International student enrollment is down at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus compared with last year. Administrators say a mix of factors is to blame, but anti-immigrant rhetoric during the 2016 presidential campaign and action taken by the Trump administration after the election have clearly had an impact.
“We have recruiters in over 60 countries around the world, and they’re spending an enormous amount of time reassuring potential students and their parents about the climate in the U.S. and that Indiana University is interested in welcoming them,” said Chris Viers, IU’s associate vice president for international services.
U.S. universities are still popular, as more than 80,000 new international graduate students enrolled during fall 2017, according to the Council of Graduate Schools' International Graduate Admissions Survey. But that’s a 1 percent decline from the previous year, the first decline the annual survey has found in 14 years.
International student enrollment on IU’s Bloomington campus declined by about 4 percent from fall 2016 to fall 2017. The biggest loss came at the graduate level, which saw a decline of about 7 percent.
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