethics in international recruitment, particularly about whether to pay agents, has sucked up much of the oxygen. I don’t want to say the issue’s 100-percent reconciled, but I feel like we’re finally at a place where the focus is shifting to what happens once foreign students actually get to campus and how to best serve them. That will need to be a campus conversation, not just something for the international office to grapple with. Some institutions may end up taking a hard look at the numbers and make-up of their international-student population and sort of right-size.  And I think some colleges will ask whether it makes sense for them to recruit abroad. I think we’ve taken for granted that all institutions ought to, but is it?

I also hope we’ll see more serious discussion about what it really means to be a global institution, beyond just recruiting foreign students. Half the colleges in America include international education in their mission statement. But having a few students from overseas or international night in the dining hall doesn’t make an institution global. If colleges really believe in this mission, what are they doing about it?

One of the changes that you and I have talked about has been the huge increase in the number of international students coming to the US (and other places too) from China. You have covered one university’s Chinese student population that topped 1000 entering freshmen last year alone. In talking with some of these students did you come away with some impressions about how well they are doing academically and socially that did not make it into your story? Do you think some of the reports about by non-Chinese students making thoughtless or downright racist or xenophobic comments is on the upsurge now that there are so many of these students on campuses in the US? If so, do you think most schools take these racial incidents as seriously as they should?  Do you have any plans to follow up with any of the students you interviewed for your story about the large increase in Chinese students?  

This question gets at the heart of one of the biggest international-education challenges. I fear that the surge in international applicants – particularly from China and particularly at the undergraduate level – happened before many colleges were able to truly think through how best to serve these students. Growth like that inevitably has consequences, not always intended or anticipated. For example, 1 in 5 foreign students study business, according to Open Doors. Are business professors prepared to teach students with a wholly different educational background? Do business schools even have the seats? Or, to address your example, what are colleges doing to integrate international and domestic students? A lack of cultural awareness doesn’t just fix itself.

I think it can be easy to see issues related to students from abroad as the international office’s problem. But it can’t be, nor can the solution simply be more programming for international students. The good news is that colleges already have much of the expertise on hand to tackle some of these issues, they just have to make the connections and tap them. For instance, multicultural affairs offices have the experience and knowledge to deal with racial tensions.

Yes, I’ve stayed in touch with some of the students I met in reporting (at Michigan State). The adjustment hasn’t always been easy, but they’re doing well.

Recently you wrote a story that demonstrated that the number of applications from Korea, once the top feeder of international undergraduates prior to the rise of China, has dropped. You also write about how the number of graduate applications has dropped too. Are you hearing more about this now and do you think this signals a shift that colleges and universities need to pay attention to in the short and long term?

I wasn’t trying to argue that today’s top-sending countries, China especially, are necessarily destined to follow Korea’s path. Still, in the midst of such outsized growth, it can be easy to believe that the China boom we’re in will continue forever. Markets mature. In Korea, the number of college-aged students leveled off and an improving educational system at home meant that families no longer needed to send their sons and daughters abroad. Some of that could happen in China, too. American colleges can’t control demographics or a foreign country’s investment in higher ed. But they can do a lot to shape the experience – academically, culturally, socially – that students have when they come to study here. Some actions may seem small, like adding menu items in the cafeteria that appeal to foreign students’ palates. Other stuff is more major, like providing the right academic support or programs to help students adjust to American life. When they graduate, is the career office prepared to give advice about job-seeking in other countries? All of that contributes to the student experience and can influence future trendlines.

In talking with international students (mostly from China) recently I have heard more and more that parents are letting their children pick majors and areas of study that were once pretty much off limits. The idea of a liberal arts education, or developing communication and soft skills and becoming a global citizen seems to a part of some of what is getting emphasized at the key high schools at least. Are you hearing this too? 

I did a piece a couple of years ago looking at how universities and high schools in Asia were adopting some form of the liberal arts. In Hong Kong, for example, the government mandated adding more general education; the change was fueled by dissatisfaction from the business community, which complained graduates were ill-prepared for the global workplace. I’d be hesitant, though, to say there’s sweeping change. Many of these curricular changes are, as you note, at key high schools or university honors colleges. For the vast majority of parents, the focus is still on getting the degree that will lead to a secure job. Which isn’t so different than in the U.S., if you think about it.

Do you think that the number of schools that depend on full paying international students to help keep afloat or at least help provide more resources for other students is growing significantly?

It may be overstating things to say that international students singlehandedly kept colleges afloat, but I don’t think it’s coincidence that the big growth in full-pay undergraduates happened during the fiscal downturn. Going forward, I think it’s fair to say that international tuition dollars are now an accepted part of the financing model, at least for certain types of institutions, such as public universities with little state subsidy or small privates that can build a niche abroad.

