At a college fair on Wednesday at the Le Meridien hotel in New Delhi, 20 US universities made their pitches to aspiring students, many of whom had long hoped to study in the US.
However, as the students looked at presentations from colleges ranging from the State University of New York at Binghamton to Abilene Christian University in Texas, several expressed concerns about going to the US when president-elect Donald Trump takes over the administration.
“It’s the main topic of conversation among my friends,” said Palak Gera, 21, who is applying to graduate programs in pharmaceutical science in North Carolina, Illinois and North Dakota. “They don’t want to apply to the US under Trump.”
Illustration: Constance Chou
Aman Kumar, 18, who is looking at universities in California, said: “In his campaign, he’s discriminating against Muslim and other brown and black people.”
“I’m thinking of applying to Canada,” Kumar said.
This year, the number of international students in US colleges surpassed 1 million for the first time, bringing more than US$32 billion a year into the economy and infusions of money to financially struggling colleges.
College admissions officials in the US caution that it is too early to draw firm conclusions about overseas applications, because deadlines for applications are generally in January and February, but they are worried that Trump’s election could portend a decline in international candidates.
Canadian universities have already detected a postelection surge in interest from overseas.
“We have seen an increase in applications from the US and from international students in the last week,” Jocelyne Younan, director of global undergraduate recruitment at McGill University in Montreal, wrote in an e-mail. “We’ve also seen an increase in students inquiring about McGill on social media.”
CANADA BECKONS
Traffic on a University of Toronto Web site for international applicants surged the day after the election, officials said — and most of it came from US nationals.
“Visits to our recruitment Web site from the US are typically around 1,000 a day,” university vice president Ted Sargent said. “On Nov. 9, that spiked to 10,000.”
On the same day, there was an increase in visitors from Britain and India, Sargent said.
“Our positive message as a university, but also as a city and a country, definitely is about openness to people from around the world and a real inclusiveness,” he said.
A disruption in the flow of international students could be particularly worrisome for universities that balance their books with income from international students, who generally pay higher tuition.
At Indiana State University, 1,000 of the 13,500 students are foreign, including many Saudis who transferred this year from Idaho State, and officials are concerned, said Santhana Naidu, an associate vice president for communications and marketing.
“We have already received inquiries from prospective students who are in the applicant pool,” Naidu said. “They’re asking: ‘Is it safe for me to come there?’ and generally getting the lay of the land.”
Naidu is to be among officials meeting this week at the university in Terre Haute, Indiana, to determine what they can do to assuage fears.
Scott Manning, director of global programs at Susquehanna University, a liberal arts college in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, said he had heard before the election that two prospective students from China were waiting until after the vote to submit visa documents necessary to attend Susquehanna.
“They were kind of spooked about threats Trump made about the South China Sea, back and forth with Japan about some uninhabited islands, and trade issues in general,” Manning said.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE
The students, who were considering an English-language program beginning in January as a precursor to fall enrollment, have still not submitted their documents, he said.
Officials at Ohio State University said it was too early to tell whether the election result would affect international applications, adding that there had been an increase so far this year, although most were received before the US Election Day.
International study has historically been affected by social forces. Attacks on Indian students in Australia in 2009 and 2010 were believed to be part of the reason for a sharp drop-off in applications from India.
International education experts first raised concerns in May about the election of Trump, when a study was presented at a meeting of NAFSA: Association of International Educators indicating that a Trump presidency could dissuade international students from going to the US.
The study, by Intead and FPP EDU Media, two firms specializing in international student recruitment for colleges, found that 60 percent of prospective students would be less likely to attend a college in the US if Trump were elected.
“We were really surprised, if not shocked, by the results,” Intead chief executive Benjamin Waxman said.
More recently, international education experts who have been on the ground in China and India — the two biggest feeder countries to US colleges — also say they are seeing postelection jitters.
Andrew Chen, chief development officer at WholeRen, an international education consulting company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, returned to the US this week from China, where he said colleges in other countries were trying to capitalize on fears over Trump.
“Many organizations and programs are starting to use this to promote education in the UK, Australia and Singapore,” Chen said. “These competitors paint the US as not safe. Now, with Trump, they’re saying it’s going to be unfriendly.”
However, Chen said he believed the fears of international students were unfounded.
“He doesn’t like refugees from the Middle East, and he said for all Muslims he wanted to do a background check,” Chen said. “And also people from Mexico. He doesn’t like those people.”
“But I don’t think he ever said he doesn’t like international students who pay tuition to study in the US,” Chen said.
Rahul Choudaha, an international education consultant in New Jersey, has been traveling for the past week in India, where he said there was a palpable worry among students and their parents.
“They are not seeing the United States as a safe destination,” said Choudaha, a founder of interEdge, a company that helps international students. “They’re changing the destination to Australia or Singapore.”
“It’s an anti-immigrant tone,” he added. “Just stylistically, he seems be a very different person than people thought would be taking leadership in America.”
As she prepared her applications to prestigious US universities, Naina Lavakare, a senior at the British School in New Delhi, developed a Plan B.
“It was a family joke,” said Lavakare’s mother, Jyoti Pande. “You can apply anywhere you want. However, if it’s Trump in the White House, we’re not sure we want to send you to the US.”
Lavakare, 17, has adjusted her college aspirations. While she still has several US colleges on her list — in New York, California and Rhode Island — she dropped universities in “red states” to focus on colleges in Britain and Canada, her mother said, because she was concerned about Trump’s talk opposing immigrants.
Lavakare and her friends” view Trump as a bigot and a misogynist,” Pande said.
“I think that is what is freaking them out more than anything else,” she added.
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