Press Room
Letter to The Weekly Standard
20 July 2005
Letters Editor
The Weekly Standard
1150 17th Street, NW
Suite 505
Washington, DC 20036
To the Editor:
Robert Satloff is quite correct: There were more international students in U.S. universities in the last academic year for which data are available (2003 - 2004) than there were the year before 9/11 ("The Brain Drain That Wasn't: Foreign student still flock to American universities," op-ed, July 25). But it isn't quite fair to hold those of us who worry about international student enrollment trends accountable for newspapers' sometimes overblown headlines about dramatic declines (although there have been dramatic declines at some universities and from some countries).
Here are the facts, so your readers can judge for themselves:
After annual increases every year since 1972 - increases that had averaged nearly five percent annually during the previous five years - international student enrollments at U.S. universities leveled off during the 2002 - 2003 academic year and declined during the 2003 - 2004 academic year. Although definitive data are not yet in, preliminary data suggest a further decline in 2004 - 2005. This followed the imposition of new visa procedures in 2002. Although that was not the only cause, when you make it exponentially harder to get into this country, and then fewer people come, you are justified in supposing that the former had something to do with the latter.
Is the downward trend ephemeral or long-term? No one knows. But no enterprise that waits until it has definitively lost its market to take corrective action will long be in business. Advocates of educational exchange are not alone in sounding the alarm. Secretaries of State Powell and Rice, among many other national leaders, have frequently expressed concern, and have promised corrective measures to ensure that the United States does not lose its edge in attracting the precious resource of international students.
To suggest that concern over international student enrollment trends reflects nothing but exaggerated rhetoric is both wrong and a disservice to an important national asset.
Marlene M. Johnson
Executive Director & CEO
NAFSA: Association of International Educators
Letters Editor
The Weekly Standard
1150 17th Street, NW
Suite 505
Washington, DC 20036
To the Editor:
Robert Satloff is quite correct: There were more international students in U.S. universities in the last academic year for which data are available (2003 - 2004) than there were the year before 9/11 ("The Brain Drain That Wasn't: Foreign student still flock to American universities," op-ed, July 25). But it isn't quite fair to hold those of us who worry about international student enrollment trends accountable for newspapers' sometimes overblown headlines about dramatic declines (although there have been dramatic declines at some universities and from some countries).
Here are the facts, so your readers can judge for themselves:
After annual increases every year since 1972 - increases that had averaged nearly five percent annually during the previous five years - international student enrollments at U.S. universities leveled off during the 2002 - 2003 academic year and declined during the 2003 - 2004 academic year. Although definitive data are not yet in, preliminary data suggest a further decline in 2004 - 2005. This followed the imposition of new visa procedures in 2002. Although that was not the only cause, when you make it exponentially harder to get into this country, and then fewer people come, you are justified in supposing that the former had something to do with the latter.
Is the downward trend ephemeral or long-term? No one knows. But no enterprise that waits until it has definitively lost its market to take corrective action will long be in business. Advocates of educational exchange are not alone in sounding the alarm. Secretaries of State Powell and Rice, among many other national leaders, have frequently expressed concern, and have promised corrective measures to ensure that the United States does not lose its edge in attracting the precious resource of international students.
To suggest that concern over international student enrollment trends reflects nothing but exaggerated rhetoric is both wrong and a disservice to an important national asset.
Marlene M. Johnson
Executive Director & CEO
NAFSA: Association of International Educators
