The number of first-year international students enrolling at U.S. colleges this fall is down 17% compared to last year, according to an early report released Monday by the Institute of International Education (IIE). The nonprofit has tracked international student data for more than 75 years.
The decline marks a major drop since the start of the second Trump administration. It’s raising alarm on campuses that have long relied on international students, who tend to pay full tuition, to offset domestic demographic and financial pressures.
But still, the effects have been uneven: some of the most selective schools have emerged unscathed, while public and less-well-known universities have taken substantial hits. Advocates for the international exchange worry that these changes are weakening the United States’ standing, while those who want to restrict immigration say that college presidents are crying wolf about larger impacts because it will affect their bottom line.
“There is a sense that international students are not unambiguously welcome in the United States,” said Gerardo Blanco, director of Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education. “And I think that is a significant change in the mood for higher education.”
In Massachusetts, mirroring national estimates, UMass Boston reports a 17% drop in first-year international enrollment this fall. But at more selective institutions like Harvard and MIT, the undergraduate numbers appear stable. If any students faced visa delays or second thoughts about studying in the United States this summer, these schools were often able to fill spots from their deep waitlists.
At Brandeis University in Waltham, international students made up a smaller percentage of this year’s incoming class: 12% versus 17% last year.
Brandeis President Arthur Levine told GBH News he blames both direct policy changes and the broader uncertainty surrounding student visas.
“There’s the visa effect, but there’s also the threat of visa effect,” Levine said. “Given the threats that higher education faces in this country, if I lived abroad, I’m not sure I’d send my child to a school in the United States.”
Many international students pay the full cost of tuition, so a drop means a financial hit for tuition-dependent schools like Brandeis. But Levine says the bigger loss is diplomatic and intellectual.
“What we’re losing is an opportunity to educate people about this country,” he said. “We’re also causing ourselves to have a brain drain. Some of these people stay in the United States, and they’re some of the best.”
Supporters of the administration’s immigration stance and attacks on higher education argue that colleges are overstating the problem and “scaremongering.”
“The schools that have tried to replace American students with foreign students — either because they don’t have the numbers or, in many cases, because they just want the higher fees — they’re going to use all of their political clout to try to change that because that’s their business model,” said Simon Hankinson, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Border Security and Immigration.
Hankinson attributes the decline in international students not to Washington’s policies but to demographic changes in countries that typically send thousands of students each year — particularly China, where the effects of the country’s one-child policy have led to fewer college-age students.
The sharp decline comes off of a banner year for colleges’ admissions of international students. Last academic year, U.S. colleges and universities hosted 1.2 million international students, who made up about 6% of the country’s higher education enrollment. These students contributed nearly $55 billion to the national economy, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Globally, the United States remained the top destination for students studying abroad, and India surpassed China for the second year in a row as the leading country of origin.
But those numbers predate the current administration’s immigration and visa policy changes and the mood on campuses this fall appears to be shifting.
Graduate programs appear more vulnerable. Figures provided by Boston University shows their number of graduate international students dropped 10% from last year, even when undergraduate numbers stayed steady. At Georgetown University, some programs report sharp declines, citing visa and immigration barriers.
Earlier this year, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government announced a contingency plan with the University of Toronto in case international students couldn’t obtain U.S. visas. But nearly all new and returning students ultimately arrived in Cambridge without issue — and the backup “global campus” never launched.
The dropoff in new international students could foreshadow a more prolonged contraction in the years ahead, especially at regional and less selective institutions already struggling to fill their classrooms. During the four years of the first Trump administration, new international enrollment fell by 12%, following the travel ban, visa restrictions and the controversial pandemic-era rule requiring international students to take in-person classes.
This time around, for Brandeis president Levine, the concern goes beyond colleges’ balance sheets.
“What we’re losing is an opportunity to make people friendlier toward the United States,” he said.
