Over the summer, the School System of Ohio received a helping hand in achieving its goal of accommodating more international students. On July 25, Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents Eric Fingerhut signed an agreement with Zuhair Humadi, executive director of the Higher Education Committee for the Educational Development of Iraq. This partnership will bring 100 students to Ohio colleges next year, with many more to follow over the next five years.
“Everything we do is driven by our Strategic Plan for Education in Ohio,” Fingerhut told The Lantern. “We’ve been looking for ways to increase the number of international students in Ohio. As our students prepare to be leaders in a global economy, we think this enhances the reputation of Ohio students.”
The influx of new students is all part of the Iraq Education Initiative, a program aiming to send up to 10,000 students a year to universities in America, Canada, Australia and the U.K. The program is starting on a smaller scale, but according to a press release, “at least one-third of the total number of qualified IEI students will be recommended to Ohio institutions.”
“I met the first small group of students,” Fingerhut said, “and I gotta tell you, they were just extraordinary young people. We know obviously that Iraqi society … is a very old society, with many great accomplishments. We have no doubt, in a country that size, there are a large number of students who are well qualified and would benefit from attending the universities of Ohio.”
All of the students participating in the initiative have not yet been selected, and the schools they will attend are still not decided. The program is not a free pass for the Iraqi students nominated, Fingerhut cautioned, and the students will still be able to choose freely among the schools in the partnership, which include universities not in the School System of Ohio such as Vanderbilt, West Virginia and Texas A&M. This decision will come after each individual school evaluates the student’s credentials.
“What we’ll do is we’ll gather their [Iraqi students’] relative information,” he said, “and then we will make it available to our university admissions offices. There are standardized assessments and we won’t hesitate to use them.”
Fingerhut expressed no concern about the volatility in the region interfering with what is now an integral part of Ohio’s 10-year strategic plan. He had been assured that the funding for the program, which comes entirely from the Iraqi government, has already been allocated. He also commented that he felt any university in the United States would be a secure atmosphere and he was not worried about student safety.
“Prime Minister [of Iraq] al-Maliki was quite eloquent in explaining that it was precisely the volatility, caused by the dictatorship, then the war, then the terrorists … that inspired them to seek education abroad,” Fingerhut said. “In some ways this program is a solution to the problems with violence that they have suffered in Iraq.”
Fingerhut said he was extremely pleased with the deal and its impact on the universities of Ohio.
“The advantage for us is clearly to get these very high quality students from Iraq,” he said. “It’s beneficial for our students to work alongside these.”
