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Foreign Enrollment at U.S. Colleges Drops by Most Since 2003

  • It’s the third-biggest decline in history of Open Doors report
  • A measure of economic benefit foreign students bring also fell
Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg
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U.S. universities experienced the biggest enrollment drop among international students in 16 years, even before Covid-19 ravaged the globe -- a sign of how the Trump administration’s immigration policies have hurt American higher education.

Attendance slid 1.8% in the 2019-20 academic year to 1.08 million, according to the Open Doors report released Monday by the nonprofit Institute of International Education. That’s the third-biggest drop in the report’s almost 70-year history.