Interactive Video

Morning and I also extend my welcome to all of you who are visiting FIT.

Thanks to Kyunghee and Elaine for bringing

the knowledge and the resources to FIT whereby,

advancing the FIT goal for internationalization of our curriculum and in this case,

sharing it with others of course.

Thank you so much. I have the great honor

to introduce our first plenary speaker, Allan Goodman.

Dr. Allan Goodman is the sixth President of the Institute for International Education,

the leading not-for-profit organization in the field of

International Education Exchange and Development Training.

IIE conducts research on international academic mobility,

and administers the Fulbright Program sponsored by the Department of State,

as well as over 200 other corporate,

government, and private-sponsored programs.

Since its founding in 1919,

the Institute has also rescued scholars threatened by war, terrorism and repression.

Rescued scholars and other alumni of IIE Administer programs

as well as IIE trustees and advisors have won 78 Nobel Prizes.

That's pretty amazing, isn't it?

Previously, Dr. Goodman was Executive Dean of

the School of Foreign Service and a professor at Georgetown University.

Dr. Goodman served as Presidential briefing coordinator for

the director of Central Intelligence in the Carter administration.

Subsequently, he was the first American professor

to lecture at the Foreign Affairs College of Beijing,

helped to create the first US academic exchange program with

the Moscow Diplomatic Academy and developed

the Diplomatic Training Program of the foreign ministry of Vietnam.

Dr. Goodman has served as a consultant to the Ford Foundation,

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation,

The United States Information Agency and IBM.

He's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He also serves on the Council for Higher Education accreditation.

Dr. Goodman has a PhD in Government from Harvard,

and MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of

Government and a BS from Northwestern University.

He also holds honorary degrees from Chatham,

Cisco Hannah, and Toyota Universities, Richmond,

The American International University in London, Dickinson, Middlebury,

Mount Ida and Ramapo Colleges,

the State University of New York,

and the University of York.

He is also a recipient of the,

I'm going to not pronounce this well,

Légion d'Honneur Day from France,

and the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit.

Dr. Goodman will be speaking to us today on

the topic of "Helping those that don't fit what works,

and the role that international education plays in everyone's education."

Thank you and welcome Dr. Goodman.

[APPLAUSE] I'm blessed to be with my team,

Nancy King, who manages part of our Development office,

Mariola Lynn who pretends to manage me,

which is not so easy,

and Kate Campbell who is secretary of

our Board and has daily liaise with our board of trustees.

We all came here to shop in the student store. [LAUGHTER]

The most important thing Deirdre left off my resume and I forgot to tell her is that,

my godson went here,

he studied Cosmetic and Fragrance Marketing [OVERLAPPING].

He is here [LAUGHTER].

God bless you [LAUGHTER].

He found a network of friends here,

learned something about the business,

made a life transition and I know his parents are extremely grateful

to what opportunity he was afforded here and the friends that he made.

So, I'm really glad to see FIT live.

I'm going to talk about three things that have,

you will think nothing to do with the topic on the program.

One is MIT, the second is Student Visas,

and the third is Labels.

All of those will relate to how we help people who don't fit because higher ed is

discovering that in the 68 million refugees and displaced persons in the world today,

the highest number we've ever had probably in human history,

there are a lot of people that don't fit into

higher education because they're in the wrong country,

they're in the wrong situation, the wrong religion,

the wrong tribe and as we know,

a lot of people don't fit in higher education because they are simply poor

and we've done a really poor job finding them and helping them succeed.

Maybe we ought to do a lot better at that because there are

a whole lot more poor people in the world than

rich people and the rich people are not going to save us.

But to return to the way to get into this topic,

the first is MIT.

I was impressed that one of your founders Mortimer Ritter

said that what America needs and this was in the '40s,

is an MIT for the fashion industry.

He, I think, reached that conclusion as American higher ed was really changing,

it was changing from a variety of agricultural schools, mechanical schools,

practical schools to the liberal arts,

that more and more people were interested especially if they were children of immigrants,

not being the tailor or the seamstress that their parents were,

but getting higher education so that they become doctors, lawyers, and teachers.

I think Ritter discovered that,

at that time, there was a huge shortage in the fashion industry.

People who actually knew, had the skills,

knew the trade and studied it in any systematic way

and I think that was an important route of your founding.

