Schools struggle to combat foreign student drop

Five years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, U.S. colleges and universities are fighting to reverse what some consider an alarming decline in foreign student enrollment.

Despite a tightening of visa regulations in the months immediately following the attacks, foreign student enrollment actually increased in 2001, in part because of students who already had applied or enrolled. But since then numbers have steadily declined.

Foreign student enrollment slid 2.4 percent in 2003-04 and another 1.3 percent last year, even as overall student enrollments rose, according to the Institute of International Education. The decline marks the first decrease in foreign student numbers in three decades.

The possible cause for the slump is still being debated in academic circles and among U.S. policy-makers who are looking for ways to bring the numbers back up. This is because many universities depend on foreign graduate students for research and teaching assistance — particularly in engineering and sciences. Majority of these students contribute to technological and scientific research projects on and off-campus while some go on to take up teaching positions in American colleges and universities.

“Globalization is not just a term anymore. It is a reality on our campus,” said Catharine R. Stimpson, dean of the graduate school at New York University.

“We live in an interdependent world and people should learn to respect each other and gain new and broader perspective. A good deal of American science and math health depends on international student numbers,” she said.

She stressed the importance of good faculty to help attract students from all over the world as well as increased scholarships to draw foreign students.

Fact file About international students — India is the leading place of origin for international students with 80,466 students in the United States in 2004/05. — Most popular fields of study for international students in the U.S. are business and management (18 percent), engineering (16.5 percent) and math and computer sciences (9 percent). — The University of Southern California hosts the largest number of international students, with 6,846. — California is the leading host state, followed by New York, Texas, Massachusetts and Florida. — International students contributed approximately $13.3 billion to the U.S. economy in 2004/05. Source: Institute of International Education

After all, America has played host to more than half a million foreign students over the past six years, and the Department of Commerce describes higher education as the nation's fifth-largest service sector export.

Foreign students pump money into the national economy and provide revenue to their host states for living expenses, including room and board, books and health insurance. Most of this revenue, nearly 72 percent, comes from funding sources outside the United States as most international students, especially at the undergraduate level, do not get scholarships or tuition waivers. Foreign students contributed $13.3 billion to the U.S. economy in 2004-5, according to the National Association of International Educators.

But, it’s not just the financial aspect that is making educators nervous.

Loss of 'brainpower'
Richard Wheeler, dean of graduate colleges at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is concerned about the loss of “brainpower” for his science and engineering departments, especially at the graduate level, where foreign students are a key component and comprise 1/3 of the total graduate student population. Wheeler was disappointed when his university saw a 30 percent decline in graduate student applications after 9/11.

“Our university has a very large and reputable engineering and science programs. This is what attracts most international students — mostly from China, India and South Korea — and they are a big piece of our talent pool,” Wheeler said. "These students are very important to our research operations, and what’s alarming is the possibility that we may be losing access to these very smart people,” he added.

For example, majority of the 36.5 percent of the 9,188 international graduate students at the University of Illinois gravitated toward programs in engineering and the sciences in fall of 2005.

“Now we are in a modest recovery mode, and our graduate application and enrollment numbers have risen a little bit this year,” he said.

Deeper issues
While 9/11 was definitely the flashpoint, there are other deeper concerns that need to be addressed about the state of health of higher education in the United States, says Debra Stewart, head of the Council of Graduate Schools.

Her organization, which specifically tracks graduate student mobility, shows international applications were up about 11 percent in fall 2005 after a cumulative decline of 32 percent over the previous two years, according to CGS. But it is hard to predict if this increase in applications will translate into actual enrollment. A previous CGS report found that enrollment rose 1 percent last fall after three successive years of declines.

As of now, hard numbers show that total international grad applications are still down 23 percent from 2003. With the exception of the humanities, all major fields showed declines in enrollment of international graduate students. The largest declines were in business and education, which lost 8 percent each, followed by engineering at 6 percent.

Competition from other countries
“Not every aspect of the declining number of international students can be pinned to 9/11,” says Stewart. She points to increased competition from United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and even China for international students as these countries step up recruitment.

“Most of this competition has modeled itself after the U.S. system — which still remains the best in the world — but we have to acknowledge that we may no longer be the only education destination for students anymore,” she says.

European universities have launched massive efforts to streamline their doctoral degrees so they can be completed in three or four years, rather than the five or six generally required at U.S. universities. As China and India have emerged to be economic powerhouses, they have expanded their higher education offerings. Stewart points to the 44 percent increase in undergraduate enrollments in China’s Shanghai region over the past few years.

As educational opportunities improve in less-developed countries, they become more attractive to international students, especially given the far lower costs of tuition, room and board.

But Stewart is optimistic about the future of international student education in the United States.

“Our surveys show international applications are increasing again,” she says. Even though the U.S. may be losing market share to other countries, Stewart predicts that in the next three years U.S. will get back to pre-9/11 levels simply because the pool of international applicants is growing.

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