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Iranian Students OK Financially

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Parent Issue
Day
27
Month
January
Year
1979
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OCR Text

Iranian students OK financially

By Max Gates
HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER

Iranian students at the University of Michigan have apparently worked out financial problems caused by the political turmoil in their homeland, according to officials of the University’s International Center.

So far, no Iranian students have been forced to drop out of school because of the trouble, officials said this week.

The University’s policy of deferring tuition payments has apparently solved the problems of students who were unable to get money out of Iran, said Susan I. Nisbett, foreign student faculty adviser at the International Center. “Everybody with a problem has gotten it solved by now,” she said.

Iranian students had been having trouble getting funds from home because other nations have not been accepting Iranian currency. Iranians outside Iran have to convert Iranian money to other currencies within Iran and the only agency which does that, the Iranian Central Bank, has been closed sporadically by strikes.

The University agreed three weeks ago to defer tuition payments for students who had kept their accounts up to date in the past.

James F. Montgomery, another foreign student faculty adviser, attended a meeting in Washington, D.C., Wednesday to discuss the problems of Iranian students at U.S. universities. Montgomery said there has been little change in the plight of Iranian students or what universities might do to help them.

Michigan’s program to ease the financial worries for Iranian students matches the best that is being done, he indicated.

There are about 120 Iranian students registered at the U-M this term, evenly divided between graduate and undergraduate students, Montgomery said. Nearly 75 percent of the Iranians are in the School of Engineering and another 15 percent are in sciences departments such as physics and math, he said.

Montgomery said the population of Iranian students has dropped from the 200 registered for the fall term. But the decrease is due to graduations, transfers and earlier drop-outs, not to the political turmoil in Iran, he added.

Iranians at some other campuses have not been so fortunate in working out their problems.

About 100 Iranian students at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo faced expulsion this week because they can not pay their tuition.

WMU has about 200 Iranian students and half failed to meet a Monday deadline for tuition payments.

“There is a definite limit beyond which the university cannot go,” a WMU spokesman said. “I think the university is doing all it can reasonably do to accommodate the circumstances.”