I thought this was interesting news. My daughter will be a freshman in the First Year Engineering program at Purdue so we receive a lot of updates from them on what is happening on campus. They've already clearly stated on record that they're going to be doing everything within their power to resume classes on campus in the fall.

However this morning apparently they sent out an email to all 1st-year (incoming) international students saying that they were not going to be able to begin their Purdue education on campus. I believe they can participate in an online curriculum but due to expected VISA issues, the campus believes that they will not be able to get new international students on campus in August. They hope they can get them on campus in January for the winter/spring semester.

Purdue has been among the leaders in universities in making announcements on future plans due to Covid 19 (there have been others too but I guess because Purdue's president is the former Governor of Indiana, he is a little more comfortable making the tough decisions earlier than other schools???). I'm just saying that it wouldn't surprise me one bit if other schools follow Purdue's lead.

Again this is only affecting new incoming students since current students should have the proper documentation to get to campus (assuming they have the means to get to the U.S.). It might be interesting to see if Rice and other schools follow in turn? It will definitely have an impact on college athletics if this becomes the national trend.

eta - just wanted to reiterate this is second hand info. I saw it on the Facebook page so I hope I'm not repeating it incorrectly.

For many universities, foreign undergraduates are irreplaceable revenue generators. It would take a lot of hand-wringing to close off a significant portion of that revenue stream.

Nice of them to send that out today, after the admissions deposit was already due this past Friday.

They're still saying international students can take classes, just not in person for the fall (they'll continue to have to do it online like pretty much every college student in the nation this semester). Of course that should impact the tuition, room and board charges. And obviously if a foreign athlete can't be there in person, they can't compete in tennis, cross country, golf, etc. It's also likely that students not being on campus will help out a school's social distancing plans in the fall for classroom sizes.

And I'm not entirely sure the emails were sent out today - an incoming foreign student posted that they had received an email but it's possible the email was sent out earlier than today (or they had received notice via other methods earlier).

BTW I was doing a google search to see if there were any stories on this and while I didn't see a Purdue story, I did see a story on colleges in general and how they're dealing with international students. It mentioned the five schools with the most international students were (1) NYU (2) USC (3) Northeastern (4) Columbia and (5) Illinois. I assume they're talking the main campuses of each, and aren't counting satellite campuses?

As a NYC resident, my perspective is that schools like Columbia and NYU aren't the ones that have to worry... They have the reputation and financial standing to be able to weather the storm of short-term enrollment changes.

It's schools like Manhattan College, Iona, St Johns, etc that are far more vulnerable.

(05-04-2020 01:55 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  And obviously if a foreign athlete can't be there in person, they can't compete in tennis, cross country, golf, etc.

Those three sports in particular (plus T&F) are heavily populated (relatively) by international athletes at the college level, and especially on the women's side. There are lots of schools with all- or nearly-all foreign rosters in those sports, especially (although by no means exclusively) at non-P5 schools. A lot of coaches are going to have some major problems if they can't get their international freshmen recruits on campus, to say nothing of upperclassmen/women international athletes that may have gone home in the spring and might not be able (or willing) to come back to the US. Interesting times.