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Learning Another Language


President Barack Obama has admitted he feels chagrined that he can't speak another language.

"It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup, right?" Obama said at a town hall meeting last July.

While campaigning for president, Obama said he thought all American students should learn another language. Now that he has taken office, though, his push for foreign language instruction has faded.

"His [Obama's] failure to include language learning in his education policy statement is regrettable," said Bret Lovejoy, executive director of the executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Foreign language education is particularly important in New York City, Lovejoy said, because of the city's role in commerce, finance, culture and entertainment.

Unilingual Nation

Judging from the numbers, foreign language education is hardly a priority in the country as a whole or in New York. One study found only 44 percent of U.S. high school students take a foreign language class. As a result, only 9 percent of Americans -- as opposed to about half of all Europeans -- speak one or more foreign languages. A 2003 report found a continuing decline in enrollments in foreign language classes across the country.

New York State calls for the learning of foreign language for both middle and high school students. They "are required two years of seat-time and one high school [language] credit before the end of ninth grade," John Carlino, executive director of New York State Association of Foreign Language Teachers, said in an email message. This means middle school students must take two years of the language -- accounting for at least one high school language credit -- before the end of ninth grade.

Learning a foreign language, however, is not a prerequisite for a standard Regents high school diploma in New York State, although students who want to earn an Advanced Regents Diploma are supposed to take one Regents examination in a language other than English.

In 2003, Carlino told the New York Post, "Middle schools are hardly complying with state requirements. They are focused more on preparing students for statewide-exam subjects than teaching them foreign languages."

At the high school-level, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), French, German, Greek (Classic and Modern), Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Urdu, Yiddish are offered somewhere in the school system, and after a decline in the teaching of Latin, reports cite a renewed interest in that language.

While the city's public schools as a whole offer an array of language choices, options at individual schools are far more limited. Last year, based on a survey of the city's high school directory, City Limits found that more than 180 city high schools only offer Spanish (in addition to English). This presents a quandary for tens of thousands of high school students who already speak Spanish fluently.

This situation exists throughout the country. Partly as a result of the limited language offerings in American schools, "only 44 percent of students study any foreign language and ... 70 percent of those learn [only] Spanish," said Barry Lowenkron, then an assistant U.S. secretary of state, in 2006.

The issue of foreign language instruction is different from bilingual education, through which most subjects are taught using two different languages. While bilingual education started as a way to teach English, an increasing number of programs include both English speakers and English language learners. The English speakers learn a foreign language, and the foreign language speakers improve their English language skills. According to a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Education, such programs "may begin as early as kindergarten, and the number of these programs has expanded from 52 in 2004-05 to 81 programs in 2008-09."

Popular Languages

Some of the impetus for foreign language education in New York City schools comes from ethnic groups who want to ensure their language plays a role in the city's education. Italian American leaders, for example, have promoted the use of Italian and in July 2008, established the Italian Language Foundation. Schools serving large Russian communities, such as Edward R. Murrow in Brooklyn, are more likely to offer Russian classes. The handful of city schools teaching Arabic tend to have substantial numbers of Arab students.

This trend has been fueled by the city's charter schools, schools that are publicly funded but privately run. Next fall, for example, a charter school offering Hebrew instruction, will open in the Mill Basin section of Brooklyn. The city already has a charter school providing classes in Greek.

Besides the support for specific languages by community leaders, government policies also play a crucial role in determining language priorities. The Bush administration focused on security-related language learning after Sept. 11, 2001, and expanded programs for teaching Arabic, Urdu and Farsi. In 2007, $8.7 million were given out in grants to school districts in 20 states, including New York, for foreign language instruction in Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi and Farsi.

Competing Demands

Whatever the interest in foreign language education, obstacles exist to making it a more integral part of the school program.

One is a shortage of certified teachers, particularly in languages less frequently taught than French and Spanish. In order to be accredited, a language teacher has to have a total of 30 college credits in the language they will teach. Fluency is not enough.

