The American Council on Education (ACE) released a new report on Friday, titled “Toward Greater Inclusion and Success: A New Compact for International Students.” It details ways universities can not only recruit international students but retain and support them.
In 2016, co-author Robin Matross Helms, ACE’s assistant vice president of learning and engagement, and her colleagues noticed that universities were ramping up their efforts to attract international students but they weren’t necessarily investing in the resources and guidance they needed.
“What we saw in the data was that support for those students once they arrived on campus had not risen commensurately,” she said. “And some areas of the student experience had decreased compared to a decade earlier.”
According to the report, in the 2018 academic year, 1,095,299 international students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, doubling from 547,867 in 2000. But growth hasn’t been steady, stagnating in 2014 and beginning to decline two years later. Now facing a pandemic, total international student enrollment for fall 2020 fell by 16% and new international student enrollment dropped by a staggering 43%, an Institute of International Education study found.
The report contextualizes what those losses mean for campus diversity and what universities have to gain from sustaining connections worldwide.
Conversations about international students are too “often centered around economic impact, the tuition international students pay and the money they spend while they’re in the U.S.,” Helms said. “As the research report notes, these conversations often neglect the tremendous contributions of international students to the educational experience of all of our students on campus.”
In the report, she and her co-authors outline the building blocks of an equity-focused model for international student inclusion and success. It stresses that universities need to be aware of financial barriers for international students, who often pay full price for their education, and points to community colleges and public universities as key options for opening up access.
