International enrollment in American higher ed either declined again or became more training-oriented
The number of international students enrolled in American colleges and universities declined in 2018–2019, according to a new Open Doors report*. This has significant implications for higher ed.
I’ll summarize the news here, drawing on Elizabeth Redden’s reporting, then add some reflections, especially concerning one odd bit of the report.
(I’ve been tracking this aspect of enrollment for some time: Feb 2019; Oct 2018; Jan 2018)
Here’s the key data point:
The number of international undergraduate students declined by 2.4 percent, the number of international graduate students declined by 1.3 percent and the number of international nondegree students declined by 5 percent.
And:
A separate “snapshot” survey of fall 2019 enrollments across more than 500 institutions released today by IIE likewise reports an average 0.9 percent decline in new enrollments continuing this fall.
This continues a trend going back one or two years.
That’s a top level summary. Naturally for a big, sprawling, and dis-integrated sector like American higher ed, things play out unevenly by geography and institutional type:
About 51 percent of institutions responding to the snapshot survey reported decreases in new international enrollments, and 42 percent reported increases, with the remaining 7 percent reporting no change. Over all, research universities reported increases in new international enrollments this fall, while master’s institutions and institutions in the Midwest reported decreases.
Also:
International enrollments increased by 1.2 percent at doctoral universities and by 2.1 percent at baccalaureate colleges, while master’s level-institutions reported a 1.3 percent decline. The biggest drop was at associate-level institutions, where total international enrollments fell by 8.3 percent in 2018–19.
Enrollment in STEM and business continued to dominate, with some tweaks:
math/computer science surpassed business/management [w]as the second-most-popular field for international students, after engineering. The number of students studying math and computer science increased by 9.4 percent, while the number studying business fell by 7.1 percent. (International enrollments in engineering decreased by 0.8 percent.)
Which nations are most highly represented in this enrollment picture?
Two countries of origin continue to dominate incoming student populations, as China and India together “account for more than half (52.1 percent) of all international students studying in the U.S.”
Meanwhile, interesting developments from other nations:
[T]he number of students from the №3-sending country, South Korea, declined by 4.2 percent, a continuation of a long-term trend driven in part by demographic changes and the development of South Korea’s own higher education system. The academic year 2018–19 represented the eighth straight year of declines in South Korean students at U.S. colleges.
Also,
The number of students from №4 country Saudi Arabia decreased by 16.5 percent in 2018–19, following on a 15.5 percent decline the year before and a 14.2 percent decrease the year before that. The number of students from Saudi Arabia has contracted sharply as the government has scaled back support for its large-scale overseas scholarship program.
Yet at the same time the number of international students in the US pursuing learning in another form of post-secondary education actually rose, according to Open Doors:
the total number of international students in the U.S. actually increased slightly, by 0.05 percent, due to a 9.6 percent increase in the number of international students participating in optional practical training, a program that allows international students to stay in the U.S. to work for up to three years after graduating while staying on their student visas.
To be honest, I don’t know much about these training programs. Is optional practical training (OPT) ( Wikipedia; federal site) taught by accredited colleges and universities? Do students take them at campuses other than the ones they enrolled in for other classwork? What topics are taught? Wikipedia claims that the federal government especially encourages STEM fields for OPT study. ( relevant list) Homeland Security describes OPT thusly: “one type of work permission available for eligible F-1 students. It allows students to get real-world work experience related to their field of study.” Which sounds like apprenticeships. That’s also the tone of this US News article. Does OPT essentially mean work, and not study?
Well, putting these OPT and non-OPT numbers together as Open Doors does leads to a very interesting picture. There are many more non-training than training students (I’m not sure of overlap), but the latter’s gains outweigh the former’s shrinkage. Check out this table:
So, overall, why are these changes happening?
“Trump” is a good single-word answer, of course. His Muslim ban and attitudes towards Latinx immigrants cover part of the international student market, but also cast a chilling effect on the whole.
School shootings must play a role, especially given their high levels of media coverage.
The leader of IIE (which produces this Open Doors report) offers a different reason, one which won’t be unfamiliar to Americans:
“Everywhere I travel, talking with parents and students, the №1 concern they have is about cost. American higher education is expensive — it is more expensive than other countries. I’d say there’s always a mix of factors that go into deciding who will come, where they’ll come, where they’ll go, but overwhelmingly that is what is most on parents’ minds,” said Allan E. Goodman, the president and CEO of IIE.
Why does all of this matter? Several reasons.
First, some colleges and universities count on international students for tuition dollars, since they tend to pay full freight. Losing them is a blow to revenue — when campuses are already financially stressed. A campus losing international students will have to make up the money somewhere.
Second, international students can add to campus population diversity. Fewer of the former can shrink the latter.
Third, international students contribute to the US economy. Open Doors estimates that amount as about $44.7 billion. Chinese students alone add $14,913,000,000 to American coffers.
Fourth, if we include OPT students, there is still a downward trend visible in rates of increase. Look at the rightmost column here, and watch the growth figure shrink steadily over the past five years:
Fifth, if we don’t include OPT? It depends on how we view Open Doors’ inclusion of this category. If we view OPT as training per se, then it’s good that America has that attraction to learners worldwide… but this isn’t a good thing for those who distinguish between training and education (and favoring the latter). If we deem OPT to be essentially work, rather than graduate study, and if it isn’t formal graduate study, then it might not make sense to count internationals pursuing it as grad students. If that is correct, then we’re just looking at a continued decline in actual international grad student numbers. Which is bad news for America as a whole, and for US higher ed in particular.
*That’s only a link to the press release. The report isn’t publicly available yet: “The full report will be available in early 2020.” They do a good job of webbing up some data and graphics here.
Originally published at https://bryanalexander.org on November 18, 2019.