Preference for specific languages widens the gap between the need and the availability of teachers in those languages as is seen in the case of Chinese. In recent years, the demand for Chinese language teachers has surged because "the number of Chinese programs, in preschool through high school, has grown by almost 200 percent since 2004," the Asia Society has reported.

Foreign languages also have been affected by other city educational priorities. For instance, the Department of Education has replaced many large schools with small ones that, because of their size, cannot present the range of course offering the huge schools did.

And, particularly at the middle-school level, as schools increasingly focus on English and math, they have less time for other classes. "There are only eight periods in the day," Barry Johnson, a bilingual social studies teacher, at IS 302 in Cypress Hills told City Limits. His school used to teach French, Italian and Russian, as well as Spanish. Today, he said, it offers no foreign language classes at all.

Then there are budget cuts. Language education might bear some of the burden of repeated, multimillion-dollar reductions. Carlino, for one, hopes not.

"Cuts to any aspect of education that would impact future generations' ability to make a life for themselves in the world would be short-sighted," said Carlino of the language teachers' association. "This could be detrimental to our nation's security."

New Debates Over Church, State, School and Charters


Graphic by Gotham Gazette, Photo (cc) idolector

Students at St. Catherine of Sienna School "worship and pray together in class as well as at weekly prayer services and liturgies," according to the school's description. The school, "guided by the teachings of Jesus, is dedicated to the development of spirituality, community and scholarship."

St. Catherine's building in St. Albans, Queens, may or may not open doors to students next September. But, if it does, its students almost certainly will not worship in class, and its teachers will not be able to help their students' develop spiritually guided by Jesus' teachings -- at least not overtly.

If the building that houses St. Catherine of Sienna serves as school next year, it will almost certainly be a charter school, funded and overseen by the city and state but privately run. Under a proposal made by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, St. Catherine's -- or some of the other threatened schools -- would not be operated by the Brooklyn diocese, religious art and symbols would be removed, and many of the teachers might be gone as well. Whether that would satisfy critics fearing a blurring of the line between secular and religious education remains to be seen.

The plan for the Brooklyn and Queens schools came as the state Board of Regents approved a Hebrew language charter school in Brooklyn and follows a heated controversy over an Arab language public school.

With an increasing number of charters and some small conventional public schools focusing on one ethnic group and the Supreme Court allowing the spending of more public money for religious education, some see a dangerous erosion of the separation of church and state in education. Others counter that state support for an array of options and services only serves to provide more children with a good education -- something people on all sides of America's religious battles should support.

A Religious Education

The proposal to save the Brooklyn schools came after the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes Queens, announced in February that it would likely close 11 schools, including St. Catherine of Sienna, at the end of this school year and reorganize others. The plan, a response to declining enrollments and increasing costs, marked the latest chapter in the decline of New York City's once thriving Catholic schools. In seven years, the New York Times calculated, the diocese will have closed 40 percent of its grade schools. It has seen enrollment drop by 20,000 to about 35,000 since 1998. The Archdiocese of New York, which includes Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, as well as some areas outside the city, has closed 15 schools in two years and could shut more.

The closings have taken on the air of ritual, with parents, some in tears, mourning the shutting of schools where they sent their children. This time, though, there was a difference. Less than two weeks after the diocese's announcement, Bloomberg proposed converting four of the schools, unspecified as of now, to charter schools. The city has been a major booster of charters, but this marked the first time it proposed taking an existing private school and making it a charter.

Appearing with Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, Bloomberg couched his plan partly as a way to keep thousands of new students from pouring into already crowded public schools. "Many if not most of the students would be likely to seek admission in Brooklyn and Queens public schools that are already at or near capacity, which gives us all a shared interest in finding innovative ways to keep these school doors open," he said.

For the diocese the plan offered hope. Bloomberg "is throwing out a life preserver and I'm going to grab it," DiMarizo said at a news conference at City Hall.

