Foreign enrollment drops at US colleges

IU is also speeding up the application process to give students more time for security clearances. Three-fourths of graduate schools surveyed by CGS report some form of admissions streamlining. Many have offered more guidance about the visa process on their websites.

Counselors on many campus have been busy advising students trying to decide whether to travel home for family events; many fear delays in getting back into the country will disrupt their studies. In a survey last winter at the University of California, Berkeley, 37 percent of international students said they had altered research plans because of visa problems.

International education groups say they're encouraged by the US government's efforts to reduce waits for visas, but they continue to press for the elimination of redundant reviews of low-risk students and well-known scholars.

Dhruv Bahl came from India to study engineering at Boston University. Now a junior, he has traveled home several times and says he doesn't hear about many Indians having visa problems. Last year, the number of students coming from India did grow, by 7 percent, but that was down from the previous year's growth of 12 percent.

As he mans a table at a campus food court to advertise a party sponsored by the Hindu Students Council, Mr. Bahl riffs for a while on the economic climate in the US: "The expense is going up. Even if you have a scholarship the way I do, it just gets more and more and more expensive," he says.

And it's tough to find a job or internship. "People say, 'Wow, you're doing so well, you've got good grades, you've done research projects.'... And then suddenly I tell the person who might want to give me a job that I'm an international student and I'll need sponsorship, and my card just comes back out of their hands."

He would still recommend American universities to friends back home, but he does think US schools or the government can do more - offering better financial aid, for instance - to "reach out and to grab the youth."

He also believes politics makes a difference. "When Bill Clinton [was president] ... a lot of Indian students dreamed about the US, because he came to India, he supported India.... He didn't do things to make us feel like America was a big bully."

Boston University representatives are traveling more to try to counter any negative perceptions of America, Mr. Ebersole says. The school wants to expand overseas offices that currently have only a single mission, such as supporting an American study-abroad program.

BU is also considering setting up a campus in the Middle East, but officials are still weighing the risks. A few American schools have already started down that path, while others are concentrating on expanding their Internet-based education around the world. "For us to be actively present and engaged in the Middle East I think is the right thing to do," Ebersole says. "Whether we do it through technology or a physical presence is what we're debating."

The domestic capacity for graduate education is on the rise in other regions - with Asia's doubling in the past 30 years to the point where it now has roughly as many university students as the US has, according to Heath Brown, research director at CGS.

That may account for part of the drop-off in applicants to the US, but huge numbers of people are still searching for education beyond what their own countries can offer.

"Half the population in the third world is under 20 years of age," Ebersole says. "We in the developed world are going to have to find ways to provide access to these students or we'll be faced with great instability."

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