STAYING AWAY

International-Student Enrollment in the U.S. Declines for Second Year Running

Anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. partly blamed in report.

The number of international students enrolling in U.S. graduate schools has fallen for the second year in a row, according to a new report that partly attributes it to America’s new anti-immigrant sentiment. The report Thursday from the Council of Graduate Schools says successive years of decline follow years of strong growth. The drop in international students was most sharply felt in engineering programs, which reported a drop of 10 percent, physical and earth sciences, which fell 13 percent, and public administration, which fell 27 percent. Hironao Okahana, co-author of the report, said the blame could be put on prospective students not believing they’d get get a visa allowing them to stay after their studies, anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S., a strong U.S. dollar making programs more expensive, and a cutback in scholarship money provided by countries—especially those dependent on oil revenue. Nearly 250,000 international graduate students enrolled in U.S. graduate schools in the fall of 2018, about 20 percent of the total.