The great thing about America is,

we have a lot of MITs and a lot of FITs.

Colorado School of Mines,

we have engineering academies,

one of the oldest is the US Military Academy at West Point,

set up not to be a war college.

In, fact the government had to set up a war college because the folks at MIT were

too practical and studied engineering and gave birth to the core of engineers.

One of the great things about our system is that,

it's so diverse, it's so inclusive.

You can learn welding and hundreds of schools, some community colleges,

some land grant institutions and some lifelong learning for adult,

and one of the most critical scientific and industrial shortages

today in America is not a shortage of economists,

it's a shortage of welders.

We turn to colleges and universities to learn how to do that,

and that's as important as teaching surgery,

or teaching the social sciences or teaching art and poetry.

What's great about America is,

we can have colleges and programs like you

have here that relate immediately to something practical,

relevant and also to the workforce.

So, I think it's not a bad idea to think of FIT and MIT at

the same time because so many students in the world come here because we have that,

rather than we have the usual liberal arts curriculum.

Nothing against liberal arts,

but it's really important to have a mix so that people can actually get jobs.

In the '40s, said maybe we can have immigrants be students.

There was a big problem,

because most immigrants weren't students.

America didn't have a non-immigrant visa system to admit students.

We had very restrictive immigration laws.

The Immigration Act of 1920,

limited how many of our relatives could come from England,

Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, you name it,

based on their proportion they were of the 1890 census.

When they figured out that was too liberal they went back to the 1880s census,

so there would be fewer emigrants admitted and everybody got a quota number.

So, if you landed in Ellis Island like my mother did,

and probably my father's relatives.

You were from Ireland, or England, or Russia,

you were told you've got to stay there

for so many years and told the quota number was reached.

Then, you were admitted to be an immigrant in the United States.

In 1920, we were founded IIE in 1919 and 1920,

our first president got calls from Ellis Island,

from distinguished professors and also students saying.

"I'm here to study at Columbia,

I'm here to give a lecture at Princeton,

but I've just been told by the immigration inspector that I have to wait three years.

Because my quota number is such and there are

so many Italians ahead of me are so many English Academy".

IIE was able to work out a system of paroling

all international students in

the United States and international scholars into our custody.

They paid a small bond we put it in a safe and we

did an annual census of who was from where and where they studying.

That system lasted till 1950.

So, the students that were beginning to come to FIT,

the generation of people who would want to pursue what you were teaching then and now,

initially came through our system of keeping a parole or record,

because the US didn't admit non-immigrant students.

Today people are here on a non-immigrant student visa,

but it took 30 years for the US to get comfortable with a non-immigrant visa system.

So, nothing changes in immigration laws very quickly,

and nothing changes easily in immigration.

Sometimes you'd need universities and organizations like ours working together,

so that we can find ways to keep our doors open and make sure students come here.

I'm very impressed at how many international students you have here.

I think the number is 1,200 out of a 10,000,

that's way above the national average.

It's what I think makes America great in a sense,

that students from all over the world see that there's an opportunity here,

and we keep our doors open which brings me to labels.

We have a lot of competition in my industry.

Probably, you have a lot of competition in

the industries you are interning at or working.

For the first time in the list of 100 top universities in the world,

there are a bunch of universities from Canada,

Australia, England, Germany, France, that are on that list.

There are a lot of terrific universities that charge no tuition.

There are a lot of governments that are suddenly saying,

if you're having visa difficulties coming to America, we'll make it really easy for you.

By the way, when you apply for the student visa to come to Canada or Australia,

we'll give your mom and dad obesity at the same time,

because they probably want to visit you and we want to make it easy".

Of course, what they want are the top students in

the world that are coming to America or coming to other countries,

and we've really never faced the breadth of competition before.

The best thing we have going for us is our label,

"Made in the USA".

No other country has as many colleges and

universities accredited colleges and universities like yours,

that offers so much with such diversity with such a mix

of relationship between the academic subject and jobs in the marketplace.

So, we have enormous capacity,

and we have fewer Americans going to college,

because there are fewer Americans.

There will be fewer Americans in that age group for about the next five years.

So, a decade ago there were about 20 million Americans in higher ed,

today it's about 17.

So, we have seats.

We have a million international students today in America. We could double that.

It wouldn't take away a seat from a single American.

