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For years, UT has advertised that the university has students attending from more than 100 countries.
According to Linda Devine, vice president of operations and planning, this has been advertised for at least five years.
It has appeared this way in the UT profile; however, according to some statistics from the assistant director of the international programs, this past year is the only year UT has had students from 100 different countries.
Though officials stressed that the advertisement said ‘approximately’ 100 countries, UT fell short of that number in Fall 2003 with 84 countries, in Fall 2005 with 87 and in Fall 2008 finally saw 101 countries represented.
As of the Fall 2008 semester UT had 547 international students. Of those, 453 are undergraduate and 94 are graduate. Students come from 91 countries.
Other students are permanent residents of the United States but have citizenship elsewhere.
These countries include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Iran, Latvia, Nicaragua, Scotland, South Africa, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
This adds 10 more countries, making 101 countries represented by students in UT.
Though some students had no prior knowledge of the advertisement, they felt that if they had known they would have expected UT to be more diverse.
Eddie Mockler said, ‘I didn’t know about the advertisement, but if I had seen it I definitely would have expected there to be more diversity on campus.’
Others, such as Krystle Canan did know about the advertisement and as she said, ‘I didn’t really have an expectation on the amount of international students here.’
Christian Carrillo, a student from Venezuela said, ‘I didn’t know about the advertisement, but I don’t think it would have made a difference…there’s a lot of culture here.’
Although it appears that UT has overstated the number of countries it represents, the school has come a long way.
In fall 1989 UT had students from 38 countries. Over the years the number has steadily increased. Spring of 2008 UT represented 81 countries.
In just six months time, the number has increased by 11 countries.
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