Professor Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday sharply criticized the U.S. government's decision to aggressively revoke visas of Chinese students.
In an interview with World Insight on China Global Television Network (CGTN), Diana Mutz, the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Trump administration's latest restrictions on education would further damage U.S. universities, both financially and in terms of their global reputation.
"So our universities stand to lose huge amounts of our incomes from a loss of international students. We already see that. Now, fewer people are applying, and more of our PhDs are applying for jobs in other countries. International students are feeling like they aren't welcome in the United States, that it's not a good idea to come to the U.S. to go to school, or for postdoctoral training, or whatever the particular situation might be. We need them as part of our workforce, as part of our research teams, and so forth. But in addition to that, it has just changed... our universities have all completely changed their budgets in the last three months, because a huge amount of our income comes from grant overhead. All those grants have been canceled from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and so forth," said the professor.
Speaking on the value of international students in U.S. higher education, Mutz emphasized the importance of global exchange in enriching both academic and national life.
"I think they need to understand how much our international community on campus enriches American students' experience of education. It's extremely valuable and it's also valuable to the United States as a country when students who are from other countries educated here go back to their home countries. It is important to have this mixing and melding of ideas and perspectives for a really high-class education," she said.
China’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday said it firmly opposes the United States’ politically motivated and discriminatory decision to aggressively revoke the visas of Chinese students, and has lodged a formal protest with the U.S. over the move announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday.
US professor condemns visa revocations for Chinese students
