Shaun Carver (University of California Berkeley) on Enhancing Support for International Learners

On this episode, Shaun Carver, Executive Director and CEO of International House at the University of California Berkeley, discusses the recent policy changes around international students and how to provide them the best support system. 

Transcript

Voiceover: Welcome to Illumination by Modern Campus, the leading podcast focused on transformation and change in the higher education space. On today’s episode, we speak with Shaun Carver, who is Executive Director and CEO of International House at the University of California Berkeley. Shaun and podcast host Shauna Cox discuss the recent policy changes around international students and how to provide them the best support system. 

Shauna Cox(00:02):Shaun, I'm so glad you could join me today. Welcome to the Illumination Podcast.

Shaun Carver (00:06):Thank you. I appreciate you having me on.

Shauna Cox(00:09):Absolutely. Now you are housed in the international house, so international students might be your forte. So that's what we're going to talk about today. And so I want to kick off our conversation with the question of how do the policies regarding international students in the UK and Canada influence learners and educational institutions?

Shaun Carver (00:32):Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I feel I'm fairly empathetic. So to think about what it must be like for an international student who's looking towards the us, looking to Canada, uk, Australia to do their degree and then see what's going on in these countries, hear the rhetoric coming from the politicians during these election cycles, it must be very challenging right now to feel like this is a good choice. So much uncertainty is brought in by these policy changes that are happening very quickly. It can be difficult. These students, especially the top students that are looking at our universities, they have choices they can apply to top universities in Canada. They can apply to the top universities, UK and the us. And so ultimately they're going to make a decision based on where they feel most comfortable. And some of these policies that are coming in place in Canada, which I know where you're at as well as UK, makes it feel probably very unwelcoming and that's not good for our industry. I'm very international education inbound and outbound. And these policies must make people feel very unwanted.

Shauna Cox(01:56):Absolutely. And I want to dive into that a little bit more and talk about the challenges that you're starting to see. So what are some of those major challenges that are faced by institutions in meeting the needs of these international students?

Shaun Carver (02:09):I think part of the challenges just keeping up with these changes and how they're impacting the business of the universities, you put a cap on international students, the next step is these administrators looking at their budgets and saying, how are we going to make up for this loss in revenue? I would say international students, because they're fully funded and oftentimes are paying significantly more than a domestic student would. The universities have been reaping benefits from increased enrollments of international students. And part of the challenges they're facing now is that they weren't investing some of those back into the resources to support students. And so increasing 10% increase in the number of students at your university, but you don't increase housing to house them when they come is where you get challenges, where they have to find a place to live. There's an impact in the community and that's what we're seeing in some areas, which you're probably well familiar with. Well, as state budgets, especially here in California, United States, the state budgets for state universities has been declining and universities have been supplementing that with increased enrollment numbers in international students. And so if we're going to limit the number of international students and the states aren't going to step up and keep the campus budgets afloat, it's a difficult situation.

Shauna Cox(04:06):Absolutely. And I want to touch on a point that you mentioned earlier about specifically supporting these international students who are going to need that help from their institution. So what specific support services are necessary to assist international students to navigate their journey that might be different than a domestic student?

Shaun Carver (04:28):And that's I think reflecting on the universities and places I've been part of, that's always the challenge. You have to look at the full lifecycle of an applicant to a student, to an alumni, and what are the resources and support that they need throughout that, certainly on the front end as they're applying, understanding the visa application process, understanding how to find accommodation, where you're going to live, what if you have a spouse, how do you navigate that? And when you see in the UK and they're talking about restricting the number of spouse visas for graduate students, now you're asking people to leave their family behind to come study. What a tough choice that is for people on the front end while on campus. I think the challenge right now for international students on campus is that especially in the us, these campus communities are very divisive, very polarizing.

(05:27):And while the state of our society, at least I can speak on behalf of the US is very polarized, everything is a black white, you're on this side or that side. When you start bringing in people from around the world, you start recognizing there's a very diverse range of views and opinions on everything. There isn't a right and a wrong depending on where you're from, your culture, what's important to your society. You look at these issues differently. And I think that's one of the things that makes iHouse a really special is we have so much diversity within this house. The divisiveness that's on campus is not within our community because there is no dominant view, dominant culture. Everybody comes in here and everyone's view is valued and we listen to everybody and we're less arrogant to think, well, my view is right, your view is wrong.

(06:22):We're more apt to listen and try to understand where they're coming from, which helps us have better informed opinions and that's very healthy. We don't see the division that happens on campus within our community. And I have Palestinian and there's Israeli students that have Russian and Ukrainian students. They live together, they share bathrooms together, they dine together, they socialize together. And we talk about these issues just like on campus but in much more civil, healthy ways. And I think if I was an international student looking at the environment on these campuses right now, they're becoming very political. And if you are going to have a political view in your higher ed, you're automatically going to be excluding people outside of that. And that's not what universities we're all about. I think we have to be very firm on creating an environment with free speech that all views are welcome.