But Bloomberg's proposal immediately raised questions about whether the city would be channeling public money to religious education. The city has repeatedly denied this, saying that in their new role as charters, the schools would have to shed their religious identity.

"Serious concerns are raised when the government tries to paint over the religious facade and import an entire school into the public school system and say it's not a religious school," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union said.

"My view," said James Merriman, chief executive officer of the New York City Charter School Center, "is as long as the school are truly inclusive, and are high quality and offering options for communities, then we would welcome then."

Charter Law and the Constitution

The state's charter school law proscribes religious instruction or religious groups running schools. But that would not prevent the schools from keeping many elements of their old approach -- discipline, uniforms, a traditional academic curriculum, teaching of ethics and values (though not from a religious perspective) and so on.

Other parts of the state law could prove more problematic. For example, the law bars the conversion of any existing private schools -- including religious schools -- into charters. While Bloomberg said that all students now enrolled in the Catholic schools would be guaranteed admission to the new charters, the law mandates that all admission to charters be by lottery -- meaning no one can be assured of a slot. The law calls for 70 percent of all teachers at charters to be certified -- a requirement many Catholic schools do not meet.

Faced with such hurdles, some observers thought the mayor would have to ask the state legislature to change the charter school law or give these schools some kind of waiver. Lieberman, for one, said she did not think Bloomberg could engineer the conversion of the schools without the legislature's approval. In light of everything else on the legislature's plate, including mayoral control of schools, prospects for quick action seemed remote.

"This is going to raise a whole myriad of philosophical and practical questions about how public education is supposed to be provided, and I don't think they're easily resolved. It's a thicket," Steven Sanders, former chair of the Assembly education committee, told the Times.

To get around that thicket, the administration now is considering whether it can get the schools approved as charters under the existing law.

Explaining how such reasoning might go, Merriman said, "The charter school law clearly prohibits a conversion of an existing private school to a public charter school. But what is not at all clear is what constitutes a 'conversion.'" The State Board of Regents, which rules on charters, would have to look at an array of factors including, Merriman said, "whether the board of the school and the staff are substantially the same, whether the private school would transfer a substantial amount of its assets to the charter school and, finally, whether the charter school would occupy the same site.

"Depending on how those factors play out and how they are weighed, it's entirely possible that what the diocese is seeking to accomplish could be accomplished without having to change the charter law," he said.

Melody Meyer, a spokesperson for the city Department of Education confirmed that possibilities exist "to convert the school without a change in law." While the administration has not made a final decision on how to proceed, she said, "We're looking for the route that is the simplest, that would allow for the schools to remain open without a gap."

This could work in a number of ways. The schools could officially close in June and then reopen. Some staff might have to leave or there could be come kind of interim or alternative certification similar to what's done by Teach for America or the Teaching Fellows program. While the schools would have to be open to all students, the number of applicants might be small enough to all but ensure everyone a seat. After all, as Merriman noted, one reason the diocese is closing many of these schools is that they are vastly under-enrolled. New organizations could be set up, perhaps including individuals who work for the church but also parents, community members, alumni and others, to serve as the chartering organization and so on.

Amid any such maneuvering though, Meyer said, one thing will remain firm. "We are not," she said, "looking to change separation of church and state in charter schools."

Few Options for Catholic Schools

Much of this presents challenges for the church as well. The religious element of the education will be lost. The new schools will have a "profoundly" different culture than those they replaced, Merriman said.

Seven Catholic schools in Washington, D.C. became charters this year -- the largest such switch in the country. While enrollment has increased and the schools by many measures have thrived, "many veterans of the old schools say there is a noticeable emptiness in classrooms and hallways," Javier Hernandez wrote in the Times. "Students miss the moments they came together for prayer, they say, and teachers wish they could sometimes get a little guidance from the Bible."

