\n<\/p>\n
Purdue University is allegedly rejecting large numbers of Chinese graduate student applicants.<\/p>\n
wanderluster\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Current and prospective Purdue University graduate students say the institution rejected a slew of Chinese applicants from its grad programs for this academic year. Also, one grad student says the university told grad admissions committees in the past couple of months that it\u2019s highly unlikely to accept students from any \u201cadversary nation\u201d for next year. <\/p>\n
Faculty were told those countries are China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, said Kieran Hilmer, a teaching assistant on the leadership committee of Graduate Rights and Our Wellbeing (GROW), a group trying to unionize Purdue grad workers. That list broadly matches the commerce secretary\u2019s catalog of foreign adversaries. <\/p>\n
Hilmer said the university conveyed this prohibition verbally. \u201cThey didn\u2019t write any of this down,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Purdue isn\u2019t commenting on the allegations. The university has faced scrutiny from members of Congress about its ties to China. In May, the Trump administration briefly said it would revoke Chinese students\u2019 visas nationwide. The president has since changed his tune and said he would welcome more students from China.<\/p>\n
A Chinese student who wished to remain anonymous because he\u2019s still trying to get into Purdue told Inside Higher Ed<\/em> he received an offer to be a research assistant last February, meaning his funding was secure to become a Purdue grad student this academic year. But, in April or May, he said, the Office of Graduate Admissions told him that his application was denied. <\/p>\n The redacted two-paragraph letter that he provided to Inside Higher Ed<\/em> said admission \u201cis competitive and many factors are carefully considered,\u201d but \u201cwe are not able to provide specific feedback.\u201d <\/p>\n The student, who said he got his master\u2019s degree in the U.S. and wishes to remain here, said he had already moved to West Lafayette, where Purdue\u2019s flagship campus is, signed a lease and turned down other institutions\u2019 offers. He said the rejection could impact his visa. <\/p>\n \u201cI may get deported,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n He said he learned through social media that at least 100 other Chinese students were similarly rejected. <\/p>\n Purdue spokespeople also didn\u2019t provide a response to the Lafayette Journal & Courier<\/em> and the Exponent<\/em> <\/em>student newspaper when asked about this issue. The Journal & Courier<\/em>, which first reported the story, cited four faculty members from \u201ca wide range of departments\u201d who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the university.<\/p>\n Multiple heads of graduate admissions committees didn\u2019t respond to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>\u2019s requests for comment Thursday; one who answered the phone referred a reporter to the press office, which didn\u2019t respond. Emails sent to Office of Graduate Admissions employees went unanswered.<\/p>\n While Purdue won\u2019t explain what actions it\u2019s taking or why, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said in a September report that it\u2019s been investigating Purdue and five other universities\u2014Stanford and Carnegie Mellon Universities and the Universities of Maryland, Southern California and Illinois at Urbana-Champaign\u2014all year \u201cregarding the presence and research activities of Chinese national students on their campuses.\u201d <\/p>\n Hilmer said Purdue is rejecting Chinese applicants in \u201ca specific attempt to comply with the U.S. Select Committee.\u201d (The committee didn\u2019t comment Thursday on whether it pressured Purdue to go as far as it allegedly has.) But Hilmer also said the \u201chostility and malice\u201d the university is showing these students goes further than what the committee requested. <\/p>\n \u201cAs Purdue said in its response to the House Select Committee, international students are fully vetted by the United States government when they apply for their visas,\u201d Hilmer said. \u201cAnd, on top of that, in order to work on projects related to national security, they need to get further security clearance. So there\u2019s no reason for Purdue to make this unilateral extralegal decision to ban all of these students.\u201d <\/p>\n He said many of these students were already in the U.S. <\/p>\n \u201cThis policy is obviously discriminatory and immoral, and, on top of that, it violates Purdue\u2019s policy on nondiscrimination,\u201d he said. The Chinese student told Inside Higher Ed <\/em>that he doesn\u2019t accept the committee pressure rationale, because Purdue wasn\u2019t the only university under investigation. <\/p>\n If Purdue is responding to the committee\u2019s pressure, it\u2019s another example of a selective American institution bending to the federal government\u2019s efforts to reduce international enrollment and to particularly target Chinese students and scholars. During President Trump\u2019s first term in office, the Justice Department launched the controversial China Initiative, which investigated faculty ties to China. <\/p>\n Republicans said the initiative sought to counter espionage, but Democrats, education lobbyists and Asian American advocates argued it was ineffective and instead justified racial profiling and discrimination. A study suggested the initiative\u2019s investigations may have caused valuable researchers of Chinese descent to leave the U.S. for China.<\/p>\n Hilmer said Purdue\u2019s rejection of Chinese students will harm its reputation and ability to recruit the best students and workers. <\/p>\n \u201cEven if they\u2019re not international students, they\u2019re going to say, \u2018Why would I ever accept an offer from Purdue if there\u2019s no guarantee that it\u2019s actually an offer?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWhy would they ever feel comfortable accepting an offer from Purdue if they could go anywhere else?\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Purdue University is allegedly rejecting large numbers of Chinese graduate student applicants. wanderluster\/iStock\/Getty Images Current and prospective Purdue University graduate students say the institution rejected a slew of Chinese applicants from its grad programs for this academic year. Also, one grad student says the university told grad admissions committees in the past couple of months<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[5456,4261,6457,15336,3549,678],"class_list":{"0":"post-37326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-allegedly","9":"tag-chinese","10":"tag-grad","11":"tag-purdue","12":"tag-rejecting","13":"tag-students"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}