How gradual would it have to be for you to find this plausible? The prior NYT article referenced in this work mentions that first-time international student fel

How gradual would it have to be for you to find this plausible? The prior NYT article referenced in this work mentions that first-time international student fell 3% from 2016. Those were numbers collected prior to the election, mind you. And a 50% change in the largest cohort of international students over only 10 years is going to make for a pretty big impact. Especially considering that these middling American schools are seen as alternatives to better domestic choices like Tsinghua. If the schools being discussed here were low on the priority list of potential students, the change would be even more exaggerated. Imagine the hypothetical where there were 2 schools, each of which could educate 50 students per year and where all students prefer school 1 to school 2. If the population drops from 100 to 80, school 2 would see a 40% decrease in enrollment, even though the general population only dropped 20%. Now if school 1 is in China and school 2 is in the US...