Latitudes

International students return to U.S. campuses but not at even rates

The number of first-time foreign students climbed 80 percent in the 2021-22 academic year, and overall international enrollments ticked up 4 percent, according to Open Doors, the annual report from the Institute of International Education and the U.S. Department of State.

Mirka Martel, the institute’s head of research, characterized the findings as a “strong comeback” for international-student mobility. No other demographic group experienced as large a decline during the pandemic as international students.

Despite robust growth, particularly among new students, total international enrollments, of about 950,000, remained below pre-pandemic highs, however.

Dig into the data, and it’s clear that the flow of students has rebounded faster from some countries than from others. Enrollments from India, for example, are up nearly 20 percent from their pandemic lows, to almost 200,000 students.

But among the top 25 countries that send students to the United States, nearly half sent at least 10-percent fewer students to American colleges in 2021 than they had before the pandemic. Several of these top-sending countries have been even slower to bounce back, with enrollments from China, Japan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia more than 20-percent lower than they were in the 2019-20 academic year.

The news out of China, long the engine of international-student mobility, is likely to be especially troubling for colleges that have come to rely on tuition dollars from a booming Chinese market. And we can say with certainty: Student interest from China has continued to decline in the current academic year.

While the Open Doors data is retrospective, a Chronicle analysis of U.S. student-visa data last month found that the number of new visas going to students from China for this fall term tumbled — new-visa issuances to Chinese students were down 45 percent from pre-pandemic levels and from the fall of 2021.

At the same time, enrollment growth from India has continued to surge, the visa data show. Here’s what else the Open Doors report can tell us:

For the first time in a decade, there were more international graduate students in the United States than international undergraduates. Overall enrollments at the graduate level increased by 17 percent in 2021-22, to more than 385,000. Undergraduate enrollments declined by 4 percent, to about 345,000.

In a briefing with reporters, Martel attributed some of the growth among foreign graduate students to pent-up demand from students who put off their studies during the pandemic. New graduate enrollments were up 121 percent.

Swelling graduate enrollments also reflect a surge in India — eight in 10 degree-seeking students from India are at the graduate level.

In addition to graduate programs, the number of international students enrolled in English-language courses and other nondegree programs increased more than 60 percent in 2021-22, although the growth only partly made up for the steep drop in such programs during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of student-visa holders working in the United States as part of the Optional Training Program fell 9 percent, the second year of declines.

When it comes to international students, the bigs got bigger. The colleges that educate the largest numbers of international students experienced healthy enrollment increases in 2021-22, of 10 percent on average. The top 25 leading institutions now enroll more than a quarter of all international students, the institute reports.

By contrast, enrollments at associate-degree colleges sunk for the fifth year in a row.

The more things change, the more they stay the same: Even during the height of the international-student boom of the past decade, enrollment increases were concentrated among a small share of institutions.

The return of international students is good for the American economy. An analysis by NAFSA: Association of International Educators found that international students contributed $34 billion to the U.S. economy in 2021-22, a 20-percent increase over the year before.

Still, economic impact remains $6.5 billion below the high-water mark, in 2018-19, the group said.

Finally, while there’s a lot of talk about returning to pre-pandemic enrollment levels, it’s worth recalling that the number of international students in the United States had begun to decline before the Covid outbreak. New foreign enrollments had been falling for four years before the pandemic, and in the 2019-20 academic year, total enrollments decreased by 2 percent.

In recent remarks, Esther D. Brimmer, NAFSA’s executive director, noted that the United States’ share of all globally mobile students has dropped 8 percent since 2001.

For American colleges, these figures are an important reality check: Although the pandemic has dominated headlines, the challenges for international enrollments are more longstanding and varied than Covid alone.

Virtual exchange: Embraced during the pandemic, but what’s next?

A year after colleges and other providers embraced online programming as a substitute for canceled study-abroad trips, a new survey paints a mixed picture for virtual exchanges.

The Stevens Initiative surveyed colleges and other providers about programs run between the fall of 2021 and the summer of 2022, and found that the total number of online programs and participants declined in the past year. But among respondents who took part in this year’s survey and the one conducted in 2021, programming expanded by 38 percent and participation by 22 percent.

