New international student enrollments in US plunge this year, data shows

The number of international students enrolling in US colleges and universities plunged this year as the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown on higher education began to bite, data released on Monday reveals.

New international student enrollment fell 17% in the current academic year, the largest drop in more than a decade aside from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a fall snapshot published by the Institute of International Education (IIE).

It follows a 7.2% drop for the 2024/25 academic year, which was bisected by the final months of the Biden administration and the first few months of Trump’s second term in which his assault on foreign students in higher education included visa revocations and cancelation of interviews, deportations and funding cuts to universities.

For the 2025/26 academic year, more than half of institutions surveyed, 57%, said new enrollments had fallen, with 27% of those saying the decrease in numbers was “substantial”.

“Concerns about the visa application process, such as visa delays and denials, have long been the leading factor noted by institutions for enrollment declines,” the IIE’s snapshot noted, stating that in its report a year earlier 85% of institutions cited visa application concerns as the primary issue for new enrollment declines.

That number soared to 96% in fall 2025.

“Additionally, institutions cite that student concerns about feeling unwelcome in the US (67%) or about the broader social and political environment (64%) may have affected new enrollment,” it said.

“A close read of enrollment figures from last year and this fall shows that the pipeline of global talent in the US is in a precarious position,” Fanta Aw, executive director and chief executive of Nafsa: Association of International Educators, said in a statement, noting that international students contributed $42.9bn annually to the US economy and supported more than 355,000 jobs.

“There are alarming declines that we ignore at our own peril. Other countries are creating effective incentives to capitalize on our mistakes. The US must adopt more proactive policies to attract and retain the world’s best and brightest… otherwise international students will increasingly choose to go elsewhere to the detriment of our economy, excellence in research and innovation, and global competitiveness and engagement.”

Overseas students make up about 6% of the overall college population in the US, a number the Trump administration has doggedly tried to reduce.

In August, the White House unveiled a policy that would restrict the length of time that student visa holders could remain in the US. Trump previously attempted to prevent some individual institutions, such as Harvard, admitting foreign students entirely, an order blocked by a permanent injunction from a federal judge.

Much of Trump’s assault has been on financial grounds, threatening or withholding federal funds until institutions capitulated to his demands over perceived antisemitism on campuses. In March, New York’s Columbia University, the scene of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year in which students were arrested and threatened with deportation, agreed to changes that would see its $400m federal funding restored.

The IIE, a non-partisan organization, contrasts the decline in new enrollments of foreign students to the total number of international students in the US, a figure it says held steady in its fall snapshot, and increased by 5% during the 2024/25 academic year to almost 1.2 million, according to its Open Doors 2025 report released Monday.

“The US remains the destination of choice for international students from over 200 places of origin worldwide,” said Mirka Martel, the organization’s head of research, evaluation and learning, noting that students from India, China and South Korea made up the largest percentage despite Trump’s various restrictions.

“International students come to every state. And 45 states experienced increases in their international student totals in 2024/25.”

Other experts, however, say the figures ring alarm bells. “There are warning signs for future years, and I’m really concerned about what this portends for fall ’26 and ’27,” Clay Harmon, executive director of the Association of International Enrollment Management, representing colleges and recruitment agencies, told the Associated Press.