Baruch must update its STEM codes for international students
Mohamed Hassan | Pxhere
December 3, 2022
Baruch College must update its codes for STEM-related degree programs to support international students seeking employment after they graduate.
The Department of Homeland Security grants F-1 visas to international students who want to study in the United States. Approximately 1,600 international students are enrolled currently at Baruch.
International students may wish to stay in the country following their graduation and find work.
The Department of Homeland Security can authorize F-1 visa holders temporary employment in the United States, allowing them to undergo one year of optional practical training that is directly related to their degree.
For international students who studied science, technology, engineering and mathematics — otherwise known as STEM — they may also apply for a two-year extension from the department after this period.
The Department of Homeland Security includes a broad range of degree programs as part of the STEM fields. These majors include but are not limited to biological sciences, business, communication, journalism, marketing and psychology.
Baruch offers several majors that qualify in the department’s list of STEM-designated degree programs. But the college does not classify all the qualifying programs as part of the STEM fields.
By updating its STEM codes, Baruch would allow more international students to qualify for the two-year extension for optional practical training.
Baruch would also enable more international students to expand their job prospects beyond their home countries.
Additionally, qualifying international students will contribute to the local workforce, in turn bolstering the economy, especially as the country seeks to recover from employment losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Baruch’s Undergraduate Student Government drafts its academic resolution to update the college’s course codes, Provost Linda Essig should act to make the changes quickly. Otherwise, some of Baruch’s graduates will be deported before finding suitable employment.
Joe • Dec 8, 2022 at 9:43 am
OPT amounts to the government offering a $10,000 per year incentive to employers for hiring a foreign student instead of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. This bonus takes the form of the employer being exempt from paying payroll tax for their foreign student workers (due to their student status, which they technically still have under OPT in spite of having graduated). Why hire Americans, eh?
Since this tax exemption from payroll tax was pointed out in lawsuits against the Dept. of Homeland Security, and has been one of the major points raised by critics, DHS is well aware of it. Yet they refuse to address it or even acknowledge it.
In contrast to DHS previous statements, in which they openly admitted that they intend OPT as an end-run around the H-1B cap, they now describe OPT in warm and fuzzy terms of “mentoring” (putting the “T” back into OPT). That raises several questions:
If the U.S. indeed “needs” the foreign students to remedy a labor shortage, why do these students need training? The DHS/industry narrative is that the U.S. lacks sufficient workers with training, while the foreign workers are supposedly already trained. And, if workers with such training are indeed needed, why won’t these special mentoring programs be open to Americans? Why just offer them to foreign students? Since DHS admitted that its motivation in OPT is to circumvent the H-1B cap, does that mean that if the cap were high enough to accommodate everyone, these same foreign students wouldn’t need training after all?