Digital exchanges helped colleges and others “meet the moment” during the pandemic, said Henry Shepherd, assistant director of the initiative, which supports virtual exchanges between the United States and the Middle East and North Africa.

Now, Shepherd said, “fewer organizations are pushing into the unknown. Participation is higher than pre-pandemic levels but lower than the surge when people couldn’t do anything else.”

In-person study abroad all but dried up during the depths of the pandemic, with the number of Americans studying overseas declining by more than 90 percent in the 2020-21 academic year, according to the Open Doors report.

For many providers, online exchanges were “quick, stop-gap measures,” said Rajika Bhandari, an educational consultant who contributed to the Stevens Initiative research. But to be sustainable, the creation of such programs must be intentional, with buy-in from institutional leaders and a real investment in technology and other supports, Bhandari said.

One particular challenge is accessibility, she noted. In some of the countries the Stevens Initiative works in, for example, computers and other technology may not be available and electricity can be unreliable.

Still, digital exchanges can help expand access to global and cross-cultural study for students, in the United States and elsewhere, who may not have the resources to travel overseas, Shepherd said. While virtual programming was a substitute for physical mobility during the pandemic, it can also be organized in concert with in-person study, such as through pre- or post-departure programming that enriches on-the-ground programming.

Related: Legislation introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate seeks to expand study-abroad opportunities in nontraditional destinations and for students who frequently do not study overseas, including minority, first-generation, and community-college students, and students with disabilities. The goal of the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Act is to have study-abroad participation reflect the demographics of the undergraduate student population.

Federal agencies release research-security tool kit

Federal intelligence and science agencies have released a toolkit to help academic, scientific, and high-tech communities safeguard research and technology from national-security and other threats.

The “Safeguarding Science” tool kit puts training materials, policy documents, and resources for best practices in a single location accessible to researchers, universities, and other organizations. They can use the background to help craft their own programs to protect work from theft, abuse, or exploitation. In addition to a half dozen government agencies, the American Association of Universities also contributed to the tool kit’s development.

Meanwhile, a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has incomplete data that may indicate whether international students and scholars from countries like China pose risks for transferring technology from American colleges to foreign governments or other entities abroad.

The agency, which oversees the student-visa database, needs to assess whether it should modify its records and collect additional data on potential risk factors, such as whether international students have access to sensitive or proprietary technology through their employment, not just through their studies, the GAO recommended.

Around the globe

Ohio State University has been fined $875,000 for failing to disclose a professor’s foreign ties to federal research-granting agencies.

Two college athletes were convicted of transferring money to Nigeria as part of an elaborate fraud and money-laundering scheme. The defendants, former track-and-field teammates at William Carey University, in Mississippi, will be sentenced in February.

A for-profit college that falsely promised immigrants and international students that it would guarantee their stay in the country after graduation will lose its regional accreditation.

The American International Recruitment Council has issued a set of international-enrollment-management standards for colleges working with agents to recruit students overseas.

Arizona voters approved a ballot measure to allow all graduates of the state’s public high schools to pay in-state tuition at public colleges there, regardless of immigration status.

City College of San Francisco will retain its Cantonese language program, one of few such programs offered at American colleges.

The defeat of president Jair Bolsonaro means Brazil will no longer be seen as a “pariah” in the international scientific community, but the country’s universities still could face financial hardship.

More than 70,000 British university staff members are expected to participate in a three-day strike later this month.

A new committee chaired by a former federal-government universities minister will draft a new international-education strategy for Britain.

Dutch universities have set up a 24-hour hotline for academics and researchers who are subject to harassment or physical threats.

American colleges retained the top spots in the latest Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings, but for the first time, two Asian universities made the global ranking’s top 10.

And finally …

Please note there will be no Latitudes next week because of American Thanksgiving. I’ll be back in your in-boxes on Wednesday, November 30.

In the meantime, if you spot any global-education news, feel free to drop me a line, at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, You can also connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here. Thanks for reading.