Abroad decline
Fewer international students are enrolling in classes at Arizona universities, mirroring a national trend
When Dania Alarfaj was looking for graduate programs overseas, she focused on finding a reputable school in a safe, affordable city.
The 26-year-old master’s degree student from Saudi Arabia considered colleges in the United States, the United Kingdom and China. She landed at Arizona State University because of its strong interior architecture program and focus on sustainability.
Alarfaj is one of 680 students from Saudi Arabia attending ASU this year, a slight decrease compared with this time last year. It’s the third year of declining enrollment from the country after a decade of steady increases.
The overall number of international students at ASU declined last school year for the first time in a decade, a reversal that mirrors a national trend of declining international-student enrollment at U.S. universities.
The decline at ASU appears to have continued this year, preliminary figures show.
Numbers also declined at the University of Arizona for the past two years, data from the university show, though the school boasted a large class of incoming international freshmen this year.
Overall, international enrollment at ASU was down more than 6 percent on the first day of school this year compared with last year’s first day. Enrollment fluctuates the first few weeks of school, so the exact number of students on campus may change.
If the decline continues or worsens, it could spell trouble for colleges, which increasingly rely on higher tuition rates paid by international and out-of-state students to balance their budgets.
There’s no simple answer for declining international student enrollment. While some may point to President Donald Trump’s administration and its immigration rhetoric as a cause, experts and students say that’s not the only — or even the major — reason.
They say it’s too soon to pinpoint the exact effects of the Trump administration, if there
are any, since many students now in the United States began planning for an international education before Trump took office.
Instead, a mix of foreign education-policy changes, geopolitics and increasing competition have led to a decrease in the number of students from abroad choosing Arizona universities, university enrollment officials and outside experts say.
For Alarfaj, the thought of U.S. politics and the Trump administration did enter her mind, but it wasn’t a primary factor in choosing where to study. Politics change so frequently. She couldn’t know what political leaders would do. It was out of her hands.
“I can’t do anything about it,” she said. “I’m not a U.S. citizen, I can’t vote, I can’t do anything about it. I can hear it, and just move on.”
Figures from ASU show international enrollment dipped slightly from fall 2016 to fall 2017, dropping 43 students to 10,238, a 0.4 percent decline. The last international-enrollment decrease happened in 2008.
ANovember 2017 report from the Institute of International Education and the U.S. State Department said the number of new international students had declined 3 percent in the 2016-17 school year, the first decline in 12 years.
Kent Hopkins, vice president of enrollment services at ASU, pointed specifically to decreased enrollment among Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Both countries sent fewer students to ASU last year. The declines are slight, but they are clear reversals of the increases seen for many years past. There were 790 students from Saudi Arabia last year, compared with 799 in 2016. Students from Kuwait totaled 600, down from 699 the previous year.
China has the highest number of international students at ASU. Its numbers decreased from 4,005 to 3,920. India, the No. 2 country, increased from 2,237 to 2,332. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait rank third and fourth in number of international students at ASU. South Korea, which ranked fifth, sent 234 students last year, down from 264 in 2016.
At the University of Arizona, international enrollment also fell last year, a rarity in the past decade. Four of the top five student-sending countries at the UA — China, India, Mexico and South Korea — all saw enrollment decreases in 2017. Saudi Arabia, the third-highestsending country, did not decrease.
International education advocates say it’s important for U.S. universities to have strong international enrollment for two reasons. First, the students help balance budgets because they pay higher tuition than in-state students.
At ASU, international undergraduates pay more than $30,000, slightly more than out-of-state students and about three times more than in-state students.
Additionally, international students help provide global perspectives and diversity to domestic students, said Peggy Blumenthal, senior counsel to the president at the Institute of International Education.
Employers in many fields want to see that American graduates know how to interact with people from different backgrounds, but only 10 percent of American students study abroad, she said. Adding an international community on campus can help achieve global perspectives, she said.
The circumstances that affect international student enrollment are as complex as global political relationships and as personal as feelings of safety and security, Blumenthal said. “It’s not that our reputation as a place to send students is dropping, it’s just sort of what the calculus is at home,” she said.
Some foreign governments, such as Saudi Arabia, are sending fewer students to the United States, while other countries have ended government-sponsored programs altogether. Take Brazil as a case study of how foreign education policy can affect enrollment at U.S. universities. The UA had 128 Brazilian students in 2014, but that number plummeted to 21 two years later. At ASU, the number of Brazilian students fell from more than 400 in 2014 to less than 50 in 2016. The declines came because Brazil ended a government scholarship program.
Some countries, like China, are trying to attract more students to come to them, Blumenthal said. And the United States has faced increased competition from the United Kingdom and Australia for the shrinking pool of international students.
China is still the largest sender of students to the U.S., Blumenthal noted, and the number of Chinese students in the country is going up; it’s just not increasing as fast as it once did. India, the second-largest sender nationwide, will probably continue to increase, though there could be a dampening effect on Muslim students from the country because of perceived anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, Blumenthal said.
Brent White, dean of global campuses and interim vice provost for global affairs at the UA, acknowledged the decline in international students, but he said the university saw an increase in enrollment on its global micro-campuses in places like China and Cambodia.
