Before Donald Trump entered the White House for his second term, international students and their advocates were anxious but hopeful. His first two months in office have dispelled much of their optimism.
This is the second installment in an Inside Higher Ed series on international students under Trump. Read the first here.
Over the past two weeks, federal immigration officials have revoked student visas, raided dorm rooms, arrested green-card holders and threatened to deport international students who participated in campus protests. They’ve also cut hundreds of millions of dollars in STEM research grants, which help fund many international graduate students’ studies; many colleges are pausing admissions for affected graduate programs altogether.
Now the administration is considering instituting a travel ban similar to the one implemented during Trump’s first administration—except greatly expanded, from seven countries to 43, according to an internal memo.
William Brustein, former vice president for global strategy and international affairs at West Virginia University and a veteran of the international student recruitment sector, said that between the funding cuts, visa crackdowns and high-profile arrests, he anticipates the international enrollment backslide will be much worse this term than it was in 2017.
“I anticipate many [students] will look for alternatives in the U.K., Canada, parts of Asia,” he said.
After Trump’s first-term travel ban in 2017, the number of international applicants to U.S. colleges fell by 2.2 percent for undergraduates and 5.5 percent for graduate students, according to a National Science Foundation report. It rebounded before plummeting again during the pandemic, and international enrollment has only recently begun to recover, surging in 2023 and continuing to inch closer to pre-pandemic levels this fall.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired Cornell University law professor who specializes in immigration law and international students in particular, said this administration’s crackdown on higher ed could similarly stifle international enrollment—and cause a dent in the significant tuition dollars full-paying international students provide.
“All of these things have a chilling effect … As we saw in the first Trump administration, similar policies prompted a decline in the number of international students applying to U.S. colleges,” Yale-Loehr said. “It took really the whole time of the Biden administration to recover from that decline.”
Mirka Martel, head of research, evaluation and learning at the Institute of International Education, which closely tracks international applications and enrollment in the U.S., said her organization’s data for this year shows a 3 percent increase in total international students over 2023-24.
But projections for next year are less optimistic: Common App data released last week shows a one percent decline in international student applicants, marking the first time since 2019 that domestic applicant growth exceeded international.
Martel said it may be too late in the admissions cycle for recent developments to have an impact on international enrollment for the fall, since most students are already well into the application process. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be serious shock waves down the line.
“Political shifts don’t always lead to major changes in international enrollment, and when they do these changes can take time to manifest,” she said. “Once students get onto an application path, it’s hard to deter them.”
The pool of U.S. international applicants has changed significantly since the pandemic. The volume of students from China has decreased while enrollment from countries like Bangladesh, Ghana and especially India—which rose by 23 percent last fall—has surged. International enrollment has also shifted from undergraduates to graduate students pursuing not just degrees but long-term research, work and life in the U.S.
Brustein said the recent shifts in international applicant profiles could exacerbate the political blowback on enrollment. The Trump administration froze or eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research grants for universities this month, many through the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. For today’s new international students, Brustein said research and program funding is “the major draw,” and the grant cuts have left international graduate students wondering if they’ll be able to afford their degrees after all.
Preparing for the Worst
A survey released last week by the international student placement organization IDP Education found that from Jan. 20 to Feb. 12, a slim majority of international students—52 percent—maintained a positive view of studying in the U.S. after Trump’s election. That number is lower for the two largest populations of foreign students at U.S. colleges: Only 48 percent of Indian students and 27 percent of Chinese students have that positive view. Over all, 26 percent of international students said they’d soured on studying in the U.S.
Emmanuel Smadja, CEO of the international student loan provider MPOWER, told Inside Higher Ed he continues to hope for the best, too. He said the MPOWER platform has seen demand for help affording U.S. institutions in particular grow substantially year over year, and that growth among students from India has doubled.
But much has happened in the past month that threatens to upend that progress, especially among Indian applicants. Last week, ICE targeted Indian graduate student Ranjani Srinivasan, revoking her visa suddenly and raiding her dorm room at Columbia University, prompting her to flee to Canada out of fear for her safety. The Trump administration has said Srinivasan was singled out for pro-Palestinian activity; she was arrested, along with more than 100 other students, during an NYPD campus crackdown last spring. Srinivasan told The New York Times that she’d merely gotten caught up in the chaos on her way home.
Rajika Bhandari, principal of the international education firm Rajika Bhandari Associates and co-founder of the South Asia International Education Network, said Srinivasan’s story is already making its way across the widely read Indian digital press and is sure to cause consternation among prospective students.
“Indian families back home are always sensitive and attuned to the status and welfare of Indian students already in the U.S.,” she said. “The recent case of the Indian student who fled to Canada is likely to have reverberations across upcoming cohorts of master’s and doctoral students.”
Martel said the two most common reasons for declines in international enrollment are cost and heightened student visa restrictions. As institutions struggle to fund graduate programs and postdocs in the wake of Trump’s funding cuts, and visa restrictions loom large in the teased proposal for an expanded travel ban, that could bode poorly for future international enrollment prospects.
International students have become increasingly important sources of revenue for higher education institutions, especially as traditional enrollment declines and more international students enroll in expensive graduate programs. According to IIE data, 81 percent of undergraduate students and 61 percent of graduate students completely fund their own tuition.
Brustein said that while the consequences of an international enrollment downturn could be dire for U.S. institutions’ finances, he worries it won’t be enough to push them into open conflict with the Trump administration.
“The marching orders around [international student protections] are going to come from the boards, or from legislators in the case of public institutions,” Brustein said. “Colleges don’t want to be out of step with them, since that’s where their funding comes from.”
For Brustein, there’s no way to spin it: The enrollment outlook is bleak.
“I wish I could be more optimistic about the future,” he said. “The truth is, it seems there are more dark clouds on the horizon for international students.”
(This article has been updated to correct the IIE data and add projections from the Common App.)