Immigration Agency Adds New STEM OPT Fields For Students
The administration has added another eight fields of study to STEM OPT. This announcement has been made through the federal register by the Dept. of Homeland Security which oversees OPT/CPT programs. These new additions were effective as of July 12, 2023. The new fields of study include Landscape Architecture, Institutional Research, Mechatronics, Robotics, and Automation Engineering Technology/Technician, Composite Materials Technology/Technician, Linguistics and Computer Science, Developmental and Adolescent Psychology, Geospatial Intelligence, and Demography and Population Studies. By adding these fields to STEM OPT, students in those fields could qualify for the two year extension for OPT.
“The new fields will be added to STEM OPT (science, technology, engineering and mathematics Optional Practical Training). The announcement provides more international students an opportunity to work in the United States, at least temporarily, at a time when Canada and other nations are seeking to lure away high-skilled foreign nationals.”
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US Universities Want More Students from India, But China Remains a Key Focus
This shouldn’t be new to any of us at Shorelight. Our teams closely monitor student mobility trends and the increasing demand from India has been something we have been dealing with for several intakes. Universities across the country have been looking at diversification beyond China and are increasingly setting their sites on India.
“The vast majority of institutions are focusing on India for graduate student recruitment (77 percent), far outpacing recruitment in all other places of origin. China, Nigeria, and Vietnam, are also strong markets where colleges and universities are conducting outreach to prospective graduate international students,” the report adds.
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American Confidence in Higher Ed Hits Historic Low
While this article doesn’t deal with international students, we never want to see a headline about American confidence in decline. We have known that higher education has come under scrutiny in recent years for issues such as rising tuition, freedom of speech, and domestic student decline. The new poll highlights that the decline in confidence in higher education is in line with trust in other public institutions. The political divide in the US is taking a toll!
“Higher education has always been seen as something good and of value to people; you start to see this partisan divide … and it makes it harder for people to understand the true benefits of higher ed.” Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education
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