(07:18):We don't have to agree, but we should listen, we should understand and we should move forward. Trying to find peaceful ways to coexist, not polarize and try to push others out. Absolutely. So I think that's really important. As we have so much diversity in this house, they kind of try to empathize with what a view of other folks within my house see these issues. And if I was to take a stand and we're nonprofit, we're apolitical, I just want to understand the issues and form our own opinions, and I look at what's going on in some of these campuses and some of their statements, I'm like, you're going to lose all of the folks on this other side.

(08:02):And again, I don't think that creates the best learning environment. It doesn't lead to the best research outcomes. And I think that's something we need to, as leaders in higher ed, we need to recapture and just be a little bit more focused on diverse opinions coming together, thinking together, coming to solutions together. I mean we've, iHouse is a hundred year old institution. We've been doing this since 1930 and we've been through all sorts of global and regional conflicts. We've been part of the free speech movement here in Berkeley as the civil rights movement. So we've been heavily involved and it's always based on listening and understanding other people's views and opinions and trying to work together.

Shauna Cox(08:46):

Absolutely. And I think with your long history there, you've learned a thing or two along the way and you're talking about supporting students, creating that environment. And I really want to pull from your playbook here and ask you what are some effective strategies or best practices to establish that more inclusive and supportive campus environment for these international students?

Shaun Carver (09:12):Yeah, I mean clearly after a hundred years we have such passionate alumni. I talked to folks that stayed here literally in the forties during what was called the golden Age here. And they stayed for one year in 1947, and they still remember that one year they had here, the friends they made, the connections they made, and this was coming out of World War ii, and so it wasn't the most, society as a whole was not necessarily coming together. They were trying to heal. And I remember a story of one of our alumnis saying who was a veteran of World War II coming in here and being with Japanese and residents here sharing that community. And two years ago we were at war with each other and now I'm sitting down and having lunch with them and they're my friends. That's really important. And I think that happens.

(10:01):Getting back to your question, because we're able to manufacture so much complexity within this house because we're an independent nonprofit, when we do admissions decisions, we're trying to make it complicated. We have 20% domestic students and we group domestic students and we think of 'em like one group, but if you looked at 20% and just said they're American students, there's complete diversity within that group. They're not all thinking the same way. There's a lot of diversity within that. And then our next largest group is in Asia, so we probably have eight or 9% Chinese, eight or 9% Indian followed by France, European countries. We work with the man guard. So we have this extremely complicated community, not just geographically, but we also have economic diversity. We do about a million dollars of scholarships. So we have folks who are here that aren't the wealthiest kids from around the world.

(11:01):We have diversity in areas of study, we have diversity in gender, any way that you can measure diversity, we want to make that part of this community. And so nobody is on solid ground when they walk into I house. No one is like everyone's my view and everybody's behind me. It's like you're sitting down and you've got four or five people who probably disagree with you, but we're all part of the same community. When I look at some of the ways that universities handle international students is international dorm, so they're kind of secluded from the domestic students and I think that's not to the benefit. Or they do affinity houses where you get like-minded people living together and that creates kind of a bubble with iHouse. Our policies on undergrad is you share a room and it has to be a person from a different country, so there's no comfort zone, which is great.

(12:02):There's no comfort zone. And so everyone's pushed to feel a bit uncomfortable and to understand that your view is just one of 620 in this house, and that opens you up to a little bit vulnerable to listen and to share. And that's the special thing I think for a lot of, when I look across the street at the university community, they tend to tribe turn into tribes of like-minded people. And I think that's what we're different is our tribe is iHouse and that tribe is made up from people from all over the world and we're where we want to come together. We want to hear differences of opinions, we want to be challenged, we want to hear from people on both sides of this view on any issue. And I want to try to understand and ask questions so I can understand. And that seems to be missing in the college campuses right now, is that people have their view, they surround themselves with people with the same view and they don't want to listen to anyone else. And there's no learning in that, right?

Shauna Cox(13:11):Absolutely.

Shaun Carver (13:13):So anyway, that was a long answer. I went on a bit on my soapbox there, but I think it's important that people get out of their comfort zones and expose themselves to challenging ideas, things they may adamantly disagree with, but sit down and talk to someone in a civil way, ask questions, right? Listen, try to understand where they're coming from, make it sound to what we're all looking for the same thing. We just want opportunity and a better life and we have a lot of different ways in how we do that. And so how do we come together to make sure that we can all achieve that goal?

Shauna Cox(13:48):Absolutely. I love that motto, that philosophy that you guys have, getting yourself outside the box out of your comfort zone. I think it's really important, especially for these international students who are coming here for a very specific experience. So it's great that you guys are doing that. Sorry, there was some really aggressive honking outside down. But I want to go back to the point that you were making because it's really stuck in my head, is this alumni who was a World War II vet and their experience there. And I think this kind alludes or is a great example for this next question of how does creating this welcoming and supportive environment impact both the learners in their institution?