In helping former parochial schools become charters, some critics say, the church could be contributing to the demise of religious education. While a multitude of things -- including demographic shifts and a rapid decline in nuns available to teach -- have contributed to the woes of parochial schools, most experts agree charters have not helped. Many parents, looking for a fairly traditional education for their children have found it in charter schools, which unlike parochial schools are free.

"The problem," Paul Moses wrote on Commonweal's blog, "is that this may hasten the demise of even more urban Catholic schools. And ... the charter schools are far from a proven success. One of the great strengths of the Catholic school system is that it has resisted the fads that sweep through public education. And if it should turn out a few years down the line that charter schools were just one more false hope, what will the alternative be if the Catholic schools have closed?"

Sol Stern, a senior scholar at the Manhattan Institute, who has praised Catholic schools for their work in urban neighborhoods, said the diocese has no choice. Converting the schools to charters is "the only strategy. It's a desperate strategy, not something that makes me happy," he said, adding, "It's a further indication that Catholic schools are in extremis. ... This is the finger in the dike."

Like Moses, he sees the demise of the schools -- or even their conversion -- as a loss. "Catholic schools at their heyday provided a spiritual dimension, a spirit of community, a higher purpose" along with solid curriculum "that enabled them to do a great job," he said.

Other Religions, Other Schools

The former Catholic schools would join other charter schools and some conventional public schools that seem to cater primarily to a single religious or ethnic group. The city has more than 60 dual-language schools, the vast majority offering instruction in both English and Spanish, with many located in largely Latino communities. By one count, in 2007, the city had 11 "culturally themed charter schools."

One, the Hellenic Classical Charter School, pledges to "supplement all instruction with the classical study of the Greek and Latin languages [and]... will utilize didactic instruction, coaching and Socratic questioning." Despite some questions abut the school's relationship with a nearby Greek Orthodox Church -- teachers refer to the church's priest as the school "spiritual leader," Elizabeth Green reported in 2007 --the school has attracted little controversy and reportedly has a diverse student body.

Not surprisingly schools appearing to cater to Jews and Arabs have raised more questions, with people wondering whether they are madrassas or yeshivas masquerading as schools of language, history and culture.

A proposal to create a new small public school -- not a charter -- focusing on Arab culture and language sparked virulent protests in2007. The now defunct New York Sun mounted a full press attack on the concept of the school with one of its writers going so far as to say, “How delighted Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda must have been to hear the news — that New York City, the site of the worst terrorist attack in our history, is bowing down in homage to accommodate and perhaps groom future radicals."

Eventually the Khalil Gibran Academy opened, but not before its founder and principal was forced to "resign." The school, now in its second year, has continued to have difficulties, according to a recent account by Seth Wussler in Colorlines. "This past September, many of the original sixth-grade students had not returned as seventh graders. The school has cut back on Arabic language instruction, is no longer set to become a high school and has moved twice in its first year of operation," Wussler wrote. School officials reportedly have been so afraid that the school -- named for a Lebanese-American Christian writer -- could be seen as Islamic that it removes pictures of mosques from its textbooks. .

So far, a school -- this one a charter -- with an emphasis on Hebrew language and history has had an easier time. In January, the State Board of Regents approved the creation of the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School, the first Hebrew public school in the city. The school, at an as-yet-to-be-determined location in Brooklyn's Community School District 22, would open in the fall and eventually serve 675 students -- of all races and religions, organizers say -- in grades kindergarten through eight.

The school has the backing of Michael Steinhardt's Foundation for Jewish Life, which seeks to "revitalize Jewish identity." It has promised to give the school $500,000 a year, according to NYCity News Service. Steinhardt's daughter Sara Berman, a former columnist for the Sun, has played a key role in planning the school.

Berman has said she hopes the school will have a diverse mix of students studying "Jewish history, secular Israeli life and the history of what it is like for Jews to live all over the world. "In no way, she said, will the school "promote or teach religious devotion."

Skepticism remains however. Saul Cohen, the one member of the Board of Regents who voted against granting the school a charter, expressed doubt about whether many black, Hispanic and Asian students in the area really wanted to learn Hebrew. The charter, Cohen told the Times, is a way of getting a good private school with public funds."

