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Article Type

Professional Proficiency

Article Abstract

Related Issue:

This comparative study examines visa and immigration regulations for international students and focuses on macro-level policy trends during the past five to ten years in four English-speaking countries: Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The study highlights the trends and motivations to recruit international graduate students as valuable skilled labor and potential designer immigrants in order to compete in the global economic market. Based on the analysis of policy documents and secondary data, it was found that there is a weak connection between higher education institutions and national security or customs and border protection agencies and the role that they play on international education. Also, the ease and expense of obtaining a student visa greatly influences international student enrollment trends.

Author(s)

Anita Gopal is a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Adjunct Lecturer in the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Gopal holds a Ph.D. in education from Queen’s University and an M.A. in educational technology from Concordia University. Her scholarship focuses on the socialization and retention of domestic and international graduate students, international student mobility and visa policies from a comparative perspective, organizational structures and policymaking within higher education institutions in the context of internationalization, and international student enrollment. Dr. Gopal has presented her research nationally and internationally. She is the author of Academic Experiences of International Graduate Students: The Canadian Perspective in the Context of Higher Education. Her work has appeared in journals such as the International Journal of Teaching and Learning, International Higher Education, University World News, and Inside Higher Ed.

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