Foreign countries get strict with student visa scheme

This year’s immigration raids on two US universities popular among Indian students—Tri-Valley in California and the Annandale campus of University of Northern Virginia (UNVA)— may have exposed the prevalence of bogus universities and student visa fraud, but the phenomenon is by no means restricted to the US alone. The UK and Australia, too, have had similar experiences. “I think that higher education globally is facing some kind of crisis—while the demand in developed nations is now plateauing, there is huge demand for education in the developing world,” says Pawan Agarwal, Educational Advisor to the Planning Commission.

Tri-Valley and UNVA coming under the scanner point to a larger conflict faced by governments of host countries: On the one hand, international students contribute billions of dollars to host countries’ economies, and provide a potential source of skilled labour. On the other hand, particularly given the recent global recession, host countries are increasingly reluctant to absorb foreign graduates into the labour market. In March 2001, Australia launched a policy aimed at providing overseas students educated at Australian universities permanent residency without having to leave the country.

But in 2005—following a steady increase in student visa applications, notably from China and India—“it became evident that the interaction between overseas student programme and the general skilled migration programme was producing unintended and problematic outcomes,” according to a policy paper.

Over the next four years, authorities noted rising rates of student visa applications due to fraudulent documents, sub-standard applications and a rash or “phoney” educational institutions. Such problems came to a head in January-October of 2009, when Australia refused admission to one-third of Indian student applicants, due to high incidence of visa fraud, according to news reports.

In April this year, the UK too ratcheted back its student visa scheme following a rash of fake universities and high visa rejection rates, imposing tougher entrance criteria, limits on work entitlements and closed the post-study work route offered to overseas students.

Source: Mint, September 16, 2011

Part I: Varsity Blues – Did they make an educated choice?

When US federal authorities raided the University of Northern Virginia (UNVA) in a Washington suburb on 28 July for suspected visa fraud and slapped a notice of intent to withdraw its licence to admit foreigners, its predominantly Indian student community was portrayed in the media as innocent victims of an unscrupulous, profit-pursuing institution. UNVA, 90% of whose 2,400 students were Indians and mainly from Andhra Pradesh, was the second American university with a large concentration of Indian students to be raided this year.

In January, California-based Tri-Valley University (TVU), another unaccredited school where a majority of students were Indians, was raided and shut down by immigration and customs enforcement officials for alleged immigration fraud. Federal officials forced Indian students of TVU to wear radio-tracking devices on their ankles to monitor their movements—a move that raised outrage back home.

Interviews with former UNVA and TVU students, and postings on the Internet and social networking sites and forums, indicate that students may have intentionally selected these universities, preferring schools known to be lax in marking attendance, with extensive online coursework, and questionable use of “curricular practical training”, or CPT, a form of work authorization available in select programmes of study that enabled them to work longer hours in off-campus, part-time jobs.

In UNVA community discussion forums on the social network Orkut, students were more inquisitive about the varsity’s leniency in allowing students to work full-time outside the campus—an activity prohibited on a US student visa.

A closer look at similarities between UNVA and TVU, and additional evidence unearthed during investigations by US newspapers, indicate that rather than being exceptions, such schools may be part of a growing number of unaccredited, for-profit colleges of questionable educational quality that make money from international student demand to work full-time in the US by exploiting loopholes in regulations governing student visa use.

“I don’t think these guys were misled or they didn’t know such kind of stuff,” said Narayanan Ramaswamy, executive director, education services, at KPMG Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd.

“It’s this fascination for US, US education and the peer pressure that it creates that led them to this situation. If somebody is knowledgeable enough to go to foreign universities for studying, they would definitely know how to check the background of an institute and check with multiple people,” he said.

A growing racket?
In the official complaint filed against TVU, the Department of Homeland Security​ accused Susan Xiao-Ping, the school’s founder, of participating in an “illegal scheme to defraud the United States” by obtaining permission to sponsor and admit foreign students and “fraudelently issuing visa-related documents to aliens in exchange for tuition and fees”. Additional transgressions included the alleged falsification of student attendance records and transcripts, submitting false information regarding students’ residences, means of support and courses of study.