It would be good for us,

because if we don't fill those seats programs are going to close,

small liberal arts colleges are going to close,

and we will end up in

the next decade with less educational capacity at a time when you need it more.

That's where the fit comes in.

What do we do about the lost generation?

It starts and I'll end here,

so we can have some questions I hope.

It starts we woke up to the lost generation in the Syrian civil war.

We think there are 250,000 Syrians students who

started university education that got displaced from it because of the war.

Where are they going to go? Who's going to teach them?

How do they restart their academic lives?

So, we have the world's largest refugee camps are in Africa.

We think of the Middle East,

but that's not the case.

What do we do with the generation of

Somali students who are in the world's largest refugee camp in Kenya,

who have lived their whole life in the refugee camp, finished secondary school,

and now can't go on because non Kenyan students can't go.

There's no room for them in the Kenyan universities.

If you're a refugee it's not so easy to say well I'd like to apply for this or that,

but I have no visa,

I have no passport,

maybe it's difficult to get my birth records.

We discovered a few years ago in working in

the refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon and Turkey,

that contrary to our imagery refugee camps of women and babies,

we found many many university students and university teachers,

and so we created programs to try to connect them to teaching

again and also to connect their students back to education.

If we don't do something about the lost generation, ISIS will.

That's why we have defined fit for everybody.

I think that may be the biggest and newest challenge of American higher education,

because we're the only country on Earth that could actually take them all.

Thank you very much again for what you did for my godson [NOISE] and for having me here.

[NOISE]

If there are any questions,

there are two mics.

I don't know if anyone's, oh,

I'm going to let you hold onto this.

All right, thank you. I appreciate your bravery,

it's so hard to walk across the room and grab a mic.

You're not going to ask me a question.

[LAUGHTER]

We have a question right here.

Dr. Goodman, thank you so much for being here.

So what sort of strategies would you propose to higher education institutions

like FIT to create a fit as you're talking about.

What would be some of the things that our college could focus on?

Our greatest priorities at IIE are trying to fit in the displacement student.

And if you said, we'd like to have a displaced student,

could be from Syria,

it could be a Rohingya,

it could be somebody from Kenya and Somali camp.

Just saying that we will do what we can,

and what we can often involve so some grant for tuition.

Often, we find that students get together.

You have 10,000 students here,

if everybody gave a dollar,

that probably would go a long way to

covering some of the living expenses that a displaced student would have.

We could find that student for you,

there's a program in Canada that also does something

similar where the universities, the government,

and also the student movement raises quite a bit of money,

dollar by dollar, to pick out a refugee

or displaced student and help them connect to higher ed.

So that would be one thing to do.

Another thing to do is to say this is New York,

we're the world's greatest sanctuary city,

we've got a lot of refugees here.

We have a lot of refugees whose kids are about ready to go to college.

Why don't we say to the refugee community from Turkey,

from Syria, you name it,

from Iraq, "We'd like to have

a New York kid go to FIT," and I bet we could find one for you.

The other is to say,

we can do something for the poorest of the poor and pick a country,

and pick a poverty pocket in another place.

We found 5,000 very, very poor,

distressed in background students from all over the world,

thanks to the Ford Foundation,

and sent them to graduate school.

The graduate admissions dean said,

"This is not going to be possible because we don't know how to find them."

I said, ''We know how to find them,

and that they're going to graduate."

Ninety-eight percent graduated, three gold medals in math and in patents.

They all went back to their home countries,

expanded what they were doing.

We were trying to teach the admissions deans that

if you intentionally pick really poor people,

like if you intentionally pick refugees, they'll excel.

When you do that, you've lifted a whole village,

a whole family, a whole community.

So there's a lot of ways to go and even if it's just one student,

it matters to that one student and to their family and to

the community from which they came and you never know who is

the student here going to help that's going to discover something that

saves us all. All right.

Hi, Dr. Goodman.

Hello.

What is your opinion on

how the anti-immigration and anti-refugee sentiment

that's becoming the election issue that's coming up?

The government's policy reflected by Trump's claiming that he will affect

changes in the 14th Amendment to even tighten up citizenship of naturalized Americans.

How these kind of government sentiments will affect international students in its future?

We do live in a political system of checks and balances,

that's never been more important.

The constitution is the basic law of the land,

you can't change that with executive order.

But we also live in a pretty interesting country,

everybody really came from some place else.