Writing in the Jewish Week, Larry Cohler-Esses and Carolyn Slutsky said that the school may find it hard to draw a line between the religious and the secular. "To explain daily life in Israel to children — even secular daily life — the baguette [from a French lesson] might well become a challah ... for a Shabbat dinner that night, when the family will gather together around the table for kiddush, or blessing over wine, even if they are not religiously observant," they wrote. "The national holiday calendar also requires referring to Jewish religious holidays."

A Nationwide Development?

About 110 of the nation's 4,600 charter schools have a particular cultural theme, according to a Times report. In Minnesota, several charter schools serve largely Muslim populations, with many students the children of recent immigrants. A least one, a suburban school run by an Islamic charity, has come under attack for allegedly teaching religion.

Such a school, said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, may say it is inclusive and accept children of all backgrounds, but, he added, "it still was set up to fill a niche that is religious." (Lynn did say his group looked at Khalil Gibran and "didn't find anything particularly wrong with it.)

While such schools exist, Merriman does not seem them as part of a widespread movement -- at least where charters are concerned. There, he said "the trend still is a wide variety of people making school work in places" where parents wanted more options for their children.

Another person who works on charters, Todd Ziebarth, vice president of policy for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said he has "seen an uptick," of Afro-centric and Latino charters and other schools catering to specific groups. The diversity of schools, he said, is good in that it provides "more high quality options for kids."

In Lieberman's view, though, these schools undercut a key mission of American education. While the public school system should seek "to integrate children of all backgrounds into a diverse society," she said, having what she called balkanized schools, "serves to isolate them."

For Lynn, charters pose a particular hazard in this regard because students have to choose to go to them. "The idea of choice can rapidly become what we used to call segregation,'' he said.

Like it or not, such divisions pervade all of education, not just charters, Stern said. "There's different kinds of balkanization in public schools as well," he said, noting that the Department of Education created Khalil Gibran as a public school and that mutliculturalism has eroded the idea that all students learn one unifying curriculum.

Degrees of Separation

Perhaps not surprisingly in city where so many people identify with religions -- and in an avowedly religious nation -- the line separating church and state can be a blurry one even in conventional, diverse public schools and traditional religious ones.

In New York City, the public schools provide transportation services to private and religious schools and serve as the conduit for Federal Title 1 funds for student from poor families to the religious schools, according to Meyer. In general, the courts have approved spending public money on so-called neutral services in religious schools.

But seemingly neutral services like health care can be fraught. A high school nurse, may, for example, feel that his or her job should include telling sexually active teens about birth control -- something that would not be allowed in a Catholic school.

Even renting space from religious institutions can pose problems. The city Department of Education, leases classroom space from the Catholic church, and students at the public schools occupying those properties have to leave their schools for health classes that involve birth control and other sensitive issues. Marc Stern, co-executive director of the American Jewish Congress, has written to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein protesting such arrangements. Beyond certain health topics, Marc Stern said, "Who knows what else teachers have to avoid?"

Help for Religious Schools

Religious schools, their supporters and particularly parents of religious school students -- who pay tuition as well as taxes to support public schools they do not use -- would like the city and state to do more to help them.

Hearing such pleas, the City Council has in the past allocated some of its so-called discretionary funds to religious schools. In 2006, for example, Councilmember Simcha Felder, whose district includes heavily Orthodox Jewish Borough Park, got $1 million for Jewish schools to buy buses. Felder also has wanted the city to provide nurses at religious schools and has been among a group of council members proposing a bill that would have the city provide security to religious schools.

"We want to break though the walls that do not allow private school parents to get a few benefits similar to public school parents," " Felder has said.

Lieberman disagrees. "It's important," she said, "not to perceive government subsidies for textbooks and nurses and other things as other than government subsidies for parochial education."