The Student Exchange Visitor Programe (SEVP) certification of UNVA that was temporarily put on hold on 28 July was, however, restored on 11 August, according to a document posted on the university’s website. UNVA officials did not respond to telephone calls and emails from this newspaper.

Central to the business model of TVU was its apparent misuse of CPT, a form of temporary work authorization issued to F-1 (student) visa holders under certain circumstances. Such students are permitted to take full-time paid internships, cooperative education, and paid practicum so long as these are an “integral part of an established curriculum and… directly related to the student’s major area of study”.

Students in mainstream universities generally only qualify for CPT after they have completed one full year of study in programmes that require hands-on, for-credit work experience for graduation—such as nursing and medical programmes, teachers’ certification programmes or courses in clinical psychology. However, many of the students from both TVU and UNVA were using CPT soon after enrolment, according to student interviews and discussions by students on online forums.

One online consulting company, StudyAbroadPlus, advertises a vast array of “paid internships” for various US Master’s programmes in positions with titles such as “retail clerk”, “cashier”, and “retail sales”, at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Macy’s Inc., RadioShack Corp​., Baskin-Robbins and grocery chain FoodForLess among others. The number posted on the website for StudyAbroadPlus connected to a company that refused to identify itself, and claimed never to have heard of the organization. StudyAbroadPlus did not reply to Mint’s emails.

Two recent investigations published by the Chronicle of Higher Education, a US publication, and the San Jose Chronicle, a Silicon Valley newspaper, identified several other schools across the US that have similar business models to TVU and UNVA. They included Herguan University (the former employer of TVU’s founder, Susan Xiao Ping), and the International Technological University (ITU). In a telephone call from the US, one student said both Herguan University and ITU have since become stringent with their academic process.

Online postings by Tri-Valley students indicate that many students were aware of the situation they were getting into. In fact, many selected the university not for its educational value, but the opportunities for off-campus work. Some students even became recruiters, accepting payment for each new student they brought to the school. On 7 January, days before the swoop by federal authorities on TVU, a person who goes by the handle Guru Guru posted this on an Orkut forum: “University name is Trivalley university, it is located at pleasanton, california. here classes are online so you don’t have to relocate, university offers CPT so you can work legally 40 hours as full time. they charge only $100 (Rs. 4,700) for CPT… you don’t have to worry about the course work, they will give you good grades. By using CPT you can work full time so we will help you in your desired software technology.”

Earn while you learn
Orkut user Vinod Babu, claiming to represent a firm named Lorvin Overseas, tried to entice prospective students in a thread in August 2010. “As you know that most of the Universities in USA give legal permission of 10-20 working hours per week, so Students looking for part time jobs in gas stations and motels they hardly earn $6 to $7 per hour. But there are few Universities like UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA which gives legal permission to work 40 hrs a week,” he said. “So that u can work full time in IT firm we can help u in getting Free Admission in the University and job assistance… Earn while you learn.”

Other postings indicate that students were paid $400 for every successful referral made. “hey guyz we get money ($400) if we refer a frnd to this university,” S.K.N. Reddy wrote in a June 2010 posting. “If you guyz who know abt the university and transfering with out any reference jsz keep my name. we can share the money. $100 for me $300 for you,” he wrote.

One consultant, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said only about 100 of the 1,500 Indian students who attended TVU actually secured a visa based on direct admission offers by the univesity. The rest obtained F-1 visas based on I-20 student forms from other, accredited universities, and then transferred.

The drive to enrol in programmes that offer such questionable “work-study” opportunities seems to be particularly strong in Andhra Pradesh, which was recently named a “visa fraud hub” of India by the US Consulate, along with Gujarat and Punjab, according to a WikiLeaks cable released in April to The Hindu. In the cases of both TVU and UNVA, the bulk of the students came from Andhra Pradesh—some 1,500 and 2,000, respectively.

Ashwini, who recently graduated from a university in the US and wants to be identified by only his first name, says the accreditation status of a university isn’t always the top priority for students from Andhra Pradesh. “Here in the US, it is very different from India. Nobody bothers about your degree here. All they care about is your work experience,” he said over the telephone. “Basically, there is not much difference between a good university and an average university,” he explained. “They (employers) give you the same salary regardless of where you come from, and most people go through consultancies for the same jobs. What is the point in going to big universities and paying such huge fees,” he said.

