Foreign grad students in U.S. down

http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/11/11/foreign.students.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The number of foreign students pursuing advanced degrees at U.S. universities fell this year, strengthening a trend that began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to a report released on Wednesday.

"This survey confirms, as we have suspected for some time, that most of the nation's leading research universities are experiencing declines in international graduate enrollment," said Nils Hasselmo, president of the Association of American Universities.

"The major factors are U.S. visa policy, increased international competition and perceptions that the United States is no longer a welcoming country," he said.

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This is it...truly a sign of the decline of the US as an economic superpower. There is a great shortage of US students interested in science and engineering, which the US has dominated since WWII. If we drive away the grad students, we are truly shooting ourselves in the foot. In my physics PhD program each class had about 12-15 foreign students and 4-5 US students....

but not good news nonetheless.

Grad programs have made up their attendance goals for years by just letting in more foreign ones, usually from India and China.

If those start to dry up, they'll soon get to a point where they'll either have to shrink their programs (not good), or really aggressively recruit Americans.

good luck! What field are you applying to?

And Canadian universities are cashing in big time, all big universities recorded record revenues from tuition due to international student influx.

and even I'm doing grad school outside of the US...