International students or Foreign students as they are known, are no more interested in US universities, as revealed by a recent survey. According to the survey, 3% decrease has been witnessed in students coming to the US universities.
According to Business Week,
The 3% average decline is the first in five years and would have been far worse if not for increases in China and the Middle East. Educators are now worried about foreign student enrollment this fall and diversity in graduate programs in years to come. Depending on how many accepted students actually show up on campus in coming weeks, international enrollments could stay level or plunge. “The declines this year were steeper than I expected,” says Nathan Bell, the author of the report and the council’s director of research and policy analysis. “It is very unlikely that we will see any increase at all in first-time enrollment of international students this fall, and that will be a shift from what we’ve seen.”
Though the report found a 4% increase in international applications, the total number of international applications received this year is still below 2003 application levels at many of the 253 schools that responded to the survey.
The findings come a time when international students are increasingly getting cold feet about coming to study in U.S. graduate schools. Many are worried about their job prospects and the daunting challenges associated with obtaining an H-1B visa to work in the U.S. after graduation. A number have had trouble securing financing to study in the U.S., a problem exacerbated this year when many graduate schools lost the contracts for the co-signer loan programs on which many international students had depended, and had to scramble to find replacements
Image by Spierzchala on Flickr
The TechCrunch, a famous technology blog also terms it an alarming situation and call it a result of Xenophobic behavior shown by American officials towards the people from developing world. That is one reason evident from the huge decrease in number of applicants from India and South Korea.
Sarah Lacy is particularly concerned about the impact of this latest trend on the future of Silicon Valley and says the following in her blog post:
It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare. We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries. But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping the world’s brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place.
She further ads the following in her concluding remarks,
You know that American dream and American spirit of innovation we always talk about? Turns out, the bulk of it was built by people who came to America from somewhere else, not people born American. We have no birthright or natural lock on these things. Money and talent are fungible assets that flowed to the U.S.—and specifically the Valley—because that is where they were supported and rewarded.
Some people have blithely dismissed growth in markets like China and India saying Silicon Valley will always be the hub for tech; that everyone will come to us. Wake up: Because the numbers are showing money and talent is increasingly going elsewhere.
Indeed, very well said Sarah, we all agree that America has traditionally benefited from its policies of welcoming merit and not color, religion and race but alas that is no more the case and its impact will soon be evident.
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