According to Ashwini, the reason some Indian students opt for universities such as TVU and UNVA was because they can pay their own fees. As few employers check on the accreditation of US institutions, their alumni still manage to find jobs. “I think it is us (Indians) who are taking advantage of the loopholes in their (US) system,” said Ashwini.

This is the first of a two-part series on unaccredited, for-profit schools. Next: Unscrupulous education consultants.

Source: Mint, September 15, 2011

>US Tri Valley University visa scam tip of an iceberg, says probe report

>A visa scam at Tri Valley University (TVU) in California, that has affected hundreds of Indian students, is just the tip of an iceberg and a large number of such institutes exist in the US, a probe report here has said. “Other colleges — most of them unaccredited — exploit byzantine federal regulations, enrolling almost exclusively foreign students and charging them upward of $ 3,000 for a chance to work legally in the US,” said the report released by Chronicle of Higher Education.

Such educational institute flourish in California and Virginia, where regulations are lax, and many of their practises — for instance, holding some classes on only three weekends per semester — are unconventional, to say the least, the report added. “These colleges usher in thousands of foreign students and generate millions of dollars in profits because they have the power, bestowed by the US government, to help students get visas,” it said, adding while these institutions are well-known among Indian students looking to work full-time, they have managed to go mostly unnoticed in the US.

In more than a dozen interviews to Chronicle, students at these institutions say that an American degree, any American degree, will help them get a better job or earn a promotion back home, the report said. “They say they choose these unaccredited colleges for their flexibility, their low cost, academic quality and because of the recommendations of other students from their home region. In online forums, students are more blunt: What they actually talk about is who will let them work ‘from Day 1’,” it said.

According to the report, Homeland-security officials say they are not blind to the existence of other Tri-Valleys, although they wouldn’t comment on, or even confirm, current investigations. “They concede that regulations governing foreign-student employment are vulnerable to exploitation. These areas are ripe for abuse,” said a top administrator with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which monitors 10,300 schools and colleges that grant visa documents.

“We look very closely,” it said. “Officials say that the agency is doing the best it can, given its resources and authority. An increase in Sevis fees — the system is entirely self-financed — will support the creation of a new enforcement unit focused solely on school and college violations and allow for the creation of a 60-person team of regionally based liaisons to act as contacts and more closely monitor colleges on the ground,” the report said.

According to a federal complaint filed in a California court in January, the TVU had helped foreign nationals, mostly Indians, illegally acquire immigration status. The university is said to have 1,555 students. As many as 95 per cent of these students are Indian nationals. The university was closed on charges of massive visa fraud.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), March 24, 2011

>US journal says more universities duping Indians

>Tri-Valley University is only one of many dubious and unaccredited universities in the US that are duping foreign students — especially Indians — reported a leading US journal on higher education. The report was based on an investigation carried out after the TVU scam in January, involving Indian students who were trapped in the US, following the university getting implicated in immigration fraud charges.

The journal claimed the University of Northern Virginia, the International Technological University (ITU) and Herguan University were among those that had been following a TVU-like business model. But they are not known to be facing any federal action.

“These universities are names that kept cropping up in our investigation, and so caught our attention. The investigation raises questions about how strictly the federal government is being able to ensure the quality of institutions it allows to admit foreign students,” Karin Fischer, one of the journal’s reporters, told HT.

The Washington DC-based Chronicle of Higher Education — the most widely read higher education publication in US academic circles — said in the report published this week that a combination of “lax” regulations and “chinks in the student visa system” were allowing these institutions to dupe students. The University of Northern Virginia claimed it was the most popular American university for foreign students, but was comfortable remaining largely unknown, according to the report.

“Dubious, non-accredited universities use loopholes in the rules to get permission from the authorities to admit foreign students, the journal said, adding that they falsely claimed that their credits were recognised by other accredited universities. “Genuine, accredited universities complained to us that their students were leaving for dubious institutions after arriving in the US,” Fischer said.

Source: Hindustan Times, March 24, 2011