I was an Indiana last week,

and they're as open as New York City is to having entry,

whether it's Indianapolis or Bloomington.

When you talk around a dinner table with people in America,

they're not anti-immigrant, and guess what?

They probably had a relative who was an immigrant or

a grandparent who was an immigrant and they get it.

Could we do a better job on our immigration system?

Absolutely, and it will take a bipartisan consensus in congress to make that happen.

There have been half a dozen immigration bills that almost passed,

that fixed DACA students that had a path to

registration and citizenship for the undocumented illegal immigrants that are here,

that are law abiding and they pay a lot of taxes.

So, I think it will take time.

But I don't believe our people have turned against immigrants,

and I don't believe they've turned against saying

that they've turned against the people that are coming here for whatever reason,

whether they're fleeing something or they have something to offer.

Because I think we all know that it's what makes

our society progress and what made America great.

So, I'm very hopeful.

Hi, excuse me.

I'm [inaudible] and I'm FIT graduate FBM,

Professor Cooper and thank you for inviting me here.

As an international student,

I went to FIT and I'm tremendously thankful

that I was able to get this education in this school.

I worked for in this fashion industry for about 15 years,

working for different companies.

What I experienced was a couple of experiences,

one company for example because I held H1

work visa back then. So once I got fired,

then I had to find another job right away.

Once I was switching my job and then the company threatened to sue me,

"I'm going to kick you out if you don't pay back the H1 Visa processing fee."

A lot of challenges as an international student

to face once you're graduated in this school.

My question was actually answered by the question of Professor Cole.

FIT, are you interested in

extending this type of idea beyond the school?

That would be my question.

So, we had 17 candidates for president of the United States in the last election.

One candidate said, "I believe if you get an education here,

we should give you a green card."

So that you could stay and work if you chose.

Who was that candidate?

I'll take volunteers from the floor. [LAUGHTER].

Both Democrats and Republicans.

Altogether Democrats and Republicans,

17 candidates, only one said if you go to school here,

you ought to get a green card.

Bernie Sanders.

All right, Bernie Sanders.

Who says Bernie Sanders?

Okay, who says Kasich?

Kasich.

Okay.

I'll take both.

Okay, keep going, you're not right.

[LAUGHTER].

Jeb Bush? No. Keep going.

Trump.

Trump.

Same question really, if you were aware of

any university systems that actually had some support program in place already,

because I also was thinking the same thing,

what happens after graduation?

Do we just let people die on the vine,

I mean, what do we do for them?

I know the Canadian, Scottish,

and English systems fairly well and they all have

skilled immigration policies after graduation,

so that if they need your skill like in medicine, nursing, engineering,

you get a very long term, like an H1B,

but not the mysterious process that H1B is today.

So, I think we will see more and more countries as they compete for talent with America,

say, if you come here,

the first tuition is going to be almost free.

Secondly, your parents can get a visa to come visit you,

at the same time you get your student visa

and when you graduate successfully in these fields,

you're eligible to stay.

That'll be part of the competition we face. Hi.

Hi, Dr. Goodman. My name is [inaudible].

I work in International Student Services here.

Thank you.

Yes. I'm on the same team and [inaudible] for

our international population [inaudible].

I was thrilled to see that you have run for them as well.

I mean they have [inaudible] students from them as well,

and I know how they are feeling for what's happening in their country.

One thing that I'm persistently concerned about is how

our numbers of students engaging in

optional practical training not near of work experience that

our international students are entitled to per educational level have been declining.

Institutions such as FIT where most people intend to go on right into industry,

to see those numbers going down and people choosing to go

home as opposed to continuing their career here,

I think it's something that made me to look at across the nation and I

just want know your thoughts on [inaudible] don't know,

IIE open doors before it which is the enrollment for it and

it's the standard across the industry and how we count our enrollment, it's so important.

We share your concern about OPT and all of the international ed organizations

worked very hard to get it extended initially from

just a 12-month period now up to three years depending on field,

and we're all rock-solid behind the importance of doing that.

I think what we're learning though,

it's more important than ever to the international students coming here,

that at least they know that OPT is out there and it's

not going to be changed by actions in Washington.

So we're working very hard to make sure it continues

and it is something that people ask more and more about,

"Should I come here as opposed to go to another place where if I graduate,

I get my green card stamped to the diploma,

stapled to the diploma?"

