US international postgraduate numbers fall as domestic enrolments rise

Graduate schools in the US have cut their offers to international postgraduate students for the first time in five years, on the back of increased domestic applications and waning interest from India and South Korea. The findings, from the ‘Final applications and initial offers of admission’ report by the US Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), suggest that the US approach to international education – recruiting top-level overseas students and supporting them with generous scholarships – may be difficult to sustain during an economic downturn. The report, based on data from 501 colleges and universities, also suggests the recent recovery in US international student numbers – following a slump in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks – may now be losing steam. It shows that offers to prospective international postgraduate students decreased by 3 per cent from 2008 to 2009. This followed four consecutive rises, although the growth had been slowing since offers rose 14 per cent between 2005 and 2006. And the fall came despite continued, albeit slowing, growth in international applications – which rose 4 per cent last year, following jumps of 6 per cent between 2007 and 2008, 9 per cent the previous year and 12 per cent the year before that. Last year’s application numbers struggled to get into positive territory because of the declining interest from two of the US’s three biggest customers. Applicants from India and South Korea – the biggest and third-biggest markets – dropped by 12 per cent and 9 per cent respectively. This translated to a 16 per cent decline in offers to students from both countries. Strong interest from the second-biggest market – China – compensated, but couldn’t make up the ground. Chinese students put in 14 per cent more applications and received 13 per cent more offers in 2009 than 2008. The overall fall in the number of offers, despite the tentative rise in applications, suggests international applicants are being gazumped by their domestic counterparts. Three out of four of the responding institutions reported that their domestic applications had risen over the last year. This translated to an average 9 per cent jump in domestic applications for each institution, and an average 2 per cent jump in offers. Interest was strongest at the PhD level, with 84 per cent of doctoral universities reporting an increase in domestic applications, compared to 58 per cent of masters-level institutions. The figures reflect a nationality shift in enrolments in the country’s most advanced courses – suggesting the US may be looking to its own to provide its top-end know-how. CGS president Debra Stewart said recent growth in graduate enrolments had been driven by international students. “The fact that so many schools reported strong growth in admissions to US students this year may signal a reversal of that trend,” she said. The penchant for recruiting the best and brightest overseas student is well entrenched in the US. According to the Bradley report, there are over 100,000 international doctoral students in the US each year, half of whom stay on after graduating. New enrolments by international postgraduates consistently outnumber those by international undergraduates, and the gap has widened from about 1400 in 2004-05 to over 10,000 last year, according to US Institute of International Education data. This plays out in the workforce. “A quarter of the American science and technology-based companies that generate about $55 billion per annum in revenue have a CEO or chief technology officer who wasn’t born in the US. And for 25 per cent of the patents filed in the US, at least one co-inventor is not a native-born American,” Dr Paul Kelly, a Boston-based Australian biotechnology executive, told a public lecture at UNSW last week. The latest figures suggest the roller-coaster of international enrolments in the US may now be curving down again, given the dominance of postgraduates. Enrolments peaked in 2002-03 but declined for the following three years, largely because of tightened visa restrictions after the September 11 attacks, before rebounding to the highest level ever last year. There are concerns at what a new decline in international enrolments could mean for the US’s global image. “Countering this drop in foreign student interest will be important from the perspective of US public diplomacy – for which educational exchanges are a cornerstone,” the US conservative policy research institute, The Heritage Foundation, announced in its blog The Foundry. “Students who have had first-hand experience of living in the US overwhelmingly come away with positive impressions and certainly with increased knowledge about America, its history and people.” Last month’s report outlined the findings of the second of the CGS’s three annual surveys of application, admission and enrolment trends. There could be more bad news in the third report – final offers and enrolments – which is due out in November. “Given the current economic situation for many universities and states, it is possible that the financial aid offers that accompanied offers of admission were smaller than expected,” the CGS reported. “Since international students must demonstrate that they have money to pay for graduate school in order to obtain a visa, this will likely have a negative effect on enrolment.” Go to cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/R_IntlAdm09_II.pdf