Washington

The number of foreign students enrolling in US universities stagnated last year and may now be declining for the first time in decades, according to a series of studies released this week.

The annual report of the Institute of International Education (IIE), a New York-based organization that monitors student exchange, shows that the growth in total foreign-student enrolment at US universities grew by just 0.6% in the 2002–03 academic year — the lowest level of growth since 1995. And in a follow-on survey of international student offices in 276 universities, most reported some decline in international enrolment this autumn, suggesting that the total number of students may actually fall in the 2003–04 academic year for the first time since 1971.

Such a drop is likely to hit US universities where it hurts: international students spend some US$12 billion annually on tuition and living expenses, according to the IIE, and foreign graduate students fill many research and teaching jobs on campuses, particularly in science and engineering.

Learning curve: the changing numbers of foreign students coming to the US between 2002 and 2003. Credit: IIE OPEN DOORS SURVEY

The 2002–03 academic year saw sharp increases in the number of students coming from India and South Korea, the IIE survey found, but the number arriving from Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East declined.

University administrators and academic groups attribute the slowing enrolment rates largely to the strict visa-issuance policies enacted in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (see Nature 422, 457–258; 2003). “The US government is doing more than anyone to deter foreign students,” says Gail Szenes, director of the Office for International Students and Scholars at New York University, whose campus lies just blocks from the World Trade Center, destroyed in the 2001 terror attacks. Consular interviews for students whose subject areas appear on a state department watch list are especially problematic for those studying in the sciences, Szenes says.

Visa woes are also afflicting scholars coming to teach and to do research in the United States, according to preliminary results of a separate survey by three major university associations. About three-quarters of more than 200 US universities surveyed by the associations said that they had problems getting scholars into the country, according to Victor Johnson, public-policy director at the Washington DC-based Association of International Educators, one of the groups that conducted the survey.

New visa guidelines have created a perception that it is more difficult for foreign students and scholars to come the United States, but until now, the evidence for this was largely anecdotal, according to Johnson. “These are the first data that confirm our fears,” he says.

→ http://opendoors.iienetwork.org

→ http://www.nafsa.org