In the article whose link you can click here, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/education/01scotland.html, the focus is on American students choosing colleges that are not only out of state but out of the country. More and more students are choosing to earn their degrees overseas. According to the article, the recent flood of American students is not by accident. The article states that colleges like St. Andrews located in Scotland has “10 recruiters making the rounds of American high schools, visiting hundreds of private schools and a smattering of public ones.” Many students say that the overseas experiences appeals to them because of “the international experience and prestige at a cost much lower than that of one the top private institutions in the United States.” However, with this prestige there are drawbacks, there is less chance of “individual attention form the professors and less chance of specialized courses.” There is also the chance that the alumni organizations are not as easily recognizable in the states once students return home to seek employment. The ironic thing is that American students are paying far more than their residential peers for the exact same education. The controversy here is that the students that are being admitted are in many cases “far less qualified than the European students.” When asked about this, the principal of St. Andrews is quoted as stating ““If a Scottish parent asked why their very talented child did not get in to St. Andrews, when so many Americans did, I would tell them to ask the government, which encourages us to take international students, but caps the number of local students they will pay for.”

According to the article, “Students need not present themselves as the well-rounded package of perfection, as many feel they must to impress American admissions officers.” This alone is reason enough, according to many, for the interest in education overseas. The major requirement, according to both recruiters and students, of the students applying to college overseas is that they “know where they are headed, and to be intellectually independent.

I find this article very interesting. I had no idea that more and more students have a preference of attending school overseas. However, after reading the article, I can say that I do understand the desire. For a student who had absolutely no chance of being admitted to an Ivy-League college, to be admitted to a university overseas and gain (if not more) respect and prestige, is enough all in itself. I also found it interesting that the foreign government places a cap on residential students but encourages international admissions. With the educational standards in most cases being sub-par in the United States and so many students being ill prepared to be admitted to the Ivy-League colleges of their dreams, I can only see this situation increasing. The funny thing is that with the economy the way it is, and the enrollment of students decreasing on a daily basis, I also see us teachers fleeing, I mean leaving the country as well.