Community experience

My family was visiting Arkansas State University as my son is looking to possibly attend the college this fall.  We were visiting the track and cross country teams during our two day visit.  While we were there one of the coaches began to explain why the college recruits students from other countries.  The first reason I thought to myself was due to the students talents, which is true, but another benifit is that there is a large increase in revenue to the community due to the increase of students from other countries.  The college has learned this first hand by looking at the revenue in the community and total number of students in the college.  The college did not increase the amount of students, but increased the amount of foreign students and the community saw an increase in revenue.  I had never thought about this as a benifit for the community and how much of a benifit there would be with bringing in foreign students.  Shortly after this conversation, we then met a student from South Africa and in just a few minutes we learned some details about her village and community that I felt we could have never received from a book.