Total U.S.: | -127,000 (-12%) |
Arizona State University: | -652 (-14%) |
Montgomery College: | -403 (-19%) |
Hartwick College: | -8 (-22%) |
Spelman College: | -15 (-47%) |
University of Montana: | -199 (-70%) |
WHAT THEY MEAN:
From Spelman College’s International Student site:
“Diversity is a large part of what makes Spelman a global leader in higher education. Spelman College welcomes women from all over the world, including the Bahamas, Ghana, South Africa, Japan, Trinidad, Tobago, Australia, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, South Korea and Vietnam.”
Spelman, an historically black women’s college in Atlanta, reports 17 international students in a student body of 2,417 this year. Some other snapshots drawn from the U.S.’ kaleidoscopic array of 3,731 public universities, private colleges, religious schools, HBCUs, arts academies, community colleges and more: According to the Common Data Set, which schools publish each year, in upstate New York Oneonta’s Hartwick College has 28 international students among 1,163 undergrads; looking west, Arizona State has 4,049 in a student body of 64,716, and the University of Montana, 83 of 7,223; and just north of D.C., two-year Montgomery College counts 1,751 international students among its 17,137 students.
The Institute for International Education’s Open Doors 2022 report provides a full national picture. In the 2021-2022 academic year, 948,000 international students were at school in the U.S., comprising 2% of America’s 16.9 million undergraduates and 12% of its 3.1 million graduate students. Most are here for a long stay with a degree at the end, and their top choices are technical subjects: topped by 290,590 aspiring engineers, 182,106 computer science and math students, and 147,293 in business and management. Some data points, and then a look at a perhaps troubling recent trend:
1. Origins and Destinations: Open Doors finds students from 218 countries and territories — essentially every place on Earth with the lone and slightly puzzling exception of Greenland. China’s 290,086 and India’s 199,182 represent a bit more than half the total. More data by country below; by region, exclusive of China and India, IIE counts 42,500 from sub-Saharan Africa; 3,700 from Central Asia; 102,000 from East Asia excluding China; 26,000 from South Asia apart from India; 49,000 from Southeast Asia; 83,200 from Europe; 10,800 from the Caribbean; 67,200 from Latin America; and 53,000 from the Middle East and North Africa.
By state, the top five destinations are California with 134,000 international students; New York with 114,000; Massachusetts with 71,000; Texas with 70,000; and Illinois with 47,000. By institution, eight institutions (NYU, Columbia, Northeastern, USC, Arizona State, University of Illinois/Champaign, UCSD, and BU) together enroll more than 100,000.
2. Tuition and Trade: Considered as a form of “trade,”* U.S. education ranks comfortably with U.S. exports of grains, cars and trucks, and metals. In 2019, the peak year for international enrollment, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported $47.9 billion in “exports of travel services, education,” or 2% of the $2.5 trillion in total U.S. exports. A quick table puts this in perspective:
Total goods & services: | $2,528 billion |
Agriculture: | $142 billion |
Cars & trucks: | $57 billion |
Education services: | $48 billion |
Steel: | $13 billion |
3. Economics & Workforce: Having finished their degrees, some graduates go home. Others stay on in the U.S. to work. The high counts of engineering and math students, for example, underpin the large foreign-born scientist role in U.S. science and technology. The National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Indicators 2022 reports that at master’s level, 34% of U.S. engineers and 47% of U.S. math/computer science workers are foreign-born, and at doctoral level the shares are 57% and 60%.
