Wanted: Foreign Students

"The good news: Foreign enrollments at American universities are on the rise. The bad news: Competition for international students if fiercer than ever."

In this article, Ron Schachter comprehensively reviews the changes in issues raised regarding US institutions' recruiting and matriculating of students from other countries since 9/11.

The annual Open Doors survey of 2,700 American higher education institutions by the Institute of International Education in Washington, D.C., tells a different story. IIE reports that in 2003-2004, foreign enrollment nationwide dropped by 2.4 percent and by another 1.3 percent the following year before leveling off in 2005-2006 (the most recent year for which IIE has national data) to almost 565,000, a total decline of almost 22,000.

What's more, before the events of 9/11 raised the requirements for F1 visas and the anxieties of foreign students considering a U.S. education, American schools could count on at least a 5 percent annual increase. "We had experienced nonstop growth," recalls Bruce Rindler, associate director of Boston University's CELOP. "We were doing very little marketing and were seeing more and more students coming to us."

And while many schools say they are again building their foreign enrollments-a statement backed up by the Open Doors report, which showed an 8 percent increase in new students for 2005-2006-they are facing greater challenges than ever before in attracting students. In another recent IIE study of 1,000 member institutions of higher ed, more than half indicated they have increased their recruitment efforts at a time when universities in Europe, China, and a host of English-speaking countries are doing the same.

The Open Doors Survey can be found here.