Fewer foreign students attending colleges in the U.S.
Ningjia Huang CLEVELAND — of Fujian, China, was just starting to get excited about studying computer science in the U.S. when a Las Vegas gunman opened fire at a country music concert, killing 58 and wounding more than 500, last Oct.1
Lucas Long Pham, a data science student from Hanoi, Vietnam, had just been accepted at Case Western Reserve University when a Florida man gunned down 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.
Although stunned and frightened, and despite the fact that such shootings never occur in their home countries, both students still came to Cleveland to start classes at Case Western. Each is the first in their families to study in the U.S.
For the second straight year, the number of new international students coming to study at U.S. colleges and universities is expected to decline from the 300,743 who came in 2015-16, according to the Institute of International Education.
“This year will be the first time that we begin to see a clear slowdown in the number of international students coming to the U.S.,” said Rajika Bandari, senior research advisor for IIE and an expert on international students and academic mobility.
Of 522 higher education institutions surveyed last year, 52 percent of the schools said prospective students cited “the current U.S. social and political climate as a potential deterrent to U.S. study.”
Just under half reported a drop in new international student numbers, and 20 percent said international students “expressed the desire to leave or have left” the U.S. as a result of the current climate.
That’s a source of concern, because those 1.1 million international students “contribute significantly to the research and entrepreneurial leadership of the United States, supporting over 450,000 U.S. jobs, and adding over $39.4 billion to the U.S. economy in 2016,” according to U.S. Department of Commerce data cited by IIE.
At Kent State University, “our numbers have declined quite substantially,” said Marcello Fantoni, associate provost for global education. The school is expecting about 400 fewer international students than last fall, for a total of about 1,730.
Although 600 to 700 international students are graduating this year, the number of new international students is only 250 to 300. “Not only is American not being perceived as a welcoming destination, it’s also the reduction in the number of visas issued for students,” he said.
“It is very enlightening when I travel, to see America through the eyes of the people we speak to, and hear their questions about America: ‘Is it safe to study in America?’ ‘Will I have problems with my student visa?’ ”
And as America’s international reputation falters, countries like Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Korea, New Zealand and the Netherlands have begun more aggressively recruiting international students. “International enrollment in Canada has skyrocketed in the past two years,” he said.
Kent, one of the top U.S. universities for Saudi Arabian students, is trying to better understand why the Saudi government has shrunk a program that gave full scholarships and stipends to Saudi students accepted by U.S. colleges. “Students had successful experiences at Kent, and they would trust us with their students,” he said.
Other Ohio colleges and universities seem to have largely defied what’s happening nationally. Some of the schools with the largest number of international students say they expect an increase in the number of foreign students this year, although final numbers aren’t confirmed for the 2018-19 school year.
Rounak Chawla, a firstyear student from Kolkata, India, chose to study at Case Western because its 50,000-square-foot Sears Thinkbox is the largest university innovation space in the world. But he said friends warned him that “it’s harder to get a job in the U.S. now, and you might have trouble with immigration.”
Chawla said some of his high school classmates opted to attend college in France, Spain, and the Netherlands. Even without President Trump’s well-known views on immigrants, “if international students don’t feel safe coming to the United States, they will not come,” he said.
Ohio ranks No. 8 in the nation for the number of foreign students, hosting 38,680 international students in 2017, up 2.5 percent from the previous year’s 37,752.
Those 38,680 foreign students collectively spent an estimated $1.18 billion in the state, up from $1.1 billion in 2016, according to IIE.
The five Ohio schools with the largest number of foreign students in fall 2017 were: Ohio State University, with 7,684; University of Cincinnati, with 4,013; Kent State University, with 3,625; Miami University in Oxford, with 2,654; and Case Western Reserve University, with 2,565.
At Ohio State’s main campus in Columbus, “We have 1,120 international new firstyear students who have paid an acceptance fee, compared to 712 at the same point last year,” said university spokesman Benjamin Johnson.
The University of Cincinnati has issued 1,218 visa documents to incoming, new international students for this fall, compared to just under 1,164 issued last fall. “Our projected number of incoming international students looks to be on par with or slightly higher than last year,” said M.B. Reilly, director of public relations.