Many of us know students in similar straits. Schools have been working on various ways of threading a difficult needle that will address for the Fall semester student, faculty, and staff safety on one hand, provide quality education on the other, and satisfy the financial bottom line, all at the same time. The new federal rules have certainly made that more difficult. Students on campus is a recipe for spreading the disease - that has been demonstrated, including recent outbreaks in Seatle, etc. Hybrid mode will include many remote learning courses (the details as to which parts of the curriculum will be online, in-person, or even a hybid classroom in which an in-class session is simultaneously including remote learning enrolled students, perhaps with a trained student monitor to keep the two sides interacting, is still being worked out in some schools), which will mean that students will have to find at least one in-class course to take to retain their visa, regardless of relevance or interest.

For many years, students in Korea studied English from early grades on, many with the hope of attending higher education in the US. In more recent years, there has been a shift toward studying Chinese instead of English, many Koreans are now studying in Chinese universities rather than US. Many Chinese students are starting to consider whether bothering to study in the US is worth it at all. Many schools have encouraged large Chinese enrollments for financial reasons. My wife teaches Japanese at Boston University - most of the students studying Japanese there are Chinese, so there is some concern that the long term future of the program itself might be endangered by Trump’s xenophobia.

Clearly, instead of stabilizing things during the unavoidable uncertainties of a pandemic, he has just increased the uncertainties, while pushing everyone to take the least safe course of action. Meanwhile he just formally began the process of withdrawing from WHO. Wherever he’s turned his attention, he has been a force for destruction and death, from the environment, to federal agencies, to corruption, to disease management.

Dan

On Jul 7, 2020, at 11:42 AM, Rosane Rocher via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:


Regulation #3 affects students at institutions that adopt the hybrid mode, who are already in the US. I think of one of my neighbors, a member of the youthful squad who have volunteered to run critical errands for the elderly who are most at risk in this pandemic among some 1000 residents in our building. She is about to enter into the final year of the doctoral program of Penn’s Wharton School of Business. Penn has chosen a hybrid mode of instruction, details of which are being worked out. Her first priority may have to be finding a course that is taught in person instead of what is most relevant for her dissertation and/or her career plans, in this last shot at academic education. I think also of Penn’s International Student and Scholar Services who may have to deflect from their role of helping vast numbers of international students navigate an unfamiliar environment, in order to monitor each international student’s roster against a list of courses taught in person and attest that each is in compliance with ICE regulations. Such a level of detail and of intrusion in educational planning would reek of bureaucratic harassment. I cannot see how kicking my young friend out of the country might contribute to mitigating Covid contagion and/or reinvigorating the American economy. She is not an Indologist, but she is a living representative of the international flow of scholarship that this list so demonstrably fosters. I guess I will just get her another box of blueberries, her comfort food.   

Rosane        

On 7/6/20 6:33 PM, Dan Lusthaus wrote:
The new ICE regulation is aimed at schools that will be entirely online with no in-class instruction.

“1. Nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States.”

“3. Nonimmigrant F-1 students attending schools adopting a hybrid model—that is, a mixture of online and in person classes—will be allowed to take more than one class or three credit hours online. These schools must certify to SEVP, through the Form I-20, “Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Student Status,” certifying that the program is not entirely online, that the student is not taking an entirely online course load this semester, and that the student is taking the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program. The above exemptions do not apply to F-1 students in English language training programs or M-1 students pursing vocational degrees, who are not permitted to enroll in any online courses.”

A list of what 800+ schools are currently planning for the Fall is compiled and avaiable on the Chronicle of Higher Education website. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-s-a-List-of-Colleges-/248626?cid=cp275 (click the arrow to move to the next page - the list, not the top text, changes). Schools that plan to go completely online include the Cal State schools, but most schools seem to be considering a hybrid semester or quarter.

Dan

On Jul 6, 2020, at 6:19 PM, Rosane Rocher via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

I tend to believe that the intent is to force universities to re-open in spite of the continuing Covid crisis, which Trump claims has been palliated. 

Rosane   

On 7/6/20 6:05 PM, Antonia Ruppel via INDOLOGY wrote:
From what I have seen, I assume this is Trumpian, and related to the restrictions to H1B visas (which most foreign academics come in on):


There was debate at one point that non-commercial organisations such as universities would be excluded from this ban; but they are now in it, as far as I know.

A step leading up to those restrictions was that the government got rid of expedited processing for H1Bs (for a fee, a reply within a period of a few weeks was guaranteed - which often was the only way to get a foreign academic into the US in time for them to start their work on time/at the beginning of the semester).

Not a good time, neither for people nor institutions.  

--Antonia

On Mon, 6 Jul 2020 at 23:53, Jeffery Long via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Thank you for alerting us to this, Patricia. Do you have a sense of whether this is COVID-19-related, or just more Trumpian BS?

All the best,
Jeff

Dr. Jeffery D. Long
Professor of Religion & Asian Studies
Elizabethtown College


Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

On Monday, July 6, 2020, 5:26 PM, Rosane Rocher via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

This is insane.  

Rosane Rocher 

On 7/6/20 3:28 PM, Patricia Sauthoff via INDOLOGY wrote:
I wanted to bring this to the attention of anyone teaching in the US this autumn. 

The US government has made changes to its overseas student visa rules. Overseas students may now no longer remain in the US if their universities operate entirely online. They either must leave the country or transfer to a school with in-person instruction. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-exemptions-nonimmigrant-students-taking-online-courses-during

Best wishes,

Patricia 

-- 
Patricia Sauthoff
(she/her/they/them)
Postdoctoral Fellow
AyurYog.org
Department of History and Classics
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada

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