Foreign Admits to U.S. Grad Schools Plunge

For the first time since 2004, international admissions to U.S. graduate schools are down. The deteriorating job market and problems with visas and financing are to blame

By Alison Damast

In a startling reversal from recent years, U.S. graduate schools' admission offers to prospective international students fell sharply this year, with several countries seeing double-digit declines, according to a report by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).

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.

Experts say international students are increasingly turning their sights to business programs in Asia and Europe, where a number of top business schools have emerged in recent years.

Indeed, that appears to be the case for students from India and South Korea, who helped fuel the U.S. international application boom in recent years. Applications from both India and South Korea fell in 2009, with declines of 12% and 9% respectively. The decline in interest from these countries was reflected in the admissions offers doled out to students this year, which were down 16% for both India and South Korea, according to the survey.

"That is just a tremendous drop. It does make me nervous because we have relied on those countries very heavily for many of our programs," says James Wimbush, dean of the graduate school at Indiana University and a professor of business administration. "When we start to see declines like this, this concerns us because it will affect the composition of the students in our programs."

Many students from countries such as India say they are thinking twice now before accepting an offer to attend a top U.S. business school. Manish Bage, 29, an electrical engineer who worked in sales for seven years, decided to turn down an offer from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business (Duke Fuqua Full-Time MBA Profile) this year, in favor of attending the Indian School of Business.

"The recession made me double-think taking out a $130,000 loan and my ability to pay it back if I don't get a job in the U.S. and was forced to return to India," says Bage, who is now a student at the Indian School of Business. "The present U.S. government policies showing a bias against H-1B workers also made me reconsider the job prospects in the U.S. post-MBA."

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