Foreign Enrollment Surges at U.S. B-Schools

When the economic downturn hit, international enrollment at top business schools tanked. Today, it's back up to prerecession levels

A marketing course at USC’s Marshall School of Business, where a one-year international MBA program attracts a large number of Asian students.

By Alison Damast

Renewed confidence and hopefulness is beginning to replace the hesitation and wariness that international applicants have felt the past few years when considering U.S. business schools. At the top 20 U.S. full-time MBA programs this fall, international enrollment is starting to inch back up to levels not seen since the economic downturn hit, according to data collected by Bloomberg Businessweek. Average international enrollment at those schools is now 33.4 percent, up from 30.2 percent at the height of the economic crisis, when visa and financing issues prevented many international applicants from enrolling.

“I don’t think the U.S. seems as unfriendly to international applicants anymore, which is great,” says Christine Sneva, director of admissions and financial aid at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, where international enrollment jumped from 22 percent in the 2009-10 school year to 34 percent this year. “It just seems like a certain level of optimism has returned for international students.”

It’s a shift in attitude that appears to be rippling throughout U.S. graduate business programs, according to a report released this fall by the Council of Graduate Schools, a Washington (D.C.) group that represents more than 500 universities. In the past few years, U.S. business schools have been facing increased competition for top foreign students from European, Canadian, and Asian schools, but the tide may be turning. This fall, the largest increase in total international graduate enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities occurred in business, which had a 6 percent gain following no growth in 2010, the report showed. That surge was the largest increase in enrollment in the graduate business school sector since 2007, says Nathan Bell, the council’s director of research and policy analysis. Graduate business enrollment for the 2011 incoming class grew even more, he notes, rising 9 percent, up from a 2 percent increase the year before.

EASIER VISAS

One reason schools are seeing more foreign applicants could be that the student F-1 visa approval rate has gone up, thanks to a push by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the past two years to get more students to come study in the U.S., says David Ware, an immigration law attorney. In the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2010, the most recent information available, 385,210 F-1 student visas were issued, up from 331,208 the previous year, a 16 percent increase, according to State Dept. data.

“I think we are beginning to win a lot of these students back. For many of them, their first choice was the U.S., and they were only going to the U.K. or Canada as a second choice,” Ware says. “Now that visas are more readily available, that definitely would have a relationship to the uptick.”

China, one of the top three countries sending graduate students to the U.S., is responsible for much of the surge in enrollment in U.S. graduate schools. Total first-time enrollment from China in all graduate programs was up 21 percent this year, its sixth consecutive year of double-digit increases, according to the Council of Graduate Schools report. Not surprisingly, 39 percent of two-year, full-time MBA programs in 2011 reported that China was their largest increasing source of foreign applicants, according to data from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the Reston (Va.) group that administers the GMAT test for business-school applicants. Women from China, Taiwan, and Vietnam are driving much of the increase and currently outnumber men in East Asia taking the GMAT exam.

Many of these students are coming to the U.S. to get their MBAs, hoping to return to their home countries and fast-track their careers at a multinational company, says Shantanu Dutta, vice-dean for graduate programs at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. The school offers a one-year international MBA program in which 75 percent of the students hail from Asia, he says. “These countries are becoming wealthier, and more students than ever can now can afford to come to the U.S.,” Dutta says. “They are more confident about the economy back home, and there is a lot of high energy and enthusiasm.”