Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday that a new Internet-based system will start in July to better track the 1 million foreign students in this nation. Colleges, universities and trade schools will have to collect and report information to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) under the system.

The system will make the student information available centrally to the INS in a database and will allow the schools to transmit it electronically via the Internet, he said. The data that must be reported includes a student's failure to enroll and whether the student dropped out or was expelled. Ashcroft said schools may voluntarily participate July 1, though under the proposed rule, they must participate by Jan. 30 of next year.

[ Read more ]