AMHERST - On a $1,300 monthly allowance, Ahmed Siddig, a University of Massachusetts Amherst international PhD student, is figuring out how to spend his money this month. He has his wife with him, he has to pay his $800 rent, and he is also expecting a baby this April.
Coming from Darfur, Sudan, where the currency rate is three times lower, Siddig starts to get unsure if he could stand in such financial difficulty for three more years.
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| Siddig with his wife, Isra |
Siddig, 28, is one of the 1288 international UMass students who came from the developing nations, and struggling to make ends meet on scholarship and assistantship.
As a highly ranked public school for graduate studies, UMass often attracts graduate students from developing nations who are looking for an inexpensive high quality education.
However, because of the significant disparities with their home countries, often these students find themselves stuck in between the dream for better graduate education in the United States, and the pressing economic reality.
International graduate students make up 25 percent of the UMass graduate student population, and 75 percent of the entire international student population.
Most of the graduate students come with families, and often the scholarship does not cover their living expenses. Some must work two to three additional jobs, while carrying the burden of intensive graduate classes.
To those who do not come with families, they have to go through the stress alone.
Alisher Boboev (a pseudonym), 26, an international MBA student from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, said it is difficult and stressful for these graduate students to manage their studies and financial problems, and he is no exception.
“Sometimes it could get too stressful, I almost feel like giving up,” he said. “But that is the way in graduate school - I’ve sacrificed a lot to come here. So I have to stay.”
Besides having classes five days a week, Boboev who came to UMass in fall 2011, also works ten hours each for his assistantship program and at Worcester Dining Common every week, optimizing the 20-hour weekly employment limit for international students on an F-1 visa.
Like many graduate students on assistantship, Boboev manages to save up to $8,000 on tuition fee every semester, which equals to an average worker’s ten months salary in Uzbekistan.
Instead he is only obligated to pay $900 every semester, which he pays using his personal savings from Uzbekistan.
“[Without additional jobs], it’ll be a little difficult,” said Boboev who relies on his salary from his two jobs for his monthly expenses that totals up to $1070, which sometimes is not enough.
“The income levels of the people [in developing countries] are more moderate. So this makes studying abroad, for the citizens of these [developing] countries, to be tougher, compared to other international students from fast developing countries,” he said.
Meanwhile, for other graduate students, working 20 hours every week still does not seem enough to cover one’s monthly spending.
“I wish I could work more, because I need money,” said Elshaymaa Ahmed, a graduate student in education from Alexandria, Egypt, where the currency rate is six times lower.
Ahmed also admitted her studies are affected significantly by this problem.
“This financial struggle gives me a lot of stress,” she said. “It makes you not focus in your study.”
“I came from a developing country, and there, I never imagined anything like this struggle. I just wanted a better education,” she said.
Ahmed currently works as a part-time Arabic tutor and as a teaching advisor for her assistantship.
She makes $1,000 to $1,200 every month, but barely gets the chance to do much savings.
International students like Ahmed on an F-1 visa are restricted a lot financially. While they are only allowed to work 20 hours per week on campus, they are also not allowed to work off campus at all, where most better-paying jobs are at.
For students who came with spouses, the situation can be a lot tougher, as their spouses on F-2 visa are not allowed to work at all, leaving the financial burden solely on the students.
As they are international students, it is also difficult to resort to financial aid from the university or the state.
Many on campus jobs also prefer undergraduates, hence this leaves international graduate students like Ahmed without many alternatives.
According to the International Student Advisor at International Program Office (IPO), Richard Yam, at least half of the international graduate students are on UMass assistantship.
This means that their tuition fees are waived and they are paid around $800 per month, but that still does not guarantee decent living expenses.
“Most students should have known (of this kind of problems),” said Yam. “For visa offer (before they came here), they must demonstrate if they have sufficient funding or not. Assuming they have a certain amount [of funding], then only we give them visa.”
To obtain the F-1 visa, an international student applying to UMass must show that he or she could provide $42,000 every year.
However, in Ahmed’s case, her life changed instantly after the Arab Spring in 2011. Her financial condition was very different when she came to UMass in fall 2009.
According to Ahmed, her father used to send her $1000 to $2000 every year.
“But then the revolution happened, we don’t have anything [in Egypt]. No business, no job.”
“But then the revolution happened, we don’t have anything [in Egypt]. No business, no job.”
As she has optimized the 20-hour working limit, Ahmed has no other alternative to better her financial standing.
F-1 visa holders can also apply for Employment Based On Economic Hardship program, where they would be able to resort to off campus employment.
However, they are required to demonstrate an extensive proof that they have been under a severe economic condition “due to unforeseen circumstances beyond the student’s control” and that “on-campus employment is unavailable or insufficient.”
This, however, is often not the case of the international graduate students. Ahmed, for example, is well-employed, but she and other students face the problem of the significantly higher living standard in the United States.
IPO officials, however, feel the most the office can do is to provide emotional support.
“The IPO cannot do anything because this is a federal regulation,” said Yam.
However, IPO has also been actively sending out information about outside funding and also community programs for international students to help them going through the stress.
“There are financial sources for them (international students), like scholarship from the Rotary Club, American Embassy, Fulbright,” said Yam. “We always want to help them, so we send this information out.”
Li Gu, a representative from the UMass Graduate Student Senate (GSS), said that this problem does not merely root in the university administration system.
According to Gu, there is an issue with prioritizing when it comes to immigration at the federal level.
“This kind of discussion (about immigration) has been focused on what’s defined as ‘illegal [immigrants]’,” said Gu. “There have been less activism [about the case of] international students, about people who are legally residing in the United States.”
Gu said it is understandable seeing people paying more attention on illegal immigrants issue as the consequences can be seen much clearly - be it to the immigrants, or to the people in the United States.
However, to Gu, it is also a problem that the issues about international students and other legal immigrants are not discussed widely.
“It somehow suggests as if we, these “relative silents,” have more choices (because we are legal immigrants) - while in fact, we do not,” said Gu.
Gu, a PhD candidate in communication, came from China with his wife in 2000. Their two children were born here in 2004 and 2006. The family solely relies on Gu’s assistantship and his job at GSS that total up to $1,600 for monthly expenses.
Gu said this problem also causes depression among spouses of international students who are on the F-2 visa.
“My wife used to be very active in her career in China,” said Gu. “But now she is stranded, not being able to work (because of the visa condition) and she suffered quite a serious depression.”
He also said that this condition makes the international student community to be “legally limited and culturally stranded.”
Gu, however believes there are ways to overcome this at the local level.
“We must encourage our spouses to get together to discern their shared experiences and conditions, [in order to] amplify their voices,” he said.
He also said that it important that the graduate students come together and organize with graduate organizations like GSS, as there are so many of them who are having the same problem.
For now, Siddig, is still figuring out how to manage his finances before the birth of his child. Although some aspects of the delivery are covered by his insurance, he said there is still a portion that requires money from his own pocket.
“So, that is the one source of headache financially, and I should be ready for that before April,” said Siddig.
Currently Siddig is not working any additional job, as the scholarship prohibits him from doing so. But he knows in order to survive for another three years, he has to work at least two jobs next year. He is planning on negotiating his scholarship plan with his sponsor.
“The baby will grow (older),” he said. “Nobody feeds his family on a $400 allowance.”
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