International Student Policy Reversed, Uncertain Future of College Athletics and Incoming Students Prepare For College Life in COVID-19 Era
Welcome to the second edition of The Early Action newsletter. I look forward to sharing news and perspective on the issues of college education. To returning readers, I thank you for reading the introduction post last week and following along; new readers can read it here.
You have most likely seen the news today about The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rescinding its policy to strip international students of their visas if they don’t attend at least one class in-person. This original plan was announced as colleges and universities finalize their plans for the fall semester, with some schools hosting online classes while allowing students to live on campus.
Harvard and MIT had initiated legal action against this ruling by filing a brief at the U.S. District Court in Boston. They received support from an additional 59 universities with their legal challenge, which was originally scheduled to receive a ruling today before the policy was withdrawn.
Uncertainty with College Athletics
There have been multiple developments concerning the immediate and long-term future of college athletics. Stanford University cut 11 varsity sports, citing the financial challenges brought up by the pandemic. The Ivy League announced no sports will take place in the fall, while the Patriot League (home to College of the Holy Cross, Colgate University among others) made their own cancellations official on Monday.
College football remains the biggest uncertainty, considering its national popularity and the amount of revenue that schools in the major conferences generate for their own institutions and many local economies (one notable example is Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge).
The Big Ten Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference took the initial measure of cancelling all non-conference games; and there is skepticism from at least one major college athletics director about the ability to play the season at all. What remains to be seen is whether the remaining major conferences follow suit, in particular the Southeastern Conference (home to many of the top tier programs in the country).
Incoming Freshmen Prepare For College in Era of COVID-19
I will often look to highlight any notable profiles and general reporting that comes from collegiate newspapers across the country. Student journalists provide access not only to school communities that may not receive regional or national coverage, but have the ability to develop a unique connection with their fellow classmates.
The Huntington News, the independent student newspaper of Northeastern University, spoke with 20 incoming first-year students about starting their college experience during the pandemic. You can read the article in full here.
One student profile that stuck out to me was Ana Sordo, who shared her perspective as an incoming international student from Mexico. Below is a brief excerpt of her account.
“There has been a lot of insecurity regarding the fall semester amongst my family. As an international student, it is daunting to predict whether the Mexico-US border will be open by the time I have to fly to Northeastern. In my hometown, the embassy is closed, so I’ll have to travel to Spain (my second home) to get my visa processed. I am indeed afraid that my visa will not come in time due to a high saturation of visa requests after months of quarantine. Even if the US is good enough to receive international flights, I’m not so sure that Mexico will be allowing people to fly out of the country. I’m feeling even more insecure now because several countries that have gone back to ‘normal’ are now experiencing a second wave of COVID-19.
In other news…..
The New York Times shares the story of four first generation college students who had their lives upended by the pandemic.
The Stanford Daily writes about the university’s decision to not require standardized test scores for high school students pursuing admission this upcoming year.
Michael Drake, previously the president of Ohio St. University, has been named the next president of the University of California.
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