An international-education group is warning that “harmful policies and anti-immigrant rhetoric” are keeping international students from enrolling at American colleges, hurting the economy.
“Prospective international students and their families are concerned about U.S. federal policies and rhetoric on immigration, along with apprehensions of personal safety and tense race relations,” says the report, released on Wednesday by Nafsa: Association of International Educators.
The top reason colleges have cited for declining international-student enrollment is the visa-application process, including delays and denials, according to survey data cited by Nafsa and originally released in November by the Institute of International Education. Eighty-three percent of institutions reported it was a deterrent, a 49-percentage-point increase from 2016, when 34 percent of colleges reported such problems.
In a news release, Esther D. Brimmer, chief executive and director of Nafsa, called the enrollment declines “of grave concern.”
The country’s 1.1 million international students make up a culturally significant — and lucrative — band of enrollments at American colleges. In the past three years, researchers and advocacy groups have documented a drop in new international-student enrollments. New first-time international-student enrollment fell by 3.3 percent in 2016 and 6.6 percent in 2017, according to IIE’s “Open Doors” reports. A 2018 survey found a drop of 1.5 percent. The trend continued for graduate students, who have declined in rates of both application and enrollment for two consecutive years, according to a Council of Graduate Schools report released in February.
Five million students around the world are pursuing education outside their home countries. The United States now accounts for a lower share of those students, 22 percent, than in 2001, when it was 28 percent, according to data from Project Atlas, a research effort led by the Institute of International Education.
The trends illustrate a slowdown in the internationalization of American colleges, which accelerated after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, The Chronicle reported in March. While international-education advocates say that Trump-administration policies and rhetoric deter prospective students, colleges have also shunted internationalization down the list of their strategic priorities, according to data from the Association of International Education Administrators.
“The era of internationalization might be over, or on life support,” Philip G. Altbach, founding director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, told The Chronicle.
Update (6/4/2019, 10:38): This article has been updated to clarify the relationship of Project Atlas and the Institute of International Education.
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