Suzanne Ortega is president of the Council of Graduate Schools, a not-for-profit group based in the United States. The council provides support to graduate school education and research projects.

Ortega told VOA that just like for everyone else, the sudden, unexpected spread of the coronavirus came as a shock to U.S. academic institutions. Luckily, many schools have been developing crisis communication and risk management plans for years. Some acted quickly, deciding not just to send students home and move classes online. They also decided which research projects to continue and which ones could be delayed.

While colleges sort through those challenges, education groups are making the case to federal officials that Optional Practical Training is an essential tool for bringing international students to U.S. campuses.

“This should not be an us versus them type of conversation,” said Lauren Inouye, vice president for public policy and government affairs at the Council of Graduate Schools.

Elite schools actually saw an increase last year in international graduate students, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

STATEMENT FROM THE CGS PRESIDENT AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Dear Colleagues,

Recent days and weeks have brought us heart-wrenching reminders of race-based inequality and injustice. In addition to COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on students of color and their families, we have witnessed appalling acts of racism and violence toward African Americans—most recently George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade—acts that cause further distress and fear among communities already suffering. 

The CGS Board of Directors condemns both the deeply embedded and structural forms of racism and injustice we see around us as well as their most immediate manifestations. We also stand in solidarity with people of color in our community as they confront painful examples of violence and injustice.

We also acknowledge that words are not enough.  As an organization, we affirm our commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion at all levels of graduate education. We will continue working with our members to make programs more diverse and accessible, to promote diversity as a principle that supports the learning of all students, to deepen our understanding of inclusive mentoring practices, and to provide inclusive and accessible student support services. 

Of equal importance, we commit to helping our students develop the conceptual frameworks and analytic methods necessary to understand social and economic forms of injustice, in all their manifestations.  We also commit to helping them develop the leadership skills necessary to begin building a better, more just society.  To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, we must create graduate programs and institutional cultures that prepare students to be the change this world so desperately needs.

If you have suggestions for how CGS can better support this work, please contact president@cgs.nche.edu.

In solidarity with you, your staff, and your students,

Suzanne T. Ortega
President
Council of Graduate Schools

Sally Pratt 
Chair, CGS Board of Directors (2020)
Vice Provost for Graduate Programs University of Southern California
on behalf of the CGS Board of Directors

“Hispanic Serving Institutions: A Critical Pipeline to Graduate School for Latinx Students” is an information brief and interactive toolkit designed to help close the gap in graduate degree attainment for Latinx students. The project was led by JoAnn Canales, CGS’s Dean-In-Residence from 2018 through 2019. Dr. Canales’ work underscores how the graduate enrollment and degree attainment of Latinx students continues to lag behind those of other groups. The project identified Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) - defined as accredited, degree-granting public or private non-profit institutions of higher education with at least 25% full-time equivalent undergraduate students who identify as Hispanic - as a possible vanguard to lead the higher education community as they address this disparity. 

The brief is accompanied by a set of checklists looking at how Latinx students can be more successfully recruited, retained, and supported during various phases of the graduate student lifecycle. These checklists are not only designed as a complimentary framework to the brief, but also to provide administrators with a tool to help assess and implement the resources needed to improve Latinx student outcomes.  

Additional CGS Resources

Doctoral Initiative on Minority Attrition and Completion 

Innovation in Graduate Admissions Through Holistic Review 

The Global Postgraduate Diversity Resource - A CGS-ETS Joint Initiative

Graduate Enrollment and Degrees, 2008-2018

Building a Diverse, Equitable, Accessible, and Inclusive Graduate Community: A Statement of Principles

Contact

Julia Kent

The Council of Graduate Schools has done a yearly report on international student applications, admissions, and enrollments since 2004. For the first time since fall 2003, it found that 2017 applications from international graduate students dropped by 3 percent and enrollment by 1 percent compared to 2016. The 2019 report from the Council of Graduate Schools showed that for fall 2018, applications from international graduate students fell by 4 percent and first-time enrollment was down 1 percent from 2017. The bulk of the declines were from master’s and certificate programs, and from students from the Middle East and North Africa, where five of the seven nations included in the January 2017 travel ban are located. For instance, in fall 2017, applications from prospective Iranian students dropped by 18 percent.

The president of the Council of Graduate Schools, Suzanne Ortega, said she also understood the concern that motivated the student protests and urged her institutions to make clear their acceptance of pass-fail grading.

Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, said she agreed with almost all of the points in the students’ letter — particularly with the idea that an applicant should be judged on an entire package of information rather than a single piece of evidence. Some universities have issued statements emphasizing holistic file review, she said.

Graduate students are a different story. April 15 is a common deadline to accept financial support from a university the following academic year. These types of support include graduate scholarships, fellowships and assistantships. The Council of Graduate Schools, a national organization for graduate deans, hasn’t changed its deadline but cautions that individual colleges and programs could move theirs.

If you are interested in a position like mine that supports graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, I would explore the resources of the Graduate Career Consortium and Council of Graduate Schools as a starting point. You can unearth more of these professional organizations by adding this question to the informational interviews that you’re conducting.