→ yohowo:我一直以為ITU是給OPT跟H1b過度期的人簽證的學校..XD 07/18 09:29
→ ccchen:itu 幫了不少人呀,尤其那陣子 h1 第一天就用完 07/22 08:49
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http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18492754
Universities or Visa Mills?
By Lisa M. Krieger
[email protected]
Posted: 07/16/2011 07:30:03 PM PDT
Updated: 07/17/2011 12:24:34 PM PDT
With his new student visa, Prasanth Goinaka was on a path toward
his dream: an MBA from an American university in the heart of
Silicon Valley.
That's why his parents back in India were stunned when their
28-year-old son was killed while manning a cash register at a
convenience store in Oklahoma City -- 1,500 miles from campus.
A Bay Area News Group investigation has found that Goinaka --
as well as thousands of other foreign students enrolled in schools
here -- probably should not have been in the country at all. They're
being lured by unaccredited universities that promise help getting a
prized student visa. But it turns out that these universities' legal
right to assist with visas is in question.
Once here, students like Goinaka often have to go to extraordinary
lengths to pay the bill.
But how he ended up losing his life halfway across the country from
San Jose's International Technological University is part of a much
larger story of the U.S. government's failure to catch up to a
growing problem in America's higher education system.
Little-known and less-watched, a group of schools -- including San
Jose's ITU, Sunnyvale's Herguan University and until recently
Pleasanton's now-shuttered Tri-Valley University -- are building
lucrative businesses by assembling student bodies comprised almost
entirely of student-visa holders. Yet, the newspaper's investigation
found none of the schools meet the criteria necessary to assist
foreign students to come here: They are neither accredited nor do
their credits transfer to recognized universities.
"Universities like Tri-Valley are causing an enormous surge of
international students," said Mohan Nannapaneni, secretary of the
Milpitas-based Telugu Association of North America. The Indian n
onprofit group raised $5,465 to ship Goinaka's body to his
distraught parents and donated legal help to 155 traumatized
Tri-Valley students, some tagged with electronic tracking devices
when the federal government shut down the school on visa fraud
charges.
"Why are we putting immigration authority into (these) "...
universities' hands?" Nannapaneni said.
University officials deny any wrongdoing.
But records reviewed by the newspaper tell a different story about
the schools' actions, and suggest the government and even the
students themselves are to blame for the problem.
Government approved
A decade after terrorists in the country on student visas carried
out the Sept. 11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security --
the very agency established to oversee a tougher visa system --
endorses universities that should be ineligible to issue the
necessary certificate
for students to gain F1 student visas, records show. It even places
these schools on the list that international students consult before
pursuing a degree in the U.S.
Tri-Valley University was on that list even as federal agents were
raiding the school in January on widespread allegations of visa
fraud and alien harboring that left 1,500 foreign students in legal
limbo and sparked violent protests in India.
"It is having approval I thought it is good university," former
Tri-Valley computer science student Harsha Sri, 25, said in an
email. He paid $2,700 to attend less than a month's worth of
classes and is now back in India.
Tri-Valley demonstrates the riches that can be made from turning a
school into a visa mill. When federal agents finally caught on, they
discovered that the unaccredited school had been paid millions of
dollars by foreigners to obtain student visas that authorize them to
remain in the U.S. -- a scheme whose growth was fueled by a
profit-sharing system that gave students who referred newcomers from
abroad a 20 percent cut of the tuition, according to court records.
Something else authorities found suspicious: More than 550 students
enrolled in the Alameda County university were registered as living
at the same address: a two-bedroom apartment on El Camino Real in
Sunnyvale.
Call for crackdown
So how do schools that exist to provide student visas get away with
it? U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein
and other lawmakers are exploring just that, and they're beginning
to demand answers. "These sham universities "... operate solely for
the purpose of manipulating immigration law to admit foreign
nationals into the country," Feinstein and three other senators
wrote in a March letter to Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services that cited the Tri-Valley University
allegations.
Questions have been raised about ITU and Herguan, but those schools
haven't been charged criminally and haven't been accused of the same
conduct.
In the case of the two Silicon Valley universities, their
applications to enroll foreigners with student visas appear to
misrepresent the facts. Both claimed that their credits were
accepted by accredited schools. But when pressed by the newspaper,
neither school could support that assertion. Still, the applications
were accepted by the government, and both schools have been given
clearance to issue the certificates needed for students to get visas.
