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U.S. earnings from international student tuition above those for gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, and gems

• June 11, 2025
• Ed Gresser

FACT: U.S. earnings from international student tuition above those for gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, and gems.

THE NUMBERS: Export revenue, 2024 –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Department of Homeland Security head and former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem presents a strange view of higher education, and of international students in the United States, as she tries to stop Harvard University from hosting them:

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.” 

Back home, according to the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, South Dakota’s universities have 2,150 international students this year, with the largest numbers from India and Nepal.  The University of South Dakota/Vermillion is home to 820, the School of Mines 149, South Dakota State 826, and so on. Like Harvard’s international enrollees, they don’t really “pad the endowments” — that’s more an investment management job — but help provide operating revenue. Most pay full tuition (USD’s charges for international undergrads total $24,587 a year, grad students a slightly higher $25,127), which helps finance staff expenses, maintenance, and scholarships for low-income locals.

The 1.13 million international students in the U.S. this year are presumably watching Ms. Noem’s efforts with alarm.  For now, they haven’t succeeded, as the courts have blocked her attempts to end Harvard’s international student program. She and her State Department colleague Mr. Rubio, though, are not only going after Harvard but raising basic questions about the future of international education in America, as they “pause” visa interviews for aspiring students and cancel some existing visas without notice. With this in mind, some background on international students and their place in American economic and intellectual life:

Basics: According to the Institute for International Education, 210 countries and territories have students in the United States.  A review of them all would be pretty dull (see below for representative examples), but it’s easy to list the four countries with “zero” students here: Nauru, North Korea, Sao Tome e Principe, and the Vatican. By country, India’s 331,000 and China’s 277,000 combine for half the total, and Asia’s 805,000 account for two-thirds. Other regional totals include 57,000 from sub-Saharan Africa, 91,000 from Europe, 74,000 from Latin America and 11,000 from the Caribbean; 1,700 Pacific Islanders and 6,000 from Australia and New Zealand; and 52,000 from the Middle East. By school, the largest international enrollments are NYU’s 27,247, Northeastern’s 21,023, Columbia’s 20,231, and Arizona State’s 18,430. Other samples around the country include 11,800 international students at UM/Ann Arbor, 8,150 at Georgia Tech, 1,300 at the University of Alabama, 220 at the University of Montana, and 4,500 at Florida International.

By academic level, about three-quarters of the international students are graduate students and post-grads in “Optional Practical Training.” (“OPT” is mainly postgrad fellowships or temporary work authorized under student visas.) The breakout looks like this:

502,291 grad students
342,875 undergrads
242,782 “Optional Practical Training”
38,742 non-degree students (for example in English-language classes)

To put these figures in perspective, American colleges and universities enroll about 3.2 million grad students and 15.1 million undergraduates. So international students are a very large part of grad-school life, and a significant but not huge part of the U.S.’ undergraduate student body.  As a very topical example, Harvard’s high international shares are in its graduate schools: 47% at the Kennedy School of Government, 34% at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 18% at the med school, and 53% — the highest share — at the Graduate School of Design.  In “Harvard College”, the undergraduate school, 850 international undergrads make up 12% of the 7,110 enrollees— above the national average, but not overwhelming and fairly typical of elite private universities; see also Johns Hopkins’ 7%, Stanford’s 9%, Northwestern’s 10%, Duke’s 12%, and Caltech’s to 14%. Undergraduate shares at state universities like USD are usually in the 3%-5% range, and community college rates are lower.

As Ms. Noem and her colleagues ponder the future of this part of American academic life — really neither a “privilege” nor a “right”, but rather an example of autonomous civil society — a few things for them to consider:

Trade and income today:  In the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ jargon, international student tuition is a form of trade called “education-related travel services”, and brings in a lot of money each year. In 2023 — the most recent year for which BEA has done an estimate — U.S. “exports” of this service totaled $50.2 billion. This is a bit less than the $80 billion in U.S. exports of cars and trucks, twice the $25 billion in American soybean exports, and about as much as we earned from gems and precious metals. Or, with the Trump administration’s trade balance fixation in mind, education is a large U.S. ‘surplus’ category: the $50.2 billion in exports are nearly five times the $11.2 billion Americans paid out as ‘imports’ to support U.S. students abroad.

Growth and innovation tomorrow: Further ahead, many international students go home with their degrees. Some stay on to work in the United States, often in valuable roles.  Per the National Science Foundation, 58% of computer science PhDs working in the United States, 56% of all engineering PhDs, and 24% of all science and tech workers in general, were born abroad. So if the administration wants —for example — Americans to assemble smartphones and design ships here, it would be odd and perverse for them to be pushing out a lot of the future phone designers and shipyard engineers.

And the intangibles: Current money and next-generation tech labor supply are important. So are some less measurable things. As IIE’s tables show, places like Vermillion and Cambridge are training a large portion of Asia’s next-generation political, intellectual, and business elite, and significant chunks of their peers in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The practical meaning of this won’t be clear for a decade or more, but it’s probably something good. Nor can it be bad for the international students’ American roommates and lab partners to gain some firsthand views of the world outside, and some unfamiliar perspectives on the United States itself. And more generally, the very large role of American universities in worldwide education and intellectual life is (or at least ought to be) a point of pride.

So: With Harvard’s case against DHS set for a hearing next Monday, Ms. Noem and her associates might usefully get some perspective on the role international students play in America’s economy, intellectual life, and long-term global influence.  One easy option would be to take an hour to call home and check in with USD.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

• Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
• Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
• Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
• Offer a positive alternative.

ABOUT ED

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 ProgressiveEconomy 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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