It comes during a Trump crackdown on top universities, which he accuses of failing to combat antisemitism.
www.bbc.co.uk
The war on academic institutions continues in the USA. Attacking the courts, attacking law makers, attacking lawyers and attacking academia, these definitely aren't traits seen in the rise of pretty much every despotic regime...
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beingcanada.com
British immigration authorities have reportedly been ordered to check people’s social media accounts when they are applying for a UK visa, in a policy echoing
www.visalogic.net
I mean, look at the German system, they currently use social media checks for international student applications, but Bundespolizei are proposing a much more rigorous system, which will probably disrupt and delay applications (or that's what German universities are countering with).
The handbook created by them around Visa fraud, wants interviewers use open sources to design interview questions, looking at risk profiles of incoming students, and individualising targeted questioning.
Infact, the requirements and checks for a school like Ludwig Maximilians are astonishing (as I recently found out lol). Social media checks are currently a thing, but the new systems if implemented (according to family who work there) would be the most intense in the world, and Germans understandably don't want the havoc of implementing a new system, calling it potentially the next Brandenburg.
So, depending on how you view this, it could be seen as further punishment to American universities, or a slight delay in new student visa applications, while they utilise open source technology. The devil will be in the detail I suppose.
Currently, the social media element was added in 2019, it has 1 question on the DS - 160 that asks to identify social media used in the last 5 years. Apparently there are no further checks, and this answer is acknowledged as evidenced based social media use.
According to Pew, of the 500k overstayers in 2023, 42k were student visas, and 10k were fraudulent upon entry.
This is a good report:
NAFSA: Association of International Educators is the world's largest nonprofit association dedicated to international education and exchange.
www.nafsa.org
Ultimately, if this is a change in policy to increase verification and risk profiling, it is very much in line with the western world, who are all exploring these options.
If this is in part of a larger campaign against USA universities, then it's either seen as an attack on higher education to fall in line with ideals more preferential to Trump, or to MAGA supporters draining an activist biased swamp of those who seek to disrupt and coerce the next generation.
Arguments to be made on both sides I suppose. If we look at behaviours on and off campus over the last 10 years, and every study acknowledges a clear and distinct bias to the left by all involved, we can say that Universities do have an issue, needing adressing.
From my POV US universities tend to talk left, allow their staff to promote popular left leaning views, but they certainly act right. I'd rather see the restriction on non productive degrees, the reviewing of cost, and debt allocation to students, and a more robust entry system that doesn't exploit and manipulate hundreds of thousands of kids a year to get lives of debt, and financial hardship for degrees in fields they cannot work.