While the Department of Homeland Security refused to answer questions
about specific schools, it provided the newspaper both ITU's and
Herguan's visa program applications in response to a public records
request. The documents showed:
Herguan's application states that it is accredited by the California
Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education -- an agency that has no
accrediting authority. The Sunnyvale-based school also states that its
coursework is accepted by other recognized schools but provided no
proof on its application, nor any proof when pressed by the newspaper.
In an email response, Richard Friberg, the school's vice president,
said "this is a competitive market, releasing the names of the schools
will cause the receiving schools to withdraw their letters since they
do not want it known that they are supporting schools that are yet to
be accredited. ... you are not going to get HGU to expose the other
schools."
ITU's application acknowledges that it is unaccredited. ITU contends
that it meets federal criteria because its credits are accepted by
recognized universities -- but no proof was submitted. School officials
asserted to the newspaper that their courses are accepted by San Jose
State, Santa Clara, Stanford and the University of California system --
a claim all the universities say is not true.
"We would not award any credit from either institution," said Terri
Eden, who oversees SJSU's transfer credit policies.
Big prize: Legal jobs
Still, trusting students arrive at these schools in droves, lured by
fancy websites and advertising slogans such as ITU's "Global Development
Through Silicon Valley Education." About 900 students are attending ITU's
summer school -- and it plans to enroll up to 5,000 students when
renovations are complete. The school does not require standardized test
scores for admission and employs a "quality control officer" in
Hyderabad, India, for prospective students.
In an interview with the newspaper, ITU said its graduates get jobs at
tech companies like Brocade and Intel. Brocade has no records of any
ITU graduates; Intel has one.
At Herguan, about 450 students are enrolled. Until recently, the lobby
was decorated with photos of its president with former Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger and commendations from U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose,
and others.
The students are attracted for another big reason: legal jobs.
Government approval means that the schools are authorized to offer
"Curricular Practical Training," a program that is supposed to give
on-the-job experiences that are "an integral part of an established
curriculum" directly related to the students' major area of study,
according to federal regulation.
The federal government leaves it to colleges to determine what kind of
job is legitimate, saying it doesn't want to meddle in curriculum issues.
At Tri-Valley, immigration officials found "career training" for many
students translated to low-level retail jobs, such as at a dollar store,
a 7-Eleven and a tobacco shop, in New Jersey, Virginia, Texas and other
states.
In need of jobs
Goinaka came to San Jose's ITU in January 2010 with a bachelor's degree
and a stint in the Indian navy.
Video surveillance at S-K Food Store where he worked in Oklahoma City
shows a heartbreaking scene. He was dragged from the cash register,
shoved to the ground, and then shot in the head by armed robbers.
"I can't believe this. He left only two months ago for studies and now
we heard that he is no more," Goinaka's father told Indian journalists
in March 2010. "Oh god, why this happened to him."
Goinaka had friends in Oklahoma, where police reports show he arrived
on a Friday, the same day ITU officials said he attended class in San
Jose. Two days later he was dead. It's unclear how he proved to the U.S.
consulate in India that he had enough money to live in the U.S., a
requirement for a student visa.
On news of his death, one friend wrote to an Indian newspaper: —...
due 2 financial prbs he desperately needed a job. But I NEVER expected
this would happen 2 him. But he did wat he had to. R.I.P love u alwys."
Federal law requires that foreign students attend class full time and
not take more than one online class per academic term. ITU says that it
has students who live outside California, but who travel to San Jose
for weekend classes.
"It can be done on a weekend format. "... They can do assignments from
a distance. The model of the school is very tied to industry," said
Gregory O'Brien, ITU's dean of Advanced Graduate Studies and Research.
"Distance learning is a proven concept."
Mikel Duffy of ITU said: "What happened to Prasanth Goinaka was very
tragic," adding, "Prasanth, as all of the other graduate students at
ITU, was a legal adult and took it upon himself to make the trip to
Oklahoma City."
But members of the group that helped ship his body home say Goinaka's
story is an example of the broken promises many Indians are finding at
colleges in the U.S.
"He was a hardworking and disciplined kid and we lost him in this
country," said Prasad Thotakura, president of the Telugu Association
of North America.
"He came to this country to further his education and to go back and
help his parents by getting a good job. He was their only son. All
their dreams have been shattered."
Accreditation promises
Housed in nondescript office buildings, both ITU and Herguan say they
are legitimate universities and offer valuable coursework, as well as
a legal route for foreign students to work off campus.