NACAC has given the green light for paid agents to help recruit international student to US schools. This was at times a bitterly contested issue. Now that it is in place do you think that the schools that use them will be in any way shunned by those that are very much against them? How worried should people be that agents will do things they shouldn’t to help attract students to schools? I guess what I am asking is whether you think the reputation of agents as unscrupulous, while not completely untrue, is perhaps a bit overblown? Or could the opposite be true?

Again, perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, but my sense is that we’re at a “agree to disagree” stage. Everyone’s pretty much made up their minds about where they stand. One of the positives of the debate, as bitter as it got at times, was that it prompted colleges to scrutinize both what was going on in these overseas markets as well as their own practices. At the same time, I’m not entirely convinced it was the right debate. People can come to the conclusion that commission-based agents are a problem, but they’re certainly not the whole problem. Even if those who opposed agents had gotten their way and the National Association for College Admission Counseling had effectively banned colleges from paying commissions, there still would be fraud and shady stuff going on in international admissions. I hear about it constantly. In some ways, it’s easier to focus on agents, because the colleges who pay them have leverage to influence their behavior. Getting rid of fraud, that’s tougher.

Do you have any opinions about whether branch campuses and agreements with educational foundations in other countries will continue to grow significantly or have some of the recent issues (at NYU, Yale, and Wellesley for example) might cause a slow down the effort to globalize education.

Ninety-nine percent of colleges will never have an overseas branch campus. Most won’t ever offer a degree or a program abroad. The debates at places like Wellesley and Yale are important ones – colleges should be talking about academic freedom and values when they go abroad – but they won’t fundamentally affect the globalization of American higher education as a whole. Frankly, what I’m more concerned about is what happens at all those other institutions. We know most students won’t study abroad; there may be international students on their campuses, but will they befriend or meet them? How do colleges ensure all students get a meaningful global experience? Are we at risk of creating a generation of global haves and have nots?

Do you have any view you want to share about whether you think on-line education and MOOCs in particular (or the Chinese version of MOOCs) will have serious implications for international education and enrollment in the near and long term?

I think the jury’s out long term. In the short term, I don’t think they have much impact. International students are coming to the United States because they want a credential, a degree. At the moment, MOOCs don’t offer that.

Are there places around the world that are going to play an increasingly important role for colleges in the US?

Ah, if I had a crystal ball… Right now, much of the attention, whether for recruiting or overseas partnerships, goes to the obvious players, like China and India. Still, more colleges are turning to places like Brazil, Indonesia, even Myanmar. But nurturing those relationships is an investment, and the returns aren’t realized overnight.

What do you like most about your job? Least?

Being a reporter gives me entre into worlds I’d never get to know otherwise. I’m incredibly curious about people, places, cultures, and my job feeds that. Like all reporters, I hate deadlines. I’m a procrastinator.

Has there been a story or two that got to you emotionally or are you allowed to even talk about this?

The story I mentioned about Chinese students did. I spent hours and hours with these young men and women, and I got to know so much about their lives and their struggles and their hopes. I never forgot that I was a reporter, but at the same time, it’s hard to detach.

If a student or anyone else asked you what they would have to do to follow your path what advice would you give?

Much of how my career unfolded was serendipity. I fell into writing about international education, but I’m lucky I did. I have a lot of passion for the subject.

For a reporter, I think it’s important to do. You have to write, you have to get out there and ask people uncomfortable questions, and you have to do it again and again. It’s like exercising a muscle. But I’d argue that the single most important skill is shutting up. There are so many great stories out there, if you take the time to listen.

Are you really the best-dressed person among those involved in international education? 

Well, I probably do have more shoes than most people in the field.

Karin’s words should inspire others who wish to pursue a passion for informing others. She, like some others I know, sort of wandered in to the field of international education. (I count myself as one of them.). She, like me, has been changed by the experience. Both of us have discovered that talking with students who have the courage and desire to pursue education in another country is one of the more rewarding things in our professional lives. We also agree on many of the issues that need to be addressed by schools in the US if they are to succeed in preparing these students for future success.

The huge influx of international students to the US, at the undergraduate level, is a relatively new phenomenon. I believe the schools need to do more to provide support, training, and orientation for them. If they don’t then I think they face losing these students in the near or long term.

I am grateful to Karin for sharing so many great insights about international education and her experience working as a journalist. The Chronicle is lucky to have such a talent dedicated to informing us about many important issues.

If anyone is wondering about my last question, I asked it because another expert in the field of international education, Clay Hensley, of The College Board, posted a remark saying she was the best-dressed person in international education and I just wanted to confirm this with the source herself.

Karin Fischer