While the number of exchange visas for international students and professors is up overall, the post-Sept. 11 decline continues for many majority-Muslim countries.
Last November, the U.S. Department of State heralded a record high number of visas issued to international students and exchange visitors.
A report by the Institute of International Education (IIE) on international students at U.S. colleges and universities confirmed that the number of student visas issued reached an “all-time high” for the 2007-08 academic year. The message was clear: International study in the United States, which dropped precipitously after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 was back.
International student enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities had seen constant growth most every year in the past quarter-century — with a glaring exception after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when enrollment dropped three years in a row, according to numbers in IIE’s “Open Doors Report on International Student Exchange.”
In the 1983-1984 academic year, there were 338,894 international students in U.S. higher education, according to the report. That peaked at 586,323 in the 2002-2003 academic year that began the year after the Sept. 11 attacks — and dropped for three straight years afterward. It was only in the 2007-2008 academic year that international student numbers in the United States rebounded to a record number — 623,805 — exceeding its previous peak.
But a Diverse analysis of international student and exchange visitor visas found that those numbers have not rebounded from pre-Sept. 11 levels for the majority of the 25 North African and Asian nations that received extra scrutiny after the attacks.
At a time when the overall numbers for foreign study in the United States are soaring — up 26 percent from the year preceding the terrorist attacks — the number of F, M, and J visas is down 2 percent for those nations. If J visas are excluded, the number of visas issued to students from those targeted nations is down by 15 percent. The J visa is for exchange visitors, including some students, professors and researchers, but is also issued to non-academics such as government visitors, au pairs and camp counselors. F visas are issued to full-time students, and M visas are for vocational students.
