African Students In The U.S And A Looming Visa Ban

On Wednesday July 8, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts took the Trump administration to court. Their grievance is mainly about a new government policy which seeks to revoke the student visas of over 9000 combined international students in both institutions. Many schools are mulling online teaching due to the Coronavirus pandemic. On the 6th of July, the US federal government had announced a new visa policy for international students, stating that such students "who are currently enrolled in online-only programmes will need to leave the country immediately or transfer to a school with in-person classes to legally continue their education". This policy has been met with widespread condemnation from politicians, private sector players, and academia, coming at a time when a large number of universities are prioritising shipping instructions online (at least 9% of US universities are considering teaching all their courses online). As the viral pandemic shows no signs of letting up and presidential elections approach, many have seen the administration's move as undue political pressure on schools to abandon caution over Covid-19 and fully reopen. Some advocates have argued that the effect of such a blanket restriction would be devastating. They believe that many overseas students, who mostly pay tuition in full, will be discouraged from attending American universities. The law suit by MIT, Harvard and others is a crystallisation of the frustrations of many schools over what they perceive is a draconian government gazette.

What does this development portend for Africa, African students and higher education in Africa? There are over a million international students studying in the USA, out of which almost 45,000 are Africans, marking a 2.1 percent increase since 2018. This means that Africa is the only region in the world with the highest percentage of growth for the second time in a row. Nigeria occupies the number one spot among the African countries with almost 14,000 students enrolled in the US for the 2019/2020 school year, representing 33 percent of the overall African students population in the U S. It is also the 11th largest country worldwide among the top 25 for students' places of origin. An issue such as the looming visa restriction should be a wake up call for Africa to fix the huge deficits in the standard of higher education its teeming youths are exposed to. Higher education in a lot of Africa's over 2000 institutions of higher learning is either under-developed or in decline. Access to higher education for the relevant age group remains at an abysmal 5%, the lowest regional average in the world. The challenges faced by these higher institutions require very urgent intervention of several stakeholders, governments, and development partners in order to create the environments in our schools that are attractive enough to prevent the embarrassment of the latest visa ban hovering over our students in America. The time to start is now!