Application and acceptance season is underway at America’s colleges and universities. But this year, some institutions of higher learning may see a noticeable dip in attendance from one group purposely choosing to stay home: foreign students.
Applications from international students from countries such as China, India and in particular, the Middle East, are down this year at nearly 40 percent of schools that answered a recent survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
Educators, recruiters and school officials report that the perception of America has changed for international students, and it just doesn’t seem to be as welcoming a place anymore. Officials point to the Trump administration’s rhetoric surrounding immigration and the issuing of a travel ban as having an effect.
“Yes, we definitely are sounding the warning,” said Melanie Gottlieb, deputy director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, adding, “We would hope that the [Trump] administration would say [to] cool the rhetoric a bit around immigration.”
r-strategists are instinctually programmed to avoid migrating to hostile environments where K-selection might lurk, and they are very cued in on the subtle indicators. If one nation creates an unwelcoming image, the migrants will migrate to other nations which do not appear as unwelcoming.
Note that here, these are not even true migrants. These are students looking for a place to study legally, temporarily. But still the r-strategists among them see the aggression in America and that is it. They’ll head somewhere else.
This is why the embrace of migrants in Europe will be the death of the tourism industry. All those r-strategist tourists are going to realize Europe is no longer safe, and from there you will see Russian and American tourism take off.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because America is a scary intolerant place for migrants these days
[…] Foreign College Students Staying Away […]
But . . . http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-exaggerates-trump-effect-on-foreign-college-recruitment-by-an-order-of-magnitude/?highlight=foreign+students
Don’t forget about Australia.
Australian tourism is already taking off. Tourism has been growing the last 2 years and is set to continue. I remember at school getting made to learn Japanese. Oh boy did they get that wrong, Chinese is the thing to learn.
http://www.tra.gov.au/documents/ivs/ivs_december_2016.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-15/chinese-tourists-spend-more-money-in-australia/7633736
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/an-extra-100000-chinese-tourists-visited-the-gold-coast-in-2017/news-story/0286e1c5b70706cc980286e4cad52572
I wouldn’t interpret the findings in that article too much; applications of foreign students are done in 39% of schools, but also up in 35% of schools, and it is not certain what the actual change (if any) in the number of foreign student applications are.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-exaggerates-trump-effect-on-foreign-college-recruitment-by-an-order-of-magnitude/
“looking for a place to study legally, temporarily.”
AC, I’d suggest that statement is a little naive. Many students from first-world countries are looking to stay and easily 90% or more of Africans, Arabs, Indians are looking to stay for sure.
True.