In sum: In an idealistic sense, all this represents a sort of republic of knowledge, with large and free flows of information and ideas between and among students, universities, scholars, and countries everywhere in the world. In more practical terms, students purchase knowledge and credentials for themselves, universities receive revenue, the overall U.S. trade deficit gets a modest offset, and U.S. science & technology get an immodest boost. With that, recent trends and policies raise some questions:
Having risen rising steadily from 1950 through the mid-2010s,** international student enrollment peaked in the 2018/2019 academic year at 1.095 million students and 5.5% of a 19.8 million student body. The count then dipped to 1.075 million in 2020 and 915,000 in Covid-stricken 2021, before this year’s modest rebound. By major, Open Doors counted 230,780 international engineering students in 2019 and 188,194 in 2022; and by state, international enrollments are down by 12,000 in Texas, 6,000 in Florida, 5,500 in Michigan, and similar percentages generally. Or, returning to the institutions sampled above, the Common Data Sets of the past five years show Spelman’s enrollment peaking at 32 in 2018 and falling to 11 in 2021, before rebounding to this year’s 17, the University of Montana’s down from 282 to 83; Hartwick’s from 36 to 23 with a 2022 rebound to 28; ASU off by 652 from its 4,692 peak, and Montgomery College down from 2,154 to 1,751.
Much of this decline came with the COVID-19 pandemic and is likely temporary. Another cause, though, is a set of Trump-era rules requiring multiple visa applications and limiting post-degree job opportunities, which make study in the U.S. more difficult and less attractive. The rationale appears mainly to be a foggy “lump-of-labor fallacy” thinking that higher international student admissions might require lower U.S. student admissions. In fact this has not happened, as foreign enrollment rose by about 700,000 between 1990 to 2019, U.S. citizen enrollment rose by 5.4 million, and the share of U.S. high school grads going on to college rose from 60% to 69%. It’s more plausible, in fact, that international students mostly paying full ride are subsidizing financial aid for larger college-bound U.S. born student body. Biden administration efforts to dial back these constrictions are still new and the 2022 rebound is encouraging though not dispositive.
* BEA and international trade statisticians generally classify education as a form of “trade” on the grounds that a foreign consumer is purchasing knowledge — differential equations, literary theory, CGE modeling, materials science, management case studies, etc. — plus valuable credentials assuming all goes well from an American provider.
** Long-term counts: In 1950, there were 26,000 international students in the U.S., making up 1% of the 2.4 million students. By 1980 these counts and fractions had risen to 290,000 students and 2% of 11.6 million students; in the millennial year 2000, 515,000 students and 3.5% of 14.8 million students.
The Institute for International Education’s Open Doors 2022 has data on foreign students in the U.S. and Americans abroad. As a quick country-by-country addition, following China, India, Korea, Canada, Vietnam, and Taiwan come 7 countries with 10,000 to 20,000: Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Japan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and the United Kingdom; then 14 countries with 5,000 to 10,000: Iran at 9,295, followed by Pakistan, Germany, Turkey, Spain, Colombia, Indonesia, France, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Italy, and Thailand. A sample of the next tiers: 4,933 Malaysians, 4,916 Ghanaians, 3,982 Aussies, 2,651 Jamaicans, 2,407 Greeks, 2,202 from Oman, 2,027 Israelis, 1,466 Moroccans, 1,458 Poles, 1,355 Mongols, 1,228 Guatemalans, 1,091 Danes, 1,030 Portuguese, 1,026 Albanians, 714 from Paraguay, 631 Uzbeks, 485 Palestinians, 366 Armenians, 305 Yemenis, 197 Sierra Leonians, 159 Antiguans, 119 Tongans, 109 Estonian, 101 Laotians, 85 Fijians, 29 from Timor Leste, finally to two from the Vatican, and one each from Tuvalu, Sao Tome e Principe, and the Falkland Islands. Greenland seems to be the only locality without a student in the U.S. this year.
Open Doors 2022, with links to previous years and 1950-2021 enrollment totals.
Policy:
Inside Higher Ed on late-Trump effort to complicate student visa applications and after-degree job opportunities.
… and the Biden’s administration’s 2021 response.
International programs:
Spelman College’s international student homepage.
Hartwick’s financial aid programs for international applicants.
International enrollment for Arizona State.
The University of Montana’s Chinese Student and Scholars Association.
Montgomery College’s International Student services page.
Data:
NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, has state-by-state counts of tuition and other income; a look at international students at community college, and more.
Mingyu Chen on foreign student tuition payments, mistaken fears of “crowding out” U.S. applicants, and more.
The National Science Foundation reviews foreign and native-born employment in American science and technology.
And BEA’s services-trade data, with U.S. education receipts and spending abroad, Table 5.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
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