Trump’s Impact on International Student Enrollment

For decades, the United States has held a dominant responsibility as a destination for international students interested in the STEM domains. Then, the administration of the American president Donald Trump began to revoke student visas, temporarily frozen interviews on student visas, promised an additional examination of Chinese students and instituted new social media checks for all candidates.

From now on, the first signals of the organizations involved in the international investment of students show a drop in interest in American colleges and universities. And experts say that Trump administration policy will have long -term consequences. “These actions which are taken at the moment will include the American post on the world market for higher education for an upcoming generation,” explains Clay Harmon, executive director of the Association of International Insollment Management (ARIC).

Early indicators of the interest of interest in American education

Stomportals, a company that helps international students find higher education programs around the world, follows the requests that visitors make on its website. He publishes reports on research trends that tend to qualify for the registration of trends a few years later. At the end of May, Stomportals published data showing that the interests of students to study in the United States (in all areas) fell to its lowest level since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with weekly views for American diploma programs down 50% between January and at the end of April.

HAS Spectrum’S asks, Stomportals specifically examined his data for engineering programs. The company noted that the interest of students in American engineering diplomas Fucked by 41% between January and May, while the interest in Master engineering diplomas decreased by 36%. Looking at engineering sub-disciplines, Stomportals saw the most steep drops of aerospace, automotive engineering, electronics, marine engineering and robotics.

“Each student who decides against America is not only lost in schooling money – it is a lost talent,” explains Edwin Van Rest, CEO of Stomportals. “The person who could have started the next major company or making a major discovery could be in London instead of Boston, all due to the decisions taken at the moment.”

Other organizations echo the conclusions of Studyports on international students in all areas that lose the interest of American education. A pillar, another company that helps students find programs abroad, told Spectrum This research of programs in the United States was abandoned below research for those of the United Kingdom for the first time in February. And in a PDI survey in May in more than 900 potential international students with American study aspirations, 44% said they “seriously envisaged” other study destinations in the United States.

Harmon of Airc notes that “there is a very long calendar” for families who plan to send a student abroad for higher education. “Some parents are starting to follow their children from kindergarten,” he said, noting that families can opt for bilingual schools to prepare their children for undergraduate in the United States. For graduate and doctoral students programs, known as Harmon, potential students can take several years to find a program that corresponds well before starting to manage financial logistics and visa. So reporting interest now could have repercussions for many years.

Spectrum Contacted the US State Department and immigration and customs application to comment on international students’ policies, but has received no response. Spectrum He also contacted universities such as MIT, Stanford and UC Berkeley to comment on registrations for international students for the next school year, but the representatives said they would publish registration figures in the fall and will have no comments before.

During the university year 2023-2024, the number of international students studying in the United States was at a record level.Open house

How many international students study in the United States?

The number of international students pursuing higher education In the United States, reached an unprecedented summit of 1.1 million during the 2023-2024 school year (the most recent for which statistics are available), according to data from the American State Department. The majority of these students, 56%, studied in STEM fields, with 19% studying engineering and 25% of diplomas in mathematics or computer science.

In the field of artificial intelligence, statistics are particularly striking. A 2023 analysis of the National Foundation for American Policy has revealed that 70% of graduate students in the AI fields are international students and that 42% of the best IA companies based in the United States (as determined by the IA 50 of Forbes list) had a founder who came to this country as an international student.

In an interview with Newsmax in May, American vice-president JD Vance argued that the country did not need to import foreign students to do “great things”, saying: “I just think that we should invest in our own people”. But Harmon disagree with this idea: “The idea that international students steal from domestic seats [applicants] could not be further from the truth. He notes that comprehensive non -resident tuition fees paid by international students provide resources to universities who in fact subsidize domestic students who receive financial assistance.

The economic impact of international students

In June, NAFSA: Association of International Educators collected field reports of more than 90 colleges and universities in the United States. Almost 75% of these institutions declared that they were planning a drop in international registrations this fall, And 40% of respondents had heard students who decided not to study in the United States. The first five countries they turn are rather the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, China and Germany.

“International students and academics are formidable assets that contribute to American pre -eminence in innovation, research and economic strength,” explains Fanta AW, Executive Director and CEO of NAFSA. “It is to undermine their ability to study here.” Its organization regularly ride economic analysiss linked to international students; His most recent report revealed that during the 2023-2024 school year these students contributed 34.8 billion dollars to the American economy.

Harmon notes that many other nations have recognized the value of international students and have instituted recruitment campaigns, countries like Germany and China offering free tuition to international students in the hope of attracting young skilled workers.

“It is very difficult to constitute a reputation for having the best education opportunities in the world, aAnd it is easy to destroy this reputation and confidence, ”explains Harmon.”Especially when there are other impatients waiting in the wings to take these students. »»