CROOKSTON, Minn. — Two years into the University of Minnesota Crookston’s partnership with the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam, UMC Chancellor Mary Holz-Clause believes the program mutually enriches the lives of students.
UM-Crookston officially started a partnership with USSH, a university in Ho Chi Minh City, in May 2023. As part of a 2+2 joint degree program, students from USSH can complete the last two years of their degree in Crookston, Minnesota. This fall, a cohort of 10 students will be arriving on campus.
Holz-Clause said she hopes collaboration between students can expand their respective worldviews.
“We’re part of a global world,” Holz-Clause said. “And so we want our students, whether they’re our students that are from the U.S. or students that are coming to us, to begin to have a better understanding of working together.”
Vietnam is now the fifth top “sending country,” a term UMC Director of Global Programs Sok Leng Tan used to describe countries with the most students seeking education abroad. For many years, Tan said China was the top sending country, but India has recently taken over the No. 1 spot. The top five sending countries currently are India, China, South Korea, Canada and now Vietnam.
Holz-Clause said a main reason for the rise in Vietnamese students studying at U.S. universities is the strong business relations between the two countries.
“There’s just a really strong desire amongst particularly Vietnamese parents for their children to study in the United States and for them to learn English,” Holz-Clause said. “Vietnam has done well financially and they have strong business relationships with many U.S. firms and U.S. companies.”
Holz-Clause and Tan said integration of international students with the rest of the student body is a priority. Tan said particularly for students studying international business or agriculture (around 60% of the student body studies the latter), establishing international connections and cross-cultural communication skills can be important for professional development.
“We are such an interconnected world these days that you can’t be siloed,” she said.
Initially there are activities for just international students, Tan said, but as the year goes on, events become more integrated. There is an international office on the Crookston campus and an orientation program to help students overcome language barriers, become accustomed to cultural differences and get any support for school or personal issues.
“We have an open door policy,” Tan said. “Students will just come by and talk to us about issues they face.”
Tan and Holz-Clause said students have increased concerns about getting and maintaining visas. Holz-Clause said the main questions asked by parents used to be about winter clothes and buying dorm materials, but it quickly changed this year, as discussion shifted to concerns about visas.
“They’re concerned that the U.S. government may do something which would change the ability of their child to come to the U.S.,” she said. “And they’re also a little bit concerned that if they go home, if they’re going to get back into the country.”
These concerns could come after numerous actions by the Trump administration affecting international students, including the now-blocked ban on international students from entering Harvard , the revoking of student visas without warning , new policies requiring all international students to have public social media profiles and general discussions by the administration against immigration.
“It was just interesting how politics have changed that conversation from what it used to be,” Holz-Clause said.
She said all international students must comply with the law and that the university helps ensure students are in compliance. While all international students must do a visa interview alone with the U.S. embassy, UM-Crookston representatives will go with the student to the embassy to show their support.
“We have done what we can to show them that indeed, the University of Minnesota is going to support these students when they come,” Holz-Clause said.
One of the reasons UM-Crookston attracts international students is because of its set tuition, said Holz-Clause. All students, regardless of whether they are in-state or international, pay the same price.
“You’re paying a public education price, but you are getting a private one,” Holz-Clause said.
She said international students do not have access to U.S. federal aid and grant assistance, so they must prove they can pay the cost of tuition out of pocket before being accepted into the program. Holz-Clause said because UMC is a part of the larger University of Minnesota system, students are getting a prestigious degree, but paying less than it would cost at other schools across the nation.
To be eligible for the 2+2 program in Crookston, students must have a GPA of 2.0 or higher and fulfill an English language proficiency requirement.
This fall, a third cohort of students will be arriving on campus. The cohort from last year, Holz-Clause said, can help students get acclimated.
“Having the other cohort is really good, because they can help this group, and they themselves also sort of serve as peer mentors,” she said.
Both Tan and Holz-Clause believe the program expands all students’ views of the world and enriches their experience on campus.
“… We hope that everybody will learn from one another,” Holz-Clause said. “That this becomes a learning community where we learn to respect, understand and be curious about different cultures and different ways of doing things, different perspectives.”
