Loss of foreign students costly for colleges in US
Virus, other concerns keeping many overseas
Already reeling from the coronavirus, American colleges and universities stand to lose hundreds of thousands of international students over the country’s failure to contain the pandemic, the challenges of online learning and a more hostile U.S. government.
Also at stake: billions of dollars the international students spend annually in the country, plus the intellectual capital of having many of the world’s best and brightest minds educated in the U.S.
Nearly 1.1 million students come to the U.S. from other countries for college or practical training programs, according to the Institute for International Education’s latest Open Doors report, which the State Department supports.
Those students spend more than $40 billion a year in the U.S., according to the latest report, which looked at the 2018-19 school year.
But most of the students come from countries with far better control of their coronavirus outbreaks than the U.S.
Jessica Sarles-dinsick, associate dean for international programs and special projects at Columbia University, said she expects that 30% to 40% of international students might not come to the U.S. this year.
That could cost colleges about 400,000 students and the American economy about $15 billion.
Sarles-dinsick said students’ strugcoronavirus gles to get visas during a pandemic and worries about the pandemic could cost the U.S. in many ways.
“The United States’ long history of receiving international students has been an opportunity to share the best version of who we are as a country and to recruit new residents and citizens for either the short or long term,” she said. “Including international students as an essential part of the education system spurs innovation and adds to the overall strength of our society.”
The blow couldn’t come at a worse time. Colleges are squeezed by the rising costs of going online and the loss of revenues from campus housing and overall enrollment as American students reconsider whether to attend.
There’s never been an impact like before, said Suzanne E. Beech, a lecturer in human geography at Ulster University in Northern Ireland and the author of a book on how students make decisions about international schools.
“In the short term, I suspect there will be a really significant drop in the number of students right away,” she said.
Beech said universities in the United Kingdom, like those in the U.S., have become reliant upon international students who don’t pay a discounted price for their education.
“There’s a lot of worry about ‘What will happen to these students?’ or ‘Where will they go?’ ” Beech said. “And ‘Will they come back in the same numbers?’ ”