They both said that no school can be accredited until it is up and
running -- and that they are now seeking accreditation and expect
approval.
"We will be accredited," said ITU Vice President Yau-Gene Chan, who
took over the school from his father in 2005 -- a year after it lost
accreditation -- when it had only 18 students and was $87,000 in debt.
By 2009, it had enrolled 1,500 students and earned $4 million. Because
of student demand, it moved to its current site on West San Fernando
Street, with 12 classrooms; when renovation is complete, it will have
18 classrooms.
"Our research can very easily compete with MIT or Princeton or
Berkeley or Stanford," he said, adding that its students have gone on
to earn Ph.D.s at those schools, although he offered no evidence. Even
without accreditation, "because we provide documentation of what a
student is learning, we can get our credits recognized. We do such a
careful job of documenting what a student learns, and they see the
quality of our students."
ITU graduate Bhagat Patlolla landed a job at a Stanford cardiovascular
research lab, but had already earned a medical degree in Russia before
attending ITU. "Studying at ITU involved hard work and commitment," he
said in an email, praising the faculty. "Two years at ITU taught me a
lot."
Although ITU is a nonprofit university, its leadership is well paid.
ITU's academic vice president, Gerald Cory, earned $445,832 in 2009,
the most recent year that data is available -- more than the $436,800
salary of UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.
Herguan University did not consent to an interview, but in a written
response, officials said, "HGU believes it meets the standards for
accreditation and plans to be accredited within the next 12 months."
Herguan did not permit on-campus interviews of its students. But one,
who asked that his name not be used, said, "This university surely did
some mistakes and this is the reason behind all this chaos. But they
have changed all the rules. "... I think we have to give them a chance."
Meanwhile, despite facing a 33-count indictment, Tri-Valley President
Susan Xiao-Ping Su is asking her former students to keep faith on the
former school's website. Su -- who has a Ph.D. in mechanical
engineering from UC Berkeley and lectured at Herguan in 2007, ITU in
2004 to 2007, and San Jose State from 2004 to 2007 -- urges students
"to move on" but adds: "TVU has many good things and is a very genuine
university. We are working very hard to have our name cleared."
Jump in student visas
Feinstein and four other senators have called for better procedures to
detect fraud by schools and an immediate crackdown on illegal use of
student visas by foreign nationals to attend universities that "exist
solely to allow any foreign national "... to unlawfully enter the
United States."
It wasn't always like this, said Nannapaneni of the Telugu Association
of North America.
Decades ago when Nannapaneni left India to study at Boston University,
far fewer universities were approved to accept international students,
he said; now, federal data show that 10,000 schools do. In the
five-year period that ended in 2009, foreigners in the country on
student visas jumped 55 percent to more than 950,000. In the past,
these universities were academically rigorous, he said, carefully
checking applicants to make sure they were qualified.
"Then universities started going abroad and recruiting people off the
streets," Nannapaneni said. "They don't check their backgrounds, to
see if they are qualified. What has happened is that there was a big
trend change."
Michael Wildes, a prominent New York City-based immigration lawyer,
said, "There is a shift of immigration responsibility to the schools.
But the schools are profit-making centers. This creates a point of
vulnerability in the system."
The students at these unaccredited schools tend to be from India's
young and growing middle class, and whose parents are not college
educated, say Indian educators.
"They can't visualize that the schools might not have a good
reputation," Nannapaneni said. "Or they might think, 'What the hell,
I'll see what is there.' They hear their friends are going, and they
all want to come."
"Once they get here, they realize it's not right. But they still
need to pay their fees," to hang onto their student visas, "and
they start working outside, because they're desperate for money."
Back in India, Tri-Valley student Sri is poorer and still jobless.
"Students are joining without knowing," Sri said, "so unfortunately
they are losing their careers, money and time."
Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 408-920-5565.
Are rarely accepted by accredited schools, making it tough to transfer.
May not be accepted by advanced-degree programs, such as graduate
schools or medical or law schools.
Do not qualify a graduate for an H1B visa, the sought-after visa that
allows foreign nationals with specialized knowledge to work in the U.S.
H1B visas are only granted to applicants with a degree from an
accredited school.
A computer science student worked at an Economy Dollar store in
Alexandria, Va.
MBA students worked at a tobacco shop called High Life in Houston
and a Houston security firm.
Health care administration students worked at a 7-Eleven in
Plainfield, N.J., and a Dillard's department store in Murray, Utah.
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