Colleges fear decline in international student enrolment

One international student after another told the University of Central Missouri this summer that they couldn’t get a visa, and many struggled to even land an interview for one. Even though demand was just as high as ever, half as many new international graduate students showed up for fall classes compared to last year.

The decline represents a hit to the bottom line for Central Missouri, a small public university that operates close to its margins with an endowment of only $65 million. International students typically account for nearly a quarter of its tuition revenue.

“We aren’t able to subsidise domestic students as much when we have fewer international students who are bringing revenue to us,” said Roger Best, the university’s president. Signs of a decline in international students have unsettled colleges around the US Colleges with large numbers of foreign students and small endowments have little financial cushion to protect them from steep losses in tuition money.

International students represent at least 20% of enrollment at more than 100 colleges with endowments of less than $250,000 per student, according to an Associated Press analysis. Many are small Christian colleges, but the group also includes large universities such as Northeastern and Carnegie Mellon. The extent of the change in enrollment will not be clear until the fall, Some groups have forecast a decline of as much as 40%, with a huge impact on college budgets and the wider US economy.

Donald Trump

As part of a broader effort to reshape higher education, President Donald Trump has pressed colleges to limit their numbers of international students and heightened scrutiny of student visas. His administration has moved to deport foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian activism, and new student visa appointments were put on hold for weeks as it ramped up vetting of applicants’ social media. On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said it will propose a rule that would put new limits on the time foreign students can stay in the US.

The policies have introduced severe financial instability for colleges, said Justin Gest, a professor at George Mason University who studies the politics of immigration. Foreign students are not eligible for federal financial aid and often pay full price for tuition — double or even triple the in-state rate paid by domestic students at public universities. “To put it more dollars and cents-wise, if an international student comes in and pays $80,000 a year in tuition, that gives universities the flexibility to offer lower fees and more scholarship money to American students,” Gest said.

Ahmed Ahmed, a Sudanese student, nearly didn’t make it to the US for his freshman year at the University of Rochester. The Trump administration in June announced a travel ban on 12 countries, including Sudan. Diplomatic officials assured Ahmed he could still enter the US because his visa was issued before the ban. But when he tried to board a flight to leave for the US from Uganda, where he stayed with family during the summer, he was turned away and advised to contact an embassy about his visa. With the help of the University of Rochester’s international office, Ahmed was able to book another flight. At Rochester, where he received a scholarship to study electrical engineering, Ahmed, 19, said he feels supported by the staff. But he also finds himself on edge and understands why other students might not want to subject themselves to the scrutiny in the US, particularly those who are entirely paying their own way.

“I feel like I made it through, but I’m one of the last people to make it through,” he said. In recent years, international students have made up about 30% of enrollment at Central Missouri, which has a total of around 12,800 students. In anticipation of the hit to international enrollment, Central Missouri cut a cost-of-living raise for employees. It has pushed off infrastructure improvements planned for its campus and has been looking for other ways to cut costs.

Small schools — typically classified as those with no more than 5,000 students — tend to have less financial flexibility and will be especially vulnerable, said Dick Startz, an economics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Lee University, a Christian institution with 3,500 students in Tennessee, is expecting 50 to 60 international students enrolled this fall, down from 82 the previous school year, representing a significant drop in revenue for the school, said Roy Y. Chan, the university’s director of graduate studies.

The school already has increased tuition by 20% over the past five years to account for a decrease in overall enrollment, he said. “Since we’re a smaller liberal arts campus, tuition cost is our main, primary revenue,” Chan said, as opposed to government funding or donations. The strains on international enrollment only add to distress for schools already on the financial brink. Colleges around the country have been closing as they cope with declines in domestic enrollment, a consequence of changing demographics and the effects of the pandemic. Nationwide, private colleges have been closing at a rate of about two per month, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.