Last year, then Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposed a bill that would grant a $1,000 tax deduction to parents sending their children to private or religious schools. Those supporting the idea, the Sun reported at the time, applauded it as "an important precedent for using state funds to explicitly help families pay for private tuition." Most of those opposing it did so for exactly that reason. The measure failed.

The New York State Catholic Conference continues to advocate for some kind of tax credit, along with providing more services to religious schools. In this time of tight budgets, spending money for this new kind of program could prove a tough sell. Church-state concern would make it even harder.

Few issues, after all, are more volatile in this county than those of church and state, particularly when it comes to our schools and our children. That could be one reason why, if St. Catherine of Sienna is to emerge as a charter school next year, the Department of Education and the Brooklyn diocese would rather not have to get the legislature's permission.

Recession Dims American Dream for Business Students


Photo (cc) snapawayyoungman
An American business degree, despite the slow hiring market, remains popular among international students.

Young Seo Kwon came to New York in the winter of 2008 to enroll in the master's program in accounting at Pace University, hoping to get a job in the city after graduation. A native of Seoul, South Korea, he did not really want to be an accountant but thought it would be relatively easy to get a work visa in the accounting field.

"Companies are always looking for accountants," said Kwon. "And many of them offer visa sponsorship to foreigners. It is sort of a niche market because Asian students are stronger at math. American students are more reluctant to study the boring stuff."

Kwon's aptitude at math, though, might not get him a job in a troubled economy where unemployment continues to rise. According to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate went from 7.2 percent to 7.6 percent in January 2009, the highest level in the 16 years. The country lost about 598,000 jobs during the same month.

"I applied for many internships for this coming summer but couldn't find any," said Kwon. "I was told later that many companies only hired a few interns this year. Last year some big companies hired more than 100 interns."

Kwon is not alone. New York City continues to attract international students because of its vibrant city life and educational and cultural resources. Many international students study in business schools in New York City in the hopes of getting a job on Wall Street. However, as the financial markets fade, so does the chance for employment for those who planned to rely on an employer's sponsorship to get a work visa.

"Right now it is not a good time to be looking for a job, it is a good time to stay in school," said Huy Nguyen of Vietnam, a first-year MBA student at Baruch College. "Hopefully by the time I get out of school, it will be the beginning of the recovery."

Not everyone is so optimistic. Nguyen's schoolmate, Thida Soe, a finance student from Myanmar who is graduating next year, said, "I think my chances are very slim. I understand they are cutting the quota some more. I am keeping my options open."

Getting the Proper Papers

The faltering economy is not the only obstacle facing international students. In the past several years the U.S. government has made it more difficult for foreign students in business and other fields to stay here after graduating.

To remain in the United States, many foreigners with college educations try to get a work visa, also known as an H-1B. This permit allows U.S. employers to hire foreign nationals in occupations requiring specialized knowledge, such as engineering, law and medicine. In general, the employer has to prove the person has the proper educational background with a minimum of a bachelor's degree. The employer must also pay the prevailing wage.

Getting an H-1B has become increasingly difficult. Since 9/11 American companies have become more reluctant to hire foreigners, both because of nationalistic sentiment and security concerns. In addition, the government has reduced the number of the visas issued annually to 65,000 from 195,000 earlier in the decade. Getting an H-1B now is a matter of fate, since the visas are allocated by lottery. In 2008, the H-1B quota for fiscal year 2009 was reached before the end of the first week in which applications were accepted. The additional 20,000 spots for people with advanced degrees also were taken within a week.

The Troubled Assets Relief Program -- popularly known as the Wall Street and bank bailout -- puts further restrictions on hiring foreign workers.

On Feb. 5, Sens. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, and Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, introduced an amendment barring all TARP recipients from hiring any H-1B workers. "Hiring American workers for limited available jobs should be a top priority for businesses taking taxpayer money through the TARP bailout program," said Grassley in a statement. "With the unemployment rate at 7.6 percent, there is no need for companies to hire foreign guest workers through the H1-B program when there are plenty of qualified Americans looking for jobs."

