This is certainly a cute story, where we're supposed to think that a single International student's "disappointing" experience at Columbia is somehow representative of the school's population as a whole, or even International students' experiences as a whole...
However, Columbia ranks very highly as a choice for "International students" with 16 % of their students consisting of International students. I knew NOTHING about Columbia's "International population" before reading this post but a simple google search revealed that foreign students LIKE attending Columbia. Ivy League Columbia is the #4 school in the US in terms of the number of international students in their student body...
She's entitled to express her OPINION and you can get all warm and fuzzy with it if you chose. But if her OPINION carried weight with others, wouldn't the number of Intl students applying to and attending Columbia be dropping off?
Five years is plenty of time for the market to determine the product's fate. The fact is more and more foreign students are deciding to attend Columbia so she has to be characterized as a total OUTLIER. It may be a peculiarity due to her N Korean upbringing (I googled but no other N Koreans at Columbia came up), but obviously MANY MORE foreign students have a more positive view of Columbia than she does.
I'd expect her to urge her friends/family to avoid Columbia, and I'd expect other Intl students to do the same if they agreed with her opinion. THAT is clearly not happening because Columbia's appeal among Intl students is growing. So why should anyone consider her opinion of what Columbia does any more valid than the majority of Intl students who attend and are obviously recommending it to their friends/family? The only way products INCREASE in popularity is if the buzz surrounding them is positive.
I really have no idea of what life is like at Columbia, but it seems to appeal to its target audience. Isn't that how a product's success is ultimately measured? Why are you giving any gravitas to this article at all? Whatever Columbia is selling, it's obvious people WANT it. Why would they change anything, if their policies are making them more appealing to MORE Intl students?