Shaun Carver (14:32):Yeah, it definitely has a big impact on the learners and obviously that's where I come from. I oversee this community and part of this community and the word gets used way too much, but it is a transformative experience. People leave here different than when they came in because they're exposed to so much diversity. When you have 600 people from 75 different nationalities all living together and then all the other diversity we talked about, they're just exposed to conversations that they wouldn't have anywhere else. I talk about this is the most diverse community outside the United Nations, but even at the un, people go home to their apartments, they go to their churches, they go to their restaurants, they go to their social groups. Here, this is it. There's nowhere to go. You are embedded in this community. And so there is no bubble or safe space to go to, which sounds challenging and I think scary to some folks.

(15:31):It really is fantastic because there's so much growth that comes from that. When was the last time any of us had sat down and had a conversation with someone from Ukraine about this issue or sat down from someone from Russia and had we were all getting our news cycles and getting a view, but is there another side that we're not hearing and that happens person to person? And so I think it really is transformative and our whole mission, the reason iHouse exists is to create this global community of people that listen and understand each other and want to find a peaceful way to move forward together. And that's our mission to make the world a more peaceful place. And we do it by understanding each other better. So I think that's the power of the impact on the learners, on the campus communities. What does the institution get?

(16:27):I hope that in some ways we're an example of how the campus communities should be. I'm only dealing with 600 and these are like-minded folks who apply to come here because they want to be part of this incredible community. But as a campus, we should be celebrating our diversity. We should be celebrating differences of opinions. We shouldn't be canceling speakers, we shouldn't be taking sides. We should say, Hey, look, this is complicated. There's conflict here and we're going to resolve it by coming together and listening and trying to understand and using all of this incredible knowledge and experience within our community to help find a solution. And unfortunately we're just into this political tribalism, throwing rocks at each other and saying, you're wrong. I'm right. And there's no end to that. So I hope from the institutions they can see that how we do things and the community that we're able to create, although a small Petri dish, this experiment, it shows as a model of how we want university communities to be, that we respect everybody's point of view, it's an area of free speech. We defend that vigorously and we are apolitical. So yeah, I hope that's how universities can look at us as a model of how the communities they want to create on their campuses.

Shauna Cox(17:51):Absolutely, and I think you highlighted in the beginning of our conversation really that there's just a lot going on when it comes to international students no matter what country you're in. And so I want to ask you, because of course you're going to have a crystal ball to know everything in the future, right? So I want to ask you, what trends do you anticipate in relation to international students in the near future?

Shaun Carver (18:15):Well, I think in the near term, when you look at the economic and social issues and political issues happening in the us, Canada, uk, Australia certainly is probably not a very exciting time for international students. Everyone seems to be wanting to reduce the number of students coming in top. Students are always going to be welcome to the top universities. The ones that probably aren't as worried, but I always envision you go to a wedding and they have the champagne tower and international students are the champagne you pour into the top of it. The top universities are always, those glasses are always going to be full, but as you go down the pyramid at the lower end of those pyramids, when you start limiting the amount of champagne, those are the ones that just start seeing drastic declines. In international students, the top students are always going to have a place to go and the top universities are always going to want it the best from around the world, and that's very economically very challenging, that the unknown and swing of revenue can be very, very challenging for a lot of universities that aren't in the upper echelon.

(19:33):And that's going to be, I think part of the challenge is in the near future is in the next few years there's going to be some serious budget constraints within those universities. I've been in this long enough to see the pendulum swing. I think part of the reason we're seeing these policies come into place is because international enrollment has drastically increased in the last post pandemic years. And so this is symptomatic of those increases and not being able to catch up on building more buildings, more housing, more classrooms, more administration to provide support. So eventually those things will catch up. I think. So long term I think we're fine. Short term, there's certainly some challenges for international students and for universities in the next probably three to five years I think.

Shauna Cox(20:29):Absolutely. Well, Sean, that's everything that we have for you, but before I let you go, we're going to need a restaurant recommendation. You are of course based in Berkeley, California, so if someone's coming to town, where do they need to go?

Shaun Carver (20:47):Berkeley's been around for a long time. There's a lot of restaurants that have a long history here in the area, and one of my favorites, if I'm going to take my staff for lunch, we're going to walk down the street to Top Dog, which is been around for a long time. It's a hot dog restaurant, it's a hole in the wall, it's an institution. People who graduated from Berkeley probably in the fifties, sixties and seventies, all talk about Top Dog. It's still there and it's an institution and as iHouse has been here in 1930, we're a hundred years this building. You kind see the picture behind it. It's a hundred years old as well. It's tradition, legacy. Those things are important to us. And so supporting local businesses like Top Dog is fantastic. So there's plenty of fine dining as well, but we're in a student community, so it's good to experience with our residents and what our students experience on a daily basis. Top Dog, highly.

Shauna Cox(21:52):I love it. Sometimes a hole in the wall is one of the best places, and if it's been there for that long, then it's clearly good.

Shaun Carver (22:00):I mentioned I spent 13 years in Asia and I've eaten at all kinds of restaurants. I've eaten on the streets in Beijing, and I've had some of the most incredible meals, street food, street vendors, hole in the walls. In some ways, that's where the best food is.

Shauna Cox(22:20):Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. Sean, thank you so much for joining me today. It was great chatting with you.

Shaun Carver (22:26):No, my pleasure. Thank you. And thank your audience for.