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International Student Enrollment in US Takes Hit
After big economic hits to the U.S. higher education sector over the past few years, experts say recruiting international students will be crucial to the industry’s recovery.
International student enrollment in U.S. universities has stalled and retreated in the past three years because of high costs, barriers to immigration and employment pathways, political rhetoric and perceived crime, according to data from the Institute of International Education (IIE).
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this decline with a 43% drop in the rate of international student enrollment for the fall 2020 semester, according to IIE.
And trade wars between the United States and China could cost American universities up to $1.15 billion in lost tuition revenue, a study from the University of California, San Diego says.
“Foreign tuition revenues are a crucial aspect of U.S. services exports,” the authors said. “Although much of the conversation on trade with China has focused on the goods trade deficit, there has been undeservedly little attention on the trade surplus with respect to educational services.”
About one-third of the more than 1 million international students in the U.S. come from China, according to IIE’s annual Open Doors report.
The report shows how income growth among upper-income families is linked to the export of educational services from the U.S. As Chinese cities exposed to trends of trade liberalization with the U.S. grew in wealth, they sent more students to study abroad. Freer trade policies alone accounted for about a quarter of Chinese students in the U.S. between 2004 and 2014, the report found.
The Trump administration imposed a tariff increase of 20 percentage points for Chinese products in 2018 in an effort to promote American products, making imported goods more expensive. The researchers found that about 30,000 fewer Chinese international students would attend American universities over the next 10 years. That could result in an 8% decrease in educational exports to China and up to $1.15 billion in lost revenue for American educational institutions.
“If the trade wars continue out into the future, a portion of the gain that happened as a result of free trade will decrease,” said Guarav Khanna, co-author of “Trade Liberalization and Chinese Students in U.S. Higher Education,” published in July 2020. “That free trade has driven the flow of students into the U.S., and restricting trade would partly reverse some of that.”
The rate of Chinese international student enrollment grew by 0.8% in the last year, according to IIE.
“That’s a really small number compared to the exponential growth we’d been seeing five years earlier,” Khanna told VOA. “Rates of international students were really high, and they really slowed down after 2016. They slowed down further because of trade wars.”
High tariffs impacting China’s wealthiest cities could help explain a decline in international student enrollment in U.S. universities. Meanwhile, competing countries are ramping up their recruitment.
In an opinion article for the Brisbane Times published February 19, John Brumby, chancellor of La Trobe University, wrote that since education is Australian’s fourth-largest export, international students should be welcomed and encouraged to attend institutions of higher education in Australia. Additionally, he wrote that Chinese international students stimulate the Australian economy and support at least 250,000 jobs in Australia.
“Students are choosing to study abroad, but they’re choosing countries like Canada and Australia, which not only are trying to make it easy for those students to go to these countries, but making it easy for students to stay and work after,” Khanna said. “In the last two years, the U.S. has made it more difficult for these students.”
The Biden administration looks set to continue the trade war on China, The Associated Press reported, which may continue to impact international student enrollment. No tariff cuts are expected by analysts. This may further a deceleration and potential decline in Chinese international student enrollment in the U.S.
One metric this year indicates that enrollment from other countries has “surged.”
“International applicant volume surged relative to 2019-20, highlighting meaningful growth in several home countries,” Jenny Rickard, president and chief executive officer of Common Application said in January. Common App is a standardized college application form used by nearly 900 institutions of higher education in the U.S. and internationally.
“While applicants from China declined by 18%, other countries exhibited noteworthy growth, including India (+28%); Canada (+22%); Pakistan (+37%); the United Kingdom (+23%); and Brazil (+41%),” Rickard explained.
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Economics, tensions blamed for Chinese students shifting from US to Australia, Britain
U.S. universities are welcoming international students as the academic year begins. But while the total number of foreign students is steadily growing, the top sending country, China, is showing signs of leveling out or shrinking.
Industry analysts say the negative trend is mainly due to higher costs amid China’s struggling economy, with a growing number of students going to less expensive countries like Australia and Britain, and tense ties between Washington and Beijing.
The number of foreign students studying in the U.S. in 2022-23 passed 1 million for the first time since the COVID pandemic, said Open Doors, an information resource on international students and scholars.
While the U.S. saw a nearly 12% total increase year-on-year for that period, the number of international students from China, its top source, fell by 0.2% to 289,526.
That’s 600 fewer students than the 2021-22 academic year, when their numbers dropped by nearly 9%. The COVID pandemic saw Chinese student numbers drop in 2020-21 by nearly 15%, in line with the world total drop.
While it’s not yet clear if the drop is a leveling out or a fluctuating decline, analysts say China’s struggling economy and the high cost of studying in the U.S. are the main reasons for the fall in student numbers.
Vincent Chen, a Chinese study abroad consultant based in Shanghai, said although most of his clients are still interested in studying in the U.S., there is a clear downward trend, while applicants for Anglophone universities in Australia and Britain have been increasing.
"If you just want to go abroad, a one-year master's degree in the U.K. is much cheaper,” Chen said. “Many people can't afford to study in the U.S., so they have to settle for the next best thing."
Data from the nonprofit U.S. group College Board Research shows that in the 2023-24 academic year, the average tuition and fees for a U.S. private college four-year education increased 4% to $41,540 compared with the previous academic year.
The British Council said three to four years of undergraduate tuition in Britain starts as low as $15,000.
The number of Chinese students in Britain was 154,260 in 2022-23, according to the U.K. Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA, up from 121,145 in the 2018/19 academic year.
Australia’s Home Affairs office said in the 2023-24 program year, China was the top source foreign country for new student visa grants at 43,389, up slightly (1.5%) from the previous year.
Chen said Chinese state media's negative portrayal of the United States and concerns about discrimination have also contributed to the shift.
Bruce Zhang, a Chinese citizen who received his master's degree in Europe after studying in China, told VOA Mandarin he had such an incident occur to him after he was admitted to a U.S. university’s Ph.D. program.
When he entered Boston's Logan International Airport last year, Zhang said customs officers questioned him for more than an hour about his research, and if it had any links to the military, and took his computer and mobile phone for examination.
"Fortunately, I had heard that U.S. customs might be stringent in inspecting Chinese students, so I had relatively few study-related data and documents on my personal computer," he said.
Zhang was allowed to enter the U.S. for his studies in materials science, but the questioning left him so rattled that he has encouraged other Chinese to study elsewhere.
Cui Kai, a study abroad consultant in Massachusetts told VOA Mandarin that experiences like Zhang’s or worse happen for a reason.
"Students who were questioned or their visas were revoked at the customs are usually those who completed their undergraduate studies in China and come to the U.S. for a master's or doctoral degree in a sensitive major," said Cui.
Former President Donald Trump signed Proclamation 10043 in June 2020, prohibiting visas for any Chinese student who “has been employed by, studied at, or conducted research at or on behalf of, an entity in the PRC that implements or supports the PRC's “military-civil fusion strategy.”
The U.S. says China has been using students and scholars to gain access to key technology and, under Proclamation 10043, revoked more than 1,000 visas issued to Chinese nationals and has denied thousands more.
Critics say the policy is costly to the U.S. and is encouraging Chinese students to look to European and other universities.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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