BYU alters international student policy

If you’re not a U.S. citizen and you want to come to BYU, you’d better have a few thousand dollars lying around. Starting summer semester 2010, incoming international students will have to pay $4,000 as a deposit to be returned upon graduation — an announcement that is causing controversy on campus.

Previously, incoming international students had to pay a $4,000 deposit their first semester, but they could use the money immediately after arriving to the U.S. according to their own discretion.

This new policy affects both incoming freshmen and transfer students, which stirred some contention among incoming transfer students from the LDS Business College. Students attending LDSBC created a Facebook group to protest against the new policy.

Ksenia Andriyanova, a student from Russia at LDSBC and creator of the Facebook group, said many students at LDSBC will not be able to transfer to BYU starting summer semester because of this new policy. She said students leaving LDSBC this semester, who would have transferred to BYU during the summer or fall, will have to return to their home countries with an associate’s degree, which some countries do not recognize as a valid diploma.

The letter with 150 signatures from LDSBC students was mailed Monday to BYU’s President’s Council petitioning against the new policy, said Andriyanova.