Hi.

Hi.

Thank you very much for being here.

I'm a Fulbright Scholar here at FIT and a full-time faculty member,

and I feel that the funding from the government and to the state department for

the Fulbright Program and other international education programs is under threat.

So what can we as a community do,

what is IIE doing,

I know what Fulbright is doing,

to really advocate more for these programs because many of the grants and fellowships at

IIE offers can be part of what we

offer to international students and students in need to come here.

But how can we do that if the funding is not going to be there any longer,

if it is continually decreased? Thank you.

Are there any students on Gilman grants,

for study abroad, here?

There are.

Good. First of all,

if you live in Congressman Meeks's constituency, or [inaudible] constituency,

write them a thank you note because

the key appropriators like them always increase what the government,

what the Executive asks for Fulbright.

So even when the White House asks for deep cuts in Fulbright and Gilman programs,

it is Congress which restores them to their full funding level and

have consistently done so and in a very bipartisan way.

You have two great Senators in this state.

One of them speaks Chinese and studied abroad,

all her kids did.

Senator Schumer attempted to go abroad.

His girlfriend went abroad.

Unfortunately, when she came back she was not interested in him anymore.

Nevertheless he always votes for Fulbright and for Gilman and yeah.

That is Kirsten Gillibrand.

Kirsten Gillibrand, you bet.

If you live in New Jersey,

you've got a great congressional delegation there.

Senator Menendez has always voted for Fulbright,

Congressmen Frelinghuysen is a key appropriator and has always done the same.

An individual letter really matters.

I'm a Fulbright alumna.

I teach at FIT,

I live in New York constituency and it made a difference to

what I do every day for the other citizens in your constituency.

So those individual letters,

tomorrow is a good day to send them.

Next week, it doesn't matter,

they're always welcome and they are so much more

impactful than if I said let's get 10,000 letters together.

Because it's the constituent saying,

"It really mattered to me and here's how it's continuing to pay a dividend."

So writing in Congress has never been more important to keep this funding up. All right.

Hi sir, I have a question,

last question, before you leave.

Thank you for the speech first of all and I went to University of Southern California.

I didn't come to FIT for study but my family,

I went to even Christie's Education for Contemporary Modern Art,

for the master's degree there.

But as a foreign student,

I paid a full tuition,

even though at first I apply to USA I was

Ford student and International student but for the Chritie's students,

I'm the green card holder.

But still we paid our full tuition here.

So my question is, there are many citizens who is well prepared in Korea

about the resume' and FIT is very prevalent school and well-known school in Korea.

There are many students who is ready for

application and everything but they have a fund problem.

So my question is do you have any kind of government subsidy to help those students?

I don't want to say that they could come here for free,

they can pay you later like American kid,

they can have a kind of student loan or financial loan so they can pay you back later,

after they got the job or anything.

So do you have any kind of a strategy in FIT for the students who got,

underprivileged students in the foreign countries,

not especially in Korea but many other countries,

especially even the Europe too?

I have many friends in Europe but they said

New York City itself is very highly competitive city to live in,

housing-wise, many things, tuition-wise,

but this is a great city to learn.

So my question is do you have any strategy or government

allocation for those kind of students or government subsidy for those kind of students?

I guess one of the reasons I'm not President of

the University is I believe we ought to lower our prices.

[LAUGHTER] We are seeing an increasing number of students, Korean,

and also European students actually take out loans to get the Made in

USA education especially when they're coming

to high-cost cities like New York and Los Angeles.

So, there's no government subsidy.

Every university sets its own prices.

I think we depend a lot on the benefactors who say, "Gee,

I studied with an International Student when I was at my school,

I want to make it possible for someone from that country to come without having to worry.

Do they have the funds to make that happen?

So, we're going to continue to have to rely on philanthropy,

and probably philanthropy and a mix of loans.

So, unless we get our prices down,

and prices are things that

the foreign student consumer and their parents notice these days.

I think when its 75 or $80,000 a

year and you have to save four years worth of that money,

it's a significant burden on so many families.

But great foundations have stepped up as Ford has, for example,

to make it possible for people who have no hope of having

this resource but the dream and the capacity to study here, do so.

Thank you for your question.

Thanks for all the questions.

Thank you so much, Dr. Goodman.

Thank you. [APPLAUSE]