Foreign students applying to graduate schools in the United States are increasingly favoring doctoral institutions, which were already popular among them, while losing some interest in other types of colleges, according to survey results released today by the Council of Graduate Schools.
Over all, foreign applications for graduate programs are up by 5 percent at doctoral universities and by 6 percent among the 100 institutions with the largest enrollments of international graduate students. But they are down by 17 percent at master’s-level institutions and by 4 percent at all institutions that fall outside of the top 100, the annual survey found.
The total number of foreign students applying to U.S. graduate programs is up by 4 percent over last year, an increase that the council characterized as welcome, considering the world’s economic troubles, but also as cause for concern, in that it marks the third straight year in which the growth of applications has slowed.
Of the three nations that send the most students to the United States for graduate study—which together account for about half of all international students in American graduate programs—applications from China rose by 16 percent, but those from India and South Korea dropped by 9 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
In a written statement announcing the survey’s results, Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, said, “We must be concerned about what we will see in the future.” Given the current economic crisis, she said, it is unclear whether the 4-percent overall increase in applications will actually translate into a similar increase in the number of international students on temporary visas who actually enroll in graduate schools this fall.
In breaking down the results of its survey by academic discipline, the council found that only the life sciences, among the eight broad fields it examines, had experienced a decline in applications, of 2 percent.
Among the other fields, applications to graduate programs in business were up by 7 percent, marking a substantial rebound from the slight decline charted last year. Business stood out as the only field in which the rise in foreign applications was strongest outside the 100 institutions with the largest enrollments of such students.
Moved by Money?
The council’s report is based on responses from 245 institutions surveyed in February. Because the survey was administered early in the graduate-admissions cycle, its results should be considered preliminary, and subject to slight revision when a second survey looks at final application numbers in June, the report said.
“The findings in this survey were very different than what we have seen in the past couple of years,” says Nathan E. Bell, director of research and policy analysis for the Council of Graduate Schools, which has administered the survey since 2004. Although doctoral institutions have previously differed from master’s-level ones in the size of increases or decreases in their foreign applications, this year marks the first in which “one group is up and the other is down,” he said.
Because the council’s survey does not try to ascertain what forces influence the trends it documents, “it is hard to speculate what might be driving an increase in one category versus a decrease in another category,” Mr. Bell said.
But Karen P. DePauw, vice president and dean of graduate education at Virginia Tech, and chairwoman of the council’s Board of Directors, says doctoral universities gain a clear edge in competing for foreign graduate students in hard economic times because of their greater resources to offer research- and teaching-assistant positions and other forms of financial aid.
In addition, Ms. DePauw said, “I think that earning a doctoral degree has been increasingly more important around the world,” which “would automatically advantage those of us who offer doctoral degrees.”
Because nearly all of the 100 American institutions with the largest enrollments of foreign graduate students are offer doctorates, the relative popularity of doctoral institutions probably helps explain the top 100’s comparative advantage, Mr. Bell said.
The 4-percent increase in total foreign applications to U.S. graduate programs comes on the heels of increases of 6 percent in 2008, 9 percent in 2007, and 12 percent in 2006. With the recent slowdown in growth, the survey’s respondents appear to have yet to fully rebound from the 28-percent decline in foreign applications charted in the survey’s first year, when the effects of post-September 11 restrictions on visas for foreign students were still being felt.