Building the Brand: Is US Education Still Internationally Appealing?

I was boarding a train in Madurai, India, saying my last goodbyes to the Tamil family I had lived with, when my host mother, Usha, pressed my hand and said, “We’ll see you again when Nivetha goes to MIT.” Her daughter, Nivetha, was only ten years old, but Usha had already formulated grandiose dreams of an American education. She had never been to the United States and could hardly imagine blustery winters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the MIT brand name captivated her. I was reminded of this moment when reading this month’s issue of World Education News and Reviews, which examines Indian perceptions of US higher education. Vijaya Khandavilli reports that “the appeal of US schools may be on the wane among Indian students.”

Khandavilli’s report coincides with a moment in the American media when doomsday predictions about our education system are at a fever pitch. NBC recently hosted an “Education Nation” summit in Rockefeller Plaza because “education is the key to the success of our country, and yet we have allowed our students to fall behind.” The new documentary Waiting for Superman grimly depicts the struggles of charismatic kids trying to get a quality education. The New Yorker and This American Life have also recently produced pieces on dysfunction in New York City public schools. In light of this negative media attention, are families in India, China, Indonesia, and Nigeria still willing to scrape together their savings for the promise of an American education?  Usha would still like her daughter to travel to the United States, but she also recently acknowledged that there are many good universities for Nivetha to consider in India.

Stories of failing American K-12 schools could tarnish or at least confuse international perceptions of US education as a whole, which has economic consequences. Every year, international students pursuing higher education pump a great deal of revenue into developed economies such as the United States, Australia, and England. For example, international students created 83,000 jobs for Canadians last year and contributed $6.5 billion to the local economy. Even public high schools, in places as far flung as rural Maine, are seeking out Chinese or other foreign students to close budget gaps. These institutions are literally banking on the fact that US education is still a coveted good. In the coming years, international enrollment numbers will test this optimistic assumption. Nivetha is now fourteen, so she still has a few years to decide whether MIT is in her future. But whether or not I end up visiting her in Cambridge might depend on how resilient the larger US education brand proves to be.