According to a new survey from the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, 40 percent of U.S. colleges and universities have seen a drop in applications from foreign students, thanks to “Trump effect” fear:
The president of Portland State University, Wim Wiewel, met last week with 10 prospective students in Hyderabad, India. But what started as a get-acquainted visit quickly turned into more of a counseling session, as the students expressed fears about coming to the United States this fall.
One student, who is Muslim, said his father was worried that America had an anti-Muslim attitude, Mr. Wiewel recounted. “Several others said they were concerned about the ‘Trump effect,’” he said in an email.
“I’d say the rhetoric and actual executive orders are definitely having a chilling effect,” Mr. Wiewel wrote, referring to the Trump administration’s travel ban.
The biggest decline in applications has come from, unsurprisingly, the Middle East. While Trump’s repeated attempts at a Muslim ban keep getting slapped down in the courts, reports of travelers still being detained at airports are ongoing, resulting in travelers from Canada, Australia, Mexico, and other countries canceling unnecessary visits to the U.S. School administrators are now worried fearful students may follow along and decline letters of acceptance.
For several graduate schools, the Trump administration’s travel ban, which initially affected seven predominantly Muslim countries, could not have been more poorly timed. It was announced in late January as deadlines loomed for applications to some graduate programs, and it came on the heels of Mr. Trump’s virulently anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign.
Slumping graduate school applications can now be seen at universities ranging from giant Big Ten public universities like Ohio State and Indiana University to regional programs such as Portland State, with just over 27,000 students, including more than 1,900 international students.
At Indiana University, international applications for undergraduate programs increased 6 percent, but graduate applications for some programs are posting big drops, said David Zaret, vice president for international affairs.
Mr. Zaret said international applications to the masters program in business were down 20 percent, and down 30 percent in both the master of law program and at the School of Informatics and Computing.
Ohio State has also seen an increase in international undergraduate applications but a significant overall drop — 8.4 percent — in international applicants to its graduate programs, a university spokesman, Chris Davey, said.
At Portland State, where undergraduate international applications are up 4 percent but international graduate applications are down 15 percent, the vice provost for international affairs, Margaret Everett, said she had heard recently from a Chinese student who canceled his application, citing the political climate.
According to the LA Times, an economic consulting firm estimated that the U.S. stands to lose 6.3 million visitors by the end of next year, “which translates into $10.8 billion in spending.” Now thanks to Trump’s state-sanctioned bigotry, we also stand to lose bright young minds that have so much to contribute to our future in terms of medicine, technology, science, and other fields. There’s no dollar amount you can attach to that.