International Students’ Graduate Enrollment Is Down, Study Finds. Some Say U.S. Policy Is to Blame.

Graduate enrollment by international students in the United States has decreased for the second time since 2003, according to an annual report by the Council of Graduate Schools.

The report, “Graduate Enrollment and Degrees, 2007 to 2017,” released on Wednesday, shows that first-time graduate enrollment of international students fell 4 percent from 2016 to 2017.

After the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s ban on travel from several countries, most of them with Muslim majorities, experts said the policy could be a significant factor in a possible decrease.

The decline wasn’t across the board. Universities categorized as “highest research activity” under the Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Learning saw a 3-percent increase in international graduate enrollment from 2016 to 2017, said an author of the report, Hironao Okahana.

Bowling Green State University, a moderate-research institution, is among those with a decline in international graduate-student applicants, said Keith Ramsdell, graduate enrollment director.

Delays in processing visa applications, he said, are also discouraging admitted students from enrolling. “The challenge that we are hearing is with international students having a hard time getting cleared for their visas,” he said. “The process for getting cleared for the visa is taking longer than it has taken in the past. And so in some cases, they don’t start the process early enough to get approved for the term for which they applied.”

This year, Ramsdell said, he and his staff have received emails from incoming international students experiencing difficulties over delays or denials. Last year some students from India told him that they were concerned with meeting visa requirements.

“What we are hearing is that employers are less enthusiastic about hiring international graduate students” for training positions after graduation, he said.

In response to the delays, Ramsdell and a recruiter are presenting webinars to admitted international graduate students. Students are shown how to enroll and are guided through the visa-application process.

“We talk about what the next steps are and what they can do to be more successful in getting through that process in a timely manner,” Ramsdell said.

In terms of total graduate enrollment, moderate-research universities saw a decrease of 7 percent. The number of first-time graduate applications fell, too, by 9 percent — the largest percentage drop — compared with the highest-research universities, which saw just a 0.1-percent decrease.

“We can’t quite tell what contributed to the decline in applications at these institutions,” Okahana said. “But looking at a relatively large decline in international graduate students, the drop was probably influenced by that.”

Follow Andy Tsubasa Field on Twitter at @AndyTsubasaF, or email him at andy.field@chronicle.com.