The version of the bill that President Barack Obama signed is not that strict but it does require that any TARP recipients with more than 15 percent of their workers on H-1B visas comply with a series of strict standards. The employers must have made a good-faith effort to hire U.S. workers first and are not supposed to displace American workers with H-1B visa holders or replace laid-off American workers with foreign workers. The companies that receive money from TARP include many major financial institutions such as AIG, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America.

Stricter Regulations on Practical Training

Some foreign residents get work in the United States under optional practical training or OPT. This permit allows international students who have completed their studies to work for up to 12 months in a job directly related to their schoolwork. The rules for this have gotten stricter as well. A provision announced in April mandates that all students with optional practical training permits find a full-time job within three months. In addition, students have to apply for the program within 60 days of graduation. Those new rules are designed to prevent international students from staying in the U.S. longer by stalling their applications.

Soe, for one, considers the new rules "outrageous." "It is hard enough to find a job," she said. "They are making it even harder for international students. ... We are highly equipped and they are missing out on us."

Internships Wanted

While the government may have made it harder for international students to remain here, the bad state of the job market remains the students' overriding concern. Rain Han, a native of Tianjin, China, will graduate with a master's degree in accounting from Pace University at the end of the year. He has been looking for a job but to no avail.

"There are not that many full-time openings compared to last year," said Han. "Major CPA firms used to come to campus to recruit quite a few positions, but now they just need one or two people."

At least he has an internship paying $17 an hour.

"I have been interning with the auditing department in a telecommunication firm since last July," said Han. "I hope I can use it to my advantage in the job search."

"I have asked my supervisor at the internship if it is possible for me to get an H-1B," added Han. "But they did not give me any clear answer. It is impossible to change the big environment. The only thing I can do is to stay competitive."

Vijay Jadhav, a graduate student at Pace from Maharashtra, India, scheduled to graduate in May, has applied for about 500 positions and internships in the last six months but only received some offers of unpaid internship. "There used to be many internships that would pay $20 an hour," said Jadhav. "Now only a few of them pay $8 to $10 and most of them are unpaid."

Business Schools Still Popular

Despite the current job situation, U.S. business schools remain alluring. The number of foreigners registering to take the GMAT -- the Graduate Management Admission Test required by most U.S. business schools -- jumped almost 19 percent, from 101,756 in 2006-2007 to 120,825 in 2007-2008, a new record, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the test.

A degree from a top American business school is still highly regarded in the face of competition from top international business schools. The most recent ranking of business schools in the London-based Financial Times listed nine U.S. business schools in the top 20.

Coping With the Crunch

To extend their stay here, some students plan to stay in school longer.

"I am playing around with my graduation date," said Kwon. "If the economy is better next year, I will graduate on time. If not, I will delay for one semester."

"I am probably going to delay my graduation to December," said Jadhav. "A lot of people are doing that. We are buying more time. There might be more opportunities in six months."

And if there aren't, most students interviewed have back-up plans if their plan A -- getting a job in the United States --doesn't pan out.

"China's economy is doing OK right now," said Han of Pace. "If I don't get an H-1B here, I will probably move to Shanghai. It is a major financial center just like New York."

"I've grown to like the city so much," said Jabhav. "If I could get a job here, it would also help me pay off my loans faster. But if I don't get anything, I have no option but to go home."

"I would like to work in the U.S. but I would consider Canada, England, or Australia," said Soe. "They have more lax regulations on hiring foreigners." She added she thought that, with an advanced degree, language skills and work experience, she could find a job in those countries.

"The good thing about being an international student is that I don't have to limit myself to the U.S. only," said Nguyen. "I can go back to my home country or other Asian countries. An MBA for me is a degree and education. I want to get it done and move on to the next phase whether it is here or anywhere else."

Larry Tung, a native of Taiwan, teaches media and film courses at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. He is also a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant and Asian American issues.



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