Teddy, cat. Earlier this week.

Recruiting Students Overseas to Fill Seats, Not to Meet Standards (NYT)

     … “There are some incentives for not delivering complete clunkers, but the underlying motivation for both the university and the agent is to get warm bodies in the door,” said Philip G. Altbach, the founding director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.
     At Western Kentucky, 106 of 132 students admitted through the recruitment effort scored below the university’s requirement on an English skills test, according to a resolution adopted last fall by the graduate faculty council, which raised questions about the program. “The vast majority either didn’t have any scores or there wasn’t documentation of their language skills,” said Barbara Burch, a faculty member of the university’s Board of Regents.
     The university senate and the student government association also expressed concerns. “It is ethically wrong to bring students to the university and let them believe they can be successful when we have nothing in place to make sure they’re successful,” the student association president, Jay Todd Richey, said….

   [A year or two ago, IVC's academic senators learned that there was a move afoot to expand our International Students program. Many faculty voiced concern that these students often are unprepared for their courses and tend to be mired in basic and remedial instruction before they can finish a degree or certificate (their visas are limited). The Senate approved the move to expand the program, provided these students were offered adequate remedial and other support and instruction. It is, of course, routine to find international students in our courses who have no business taking courses that require writing in English. --RB]