Non-Immigrant Foreign Students: A Survey of their Needs and Interests
IN THE academic year 1960-1961, New York I University enrolled some 3200 students who were foreign citizens ? a larger number perhaps than any other institution of higher education i n the United States. Nearly two-thirds of these persons (1944) held temporary visas. 1 Concern about the educational and related needs and interests of these foreign students on temporary visas recently led New York University to ask their cooperation in a study of their problems, with a view toward im proving the services the University offers in help ing to resolve them. Some of the data developed i in this study seem to be of general interest and will be summarized in this article. As a preface to this summary, a brief discussion of the study methodology follows. On May 1, 1961, a twenty-page questionnaire was mailed to the 1944 persons holding temporary visas and who were in residence for at least one of the two regular semesters during 1960-1961. The questionnaire was designed by Dr. John Dale Rus sell (then Director of NYU's Office of Institutional Research), under the general guidance of an ad hoc Committee on Foreign Students. In addition to the usual personal data, the questionnaire contained clusters of items about academic, physical, finan cial, social, and cultural needs and interests of the respondents. The last question solicited com ments about subjects not fully developed. In answer to this invitation for comment, fully a third of the respondents (384 by the time data processing got under way), appended statements, many exceeding 200 words in length. In addition, literally hundreds of explanatory notes were scattered throughout the completed questionnaires. These qualitative data have been found to be invaluable in interpreting the quantitative responses. When compared with known parameters such as sex and country of citizenship, the respondents seemed to constitute a fairly good sample not only of New York University's non-immigrant foreign student population but also of all foreign students on temporary visas in the United States. Although differences in questionnaire construction make I direct comparisons hazardous between NYU's study and the excellent investigation directed by Dr. Homer Higbee, we quite agree with his judgment that our "findings are thoroughly consonant with (his) in those areas where we were looking for approximately the same things. "2 Unfortunately, the small number of African students in our sam ple makes any comparison questionable between our data and the HE Survey of the African Student. 3