Foreign enrolment on US campuses drops for first time in years

WASHINGTON - Foreign student enrolment at US universities fell this autumn for the first time in three years after the Trump administration

clamped down on immigration

and took aim at a bevy of elite schools.

The number of international students across the country dropped by close to 5,000, even as the overall number of students grew by 1 per cent, according to data released on Jan 15 by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Centre.

The decline was driven by graduate student programmes, where enrolment fell by 6 per cent – or nearly 10,000 students – after shooting up more than 50 per cent between 2020 and 2024.

It is the latest blow to US colleges and universities as President Donald Trump pushes to remake higher education. The wealthiest institutions are facing a higher endowment tax under his tax-and-spending law from 2025. And top schools have also been contending with federal funding freezes.

International students have been coveted by school administrators because they often pay full freight. Personal and family funds represented the primary source of funding for 51 per cent of students in 2024-25, according to the Institute of International Education.

But the Trump administration has enacted travel bans, gummed up the visa application process and threatened deportations for campus activists.

Earlier this week, the X account for the Department of State touted that it had revoked 8,000 student visas in its mission to “keep America safe”.

Dr Matthew Holsapple, senior director of research at the Clearinghouse, said the drop in graduate students is a “stark difference” in the recruiting environment.

“It follows several years of strong growth, making this year’s downturn a pretty meaningful shift after that long period of expansion,” he said.

At Lewis University, a private school just outside of Chicago, a summer pause in visa processing was followed by a 37 per cent decline in the number of new international students in graduate programmes.

The loss forced the school to cut 10 per cent of its employees.

“It was a very dramatic shift in a very small amount of time, and we had to make quick adjustments,” Provost Christopher Sindt said in an interview.

“We had been growing our staff and resources, but this decline required us to right-size the institution to a smaller enrolment profile.”

Harvard or bust

The new policies have played out in very different ways across the higher education landscape.

While the foreign population in graduate programmes shrunk, it grew at the undergraduate level, though at a much slower pace than in recent years – a 3.2 per cent increase this year, down from 8.4 per cent growth the year before.

Harvard University,

one of the main targets of Mr Trump’s ire

, managed to buck the trends when it recently reported that it had enrolled a record number of international students this academic year.

The share of foreign students at the school in the autumn of 2025 rose slightly to 28 per cent, or 6,749 students – the most since at least 2002 – according to university data. 

In Gurgaon, near New Delhi, Mr Adarsh Khandelwal, co-founder of the college counselling firm Collegify, said that his clients – prospective students hoping for an American education – are focusing on elite schools in a “high-risk, high-reward” strategy.

Before, his students used to send out applications to about eight schools, and that pool could include liberal arts colleges. Now, the number has almost doubled, and they are only trying the most competitive schools.

Visa scrutiny and a dismal job market have steered prospective students to only apply to top schools, Mr Khandelwal said.

“Now the feeling in this part of the world is that if you want to go to the US, you should only look at a top school because only then you’ll have a good future or a good job or a good ROI,” he said.

At DePaul University, in Chicago, foreign student enrollment has taken a big hit. This past autumn, the overall foreign student population was down 755 students compared to fall 2024, while the number of new graduate students from abroad was down nearly 62 per cent.

The school attributed losses to visa challenges and the “declining desire for international students to study in the US”.

“Our FY26 budget planning did not anticipate a reduction of this magnitude,” DePaul’s leadership team wrote in a September post announcing spending cuts.

Media representatives for DePaul did not respond to a request for comment. 

Affordability plays

Headcount in computer and information science studies, popular programmes with international students, fell for the first time since 2020. Enrolment shrank by 14 per cent at the graduate level and 3.6 per cent in undergraduate programmes. The drops come after the field saw 30 per cent growth from 2020 to 2024. 

In looking at the student population as a whole, the Clearinghouse data indicates that there was a shift this fall away from private four-year schools, where enrolment was down 1.6 per cent, and towards public universities and community colleges, which grew by 1.4 per cent and 3 per cent respectively.

“It’s a clear departure from the broad-based growth we’ve seen in recent years, when publics and privates have moved together and not in opposing directions,” Dr Holsapple said. “The split is striking.”

Undergrads appear to be broadly pivoting towards more affordable, value-oriented studies. Certificate and associate degree programmes grew by 1.9 per cent and 2.2 per cent, outpacing the 0.9 per cent gains in bachelor’s degree programmes, according to the Clearinghouse.

Community colleges now enrol 28.3 per cent more undergraduate students in certificate programmes than they did in the autumn of 2021.

“We are continuing to see students shifting out of some of the more traditional pathways into these shorter-term, more flexible, perhaps more job- and career-oriented fields,” Dr Holsapple said. BLOOMBERG