Applications from international students rebounded this year, and the school had a 36 percent increase in the number of incoming international freshmen, preliminary numbers show.
The overall number of international students on campus is still lower than last year at this time.
The school attributed part of the decline in overall international enrollment to a large graduating class this spring and summer.
White said numbers from China, the top-sending country nationwide and at the UA, have been flat or gone down slightly because fewer Chinese students are heading to the U.S. overall for school, so there’s increased competition for those who are.
“I think that’s why you’ll see a decrease from China, just because there are more universities competing for a pie that’s not growing,” he said.
There’s more competition from other countries seeking foreign students, too, White said. Higher education is an international market, and more and more countries are looking beyond their borders to fill classes and add diversity to campus, he said.
“That makes it harder as you’re thinking of recruiting international students, because you’re not just competing with another university up the street or another university across the country, you’re competing in a global market for education,” he said.
Hopkins, of ASU, attributed part of the decline in international enrollment from the Middle East to the lower price of oil, a major facet of the economy that affects government spending in places such as Saudi Arabia. Many students who come to ASU from Saudi Arabia receive scholarships from the Saudi government.
“I think it gave the Gulf countries the opportunity to step back and go, ‘How should we invest our funds in education?’ ” Hopkins said.
Blumenthal, of the Institute of International Education, said Arizona’s number of Saudi Arabian students declined less than the national trend. Nationwide, numbers from Saudi Arabia dropped 14 percent, she said.
Students coming to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia were primarily funded by a large Saudi government scholarship program which has since been scaled back, Blumenthal said. “Many, many institutions would have seen their numbers go down,” she said.
Other countries in the region, such as Kuwait, have said there may be too many students from their country at one specific university, Hopkins said. There are about 700 students from Kuwait at ASU. In April 2016, the Kuwaiti government specifically closed enrollment of the country’s students at ASU because there were too many at one school.
“We don’t think that anything’s too big at ASU, and when you think of about 700 Kuwaiti students of an international composition of 10,000 at a four-campus immersion environment of 72,000, 700 doesn’t really seem too big,” he said.
Hopkins took a trip to the Middle East last year, stopping in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain to talk to foreign offi-
cials about sending students to ASU.
In Kuwait, Hopkins met with the country’s undersecretary of education to talk about the country’s students at ASU and try to change his thinking about enrollment caps. Hopkins told him about Kuwaiti students’ retention and graduation rates, their lives on campus and their successes after graduating. It was Hopkins’ first trip to the Gulf countries, he said.
While the overall enrollment numbers from Middle Eastern countries at ASU has declined only slightly, the number of applications from these countries has fallen more steeply.
The number of total applications from Kuwait in 2016 was nearly 800. In 2017, it was just over 200. In 2015, more than 1,000 students from Saudi Arabia applied, compared with more than 600 in 2017. Qatar went from more than 200 applications in 2015 to about 50 in 2017.
Hopkins said the change in federal leadership does add a different dynamic to international enrollment, but the university has stressed its diversity, inclusiveness and welcoming atmosphere.
When the Trump administration announced a travel ban last year for several Muslim-majority countries, ASU met with about 170 students from those countries and helped connect them with legal services, Hopkins said. The school stressed that its commitment to those students hadn’t changed, and Hopkins said students should try, as best as they can, to focus on their studies.
“That was new to us. We never had to reach out in that particular type of case because of a federal-government action,” Hopkins said.
But politics can be fickle, Blumenthal noted. For instance, China and the United States have historically had a positive relationship, but could a trade war spoil that? Does rhetoric about building a wall at the southern border affect Mexican students’ interest in coming to study here? The answers aren’t yet clear, she said.
One thing is clear: The current U.S. political atmosphere and the impression of it abroad don’t make recruiting international students easier.
“Certainly those kind of comments are not helpful, and most colleges and universities are putting out strong statements to prospective international students that they are welcome here,” Blumenthal said.
Fahad Alresaini, a 17-year-old freshman from Saudi Arabia, said his first concern when searching for a school was the university’s and program’s reputation. He also considered the hot, dry climate here, which is similar to back home. And studying at ASU means a campus in a large city, where he could learn about a new culture and get to know different people, he said.
“We don’t get into political stuff. What (Trump) says and what he does doesn’t matter, as long as it doesn’t affect our education,” he said.
Mesfer Alzahrani, another student from Saudi Arabia, jumped in, agreeing with Alresaini. Who cares about politics, he quipped.
“Politics is for politicians. We’re students,” he said. The young men joined hundreds of other incoming freshman international students at an orientation Aug. 8 in Tempe. Students excitedly hustled around, playing icebreaker games that shared tidbits about whom they are — their majors, their home countries, how many siblings they have, whether they’ve ever lied to their parents. The room was filled with high-fives, woo-hoos and selfies as the new students buzzed about getting to know the people who will become their friends and family at ASU.
The feeling of camaraderie can take hold quickly. Alresaini had been in Arizona for less than a week, but he was already thinking he wants to come back to ASU to do a master’s degree after he gets a bachelor’s and works back home for two years. Maybe even a doctorate.
“I like it here,” he said.