Yiwei Sun: UCLA must provide financial support resources to international students

Mingren Wang, a first-year business economics student from China, had to sell his house to pay for his tuition fees at UCLA.

The University of California Board of Regents’ recent plan to increase tuition fees could potentially force international students like Wang to pay $1,700 more every year. This sum could be worth two months’ income for a normal family in many countries. Wang’s circumstances might seem extreme, but there are many international applicants who are not lucky enough to be able to afford UCLA even if they sell all their properties.

International applicants are not eligible to receive financial aid or university scholarships. All international applicants have to prove they are able to pay for their first year’s tuition to be eligible for a student visa according to regulations of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The current financial threshold, coupled with UCLA’s proposal to increase tuition even more, will result in UCLA shutting its doors to more qualified foreign students. UCLA should secure donations from private donors to set up a fund to assist needy foreign applicants or at least provide them with the information of available private scholarships during the application process.

While some private scholarships exist for international students, they are not easily accessible by international applicants. Two important websites for international applicants – UCLA’s admissions website for international students and the website of the Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars – show no relevant information about private scholarships.

There is an easy fix to this problem: A web page containing information about private scholarships can be linked to the admissions page so that eligible foreign applicants will not be deterred and withdraw their applications immediately when they read the heartless sentences warning students about demonstrating $55,000 to be financially capable.

Most importantly, while there are many international students at UCLA and across the UC system, the students truly in need of financial aid – the applicants from poor families in developing countries – are found in much fewer numbers due to the lack of scholarships and financial aid available to them. In fact, many international students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds cannot even apply to the UC because they cannot meet the UC’s baseline requirements for financial capability. This is harmful to the diversity of a place like UCLA, where all international students come from a very specific type of background and socioeconomic status.

The lack of available scholarships also has detrimental effects outside of financial strain. Many international students spend their time on the US admission process, which is often different from the university admission system of their home countries. Thus, when they fail to get scholarships to support their education overseas, they’re often forced to choose cheaper, but lower quality colleges or not go to college at all in their home countries.

The predicament of international students without access to financial aid in their home countries can be remedied if a fund from private donors can be set up to help capable incoming first-year international students before their hope for higher education gets suffocated in the cradle. This requires the administration to make more efforts to secure donations from private donors who are interested in increasing international students’ access to education at UCLA. These funds will not be coming from the state of California or the federal government.

No matter how little the funding may be, the sole presence of such a mechanism is a powerful way to attract a more diverse international applicant population from all socioeconomic backgrounds.

Indeed, rich students who can afford UCLA can easily afford to choose other private institutions. To foreign students from at least middle class or richer families, UCLA will be less attractive because of its plans to increase tuition and enrollment.

Eric Hu, an international first-year mathematics of computation student, said he valued UCLA for its diversity and educational resources, but he is concerned that increasing student enrollment and tuition will drive more international students away to private colleges. In particular, if tuition goes up and UCLA is no longer able to provide cheap and quality education, international students would not want to compete with more people for classes and other opportunities. In light of that, they might choose private colleges in comparison.

The repercussions of financial difficulties is a shared concern among poor domestic and international students alike. Efforts should not only target domestic students but also their international counterparts who share the same dream of education.

All Bruins have the right to pursue their passion without the distresses of not being able to pay for their education at UCLA. UCLA has the option to neglect the needs of international students or ensure the high quality to all foreign students enrolled. But more efforts from UCLA administration will bring about a more diverse international population, and ultimately, benefit both international students and their resident peers.