https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/06/rethinking-university-dependence-on-foreign-students/
Once the coronavirus pandemic subsides, might it not be better if we tried to attract American students and their tuition dollars by competing to provide a rigorous, remunerative education?
Were all of the foreign students returning to America’s campuses in January vectors of infection for coronavirus? Especially the students from China? There’s no evidence yet to prove the point, although the odds are that at least some coronavirus infection came to the United States from foreign students.
If we’ve been spared a campus plague, it’s owing to the grace of God, and not to any actions by our colleges and universities.
To my knowledge, before the decision was taken out of their hands by the general lockdowns, no American college or university barred foreign students from returning to campus. No academic administration even suggested that foreign students should self-quarantine for two weeks before interacting with other students or professors.
The most active were institutions such as Princeton, which followed “a recommendation by the New Jersey Department of Health that students and faculty at K-12 schools and colleges who have recently returned from China ‘self-quarantine’ for two weeks if they’re at moderate or high risk of potentially contracting the illness.” Colleges and universities did nothing better than grudgingly acquiesce to ineffective directives from state health departments.