Dear Student: We Pay If You Stay

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It's a good time to be a computer science student.

Multinational companies with offices in Central Europe and Asia are quietly trying to plug the brain drain that's siphoning technical talent to the United States by offering to pay for the education of their best and brightest applicants.

The catch: Students have to attend local schools and then work in their home countries for a specified period of time after graduation.

The United States is still the most popular destination for foreign students, drawing about 578,000 in the 1998-99 academic year, according to the Department of States International Information Programs.

But the number of foreign students attending college in the United States has been dwindling, according to SIIP. Five years ago, about 40 percent of all international students studied in the United States. Today, it's 32 percent.

The decline is attributed to aggressive recruiting problems in students' own countries and in others, especially in the computer science fields. The high cost of tuition at American colleges and universities is also to blame.

U.S. schools are battling back.

President Clinton recently suggested that "educational institutions, state and local governments, non-governmental organizations, and the business community" should "review the effect of U.S. government actions on the international flow of students and scholars as well as on citizen and professional exchanges, and take steps to address unnecessary obstacles, including those involving visa and tax regulations, procedures, and policies."

In response, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has eased work rules for foreign students. And some colleges are considering adjusting the amount of funds made available for grants to foreign students in order to fill in the gaps caused by weak exchange rates.

It may not be enough. International students increasingly are being tempted with offers of free education and guaranteed jobs after graduation if they attend school in their own countries.

Mark Pataki, 21, from Nagykanizsa, Hungary, had seriously considered attending school in the United States. He has family in the United States and he speaks English fluently, so the transition would be an easy one.

He looked into programs such as the one offered by New York University, which partnered with CitiBank to offer "CitiAssist Global," a Web-based private loan program specifically for international students.