Trump visa policies force colleges to scramble as international students vanish: report

Fox News

2 days ago

An educational consultant warned that there will be "no more normal years" as colleges brace for a loss of international students and face financial challenges due to those losses.
Prestigious colleges have been offering student prospects on their waitlist a spot among their first-year students a lot later than usual, according to Town & Country.
"This is not a typical year," the outlet reported.
The magazine explained further that waitlist discussions on college forums "went deep into July." Top schools like Columbia University, Rice University, Stanford University, and Duke have been notifying students a lot later than usual.
In an effort to attract students who were waitlisted, Rice University has had to compensate students who have already committed to another school and received important materials such as course schedules and freshman dorm assignments.
Rice has been admitting students from its waitlist deep into summer.
The admissions process at America's most selective universities has been disrupted, possibly due to the Trump administration's pressure on colleges' handling of antisemitism on campus and civil rights violations as well as freezing the funding they relied on from the federal government, the outlet suggested.
"The most likely explanation for the waitlist extensions this year is a fear that international students will not be able to start classes in August as a result of a pause that Secretary of State Marco Rubio placed on visa interviews earlier this year, between May 27 and June 18, during their peak season," the outlet reported.
"When interviews were resumed, U.S. consulates were told that they must implement new social media vetting protocols within five days. According to NAFSA, a professional organization for people who work in international education, the State Department provided little guidance on how to carry out this new order."
International students at consulates in India, China, Nigeria, Japan, and other countries are reportedly backlogged due to a "three-week" pause in interviews.
Colleges will lose many of their international student enrollment as India and China make up over half of international students in the U.S. "NAFSA predicts 'a potential 30–40 percent decline in new international student enrollment,' which could mean 150,000 fewer international students on American campuses," Town & Country reported.
Mark Moody, an education consultant who has worked at high schools domestically and internationally for almost three decades, told Town & Country that this "year's issue with international enrollment needs to be understood as compounding, not creating, problems that have been developing for some time."
The financial implications are a significant factor. Union College reportedly announced financial cuts and was forced to pull from endowment funds after a decline in international students.
The loss of international students has shaken up the college admissions process, causing many universities to extend the waitlist deadline as they struggle to predict which students will enroll.
"Students are applying to more colleges, making it harder to predict who will enroll. Colleges are seeing more students secure a spot in a college with a deposit in the spring and then never actually enroll, a phenomenon known as melt. It's become more common for families to make deposits at multiple colleges in the hope of securing better financial aid deals later that summer," the outlet reported.
"The international visa problems have made the uncertainty and anxiety among admissions leaders worse, but they were already bad," Town & Country stated.
Moody told Town & Country that the college admissions landscape will favor students with "higher admit rates and more merit aid, especially if they're from full-pay families."
"Outside of the Ivy League and perhaps a dozen other schools with massive endowments, colleges are going to feel great pressure to admit more students who will help them hit their bottom line."
Moody worries that more colleges will lean heavily into their early decision process to admit a larger percentage of their freshman class, which "could put students in a tough spot" if they apply regular decision or if they don't approach early decision very carefully and strategically.
"There are no more normal years," Mark Moody said to Town & Country.
Fox News Digital reached out to Columbia University, Rice University, Stanford University, Duke University, and Union College for comment but did not immediately receive responses.