As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting<br />Last month, Moody’s changed its credit outlook for higher education to “negative” from “stable.”<br />“Growing uncertainty for international student enrollment stems from immigration policies<br />that are in flux,” Moody’s said, warning that universities without global brand recognition would be hit hardest.<br />“As you lose those students, then the tuition revenue is negatively impacted as well,” said Michael Godard, the interim provost at the University<br />of Central Missouri, where 944 international students were enrolled in the fall, a decline of more than 1,500 from the previous year.<br />Officials said that other reasons for the decline in enrollment include increased competition from schools in other countries, cuts in scholarship programs in Saudi Arabia<br />and Brazil, and a currency crisis in India caused when the government decided to swap widely used notes for new bills.<br />“There’s only so much you can do with recruiting if the families can’t afford the tuition.”<br />Officials at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., reported an overall enrollment<br />decline of more than 900 students, including 159 fewer international students.<br />The downturn follows a decade of explosive growth in foreign student enrollment, which now tops 1 million at United States colleges<br />and educational training programs, and supplies $39 billion in revenue.
