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Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August
- LPisGood 1y agoAll those students, along with their talent and money and connections went _somewhere_ so that’s a shame for USA.
- symlinkk 1y ago99% of those students were not any more talented than the average US citizen
- jeffbee 1y agoJust on the odds this statement is almost certainly incorrect.
- MattDaEskimo 1y ago99% of stats are made up
- honeycrispy 1y agoBut personal experience is not. I went to college and was friends with the foreign students. They were average.
- danparsonson 1y agoYou must've been pretty busy hanging out with a statistically significant quantity of all of them.
- honeycrispy 1y ago[flagged]
- danparsonson 1y agoThat still doesn't mean your experiences generalise in any useful way, and using phrases like 'liberal HN audience' only serves to highlight your own biases.
- honeycrispy 1y agoIt doesn't take a right-winger to see the tilt.
- mothballed 1y agoWe had 'Asian road chaos' every fall where the rich ones would show up with their new Bugattis (edit: Maseratis) having never learned how to drive the thing and much less on the open American roads where you can really let the accelerator loose. They would cause endless crashes. One or two of poor ones would end up committing suicide in the spring when they flunked out and had spent their entire little farming family's fortune back in some austere rice farming village. It was quite the sight to see. I want to say they were fairly normal in intelligence, relatively, but the set of incentives for them to perform were wildly different.
- bix6 1y agoHoly racism Fwiw there’s like 1000 Bugattis in the world so you really must have gone somewhere super duper elite! Monaco perhaps?
- chronic74939 1y ago> had spent their entire little farming family's fortune back in some austere rice farming village. Depends on tier of university. At Harvard, MIT, Stanford, the asian international students are moderately rich (US$10 million+ net worth) from tech or manufacturing businesses.
- mangecoeur 1y agoThats the very definition of “anecdata”. (Anecdotes you mistake for representative data)
- antris 1y agoWhat's your point? That education only belongs to the "talented"? Talented in what way? What good does it do to society that the "non-talented" are not educated? Also, no source for claim.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agoNot OP but I infer that they're point is US colleges should primarily serve US citizens, not "talented" foreigners
- nemomarx 1y agoIt's not really talent, it's that they don't get scholarships and pay tuition in full. It was basically a subsidy program
- zht 1y agowhy do you say that? I can say, that 99% of those students are much less obese than the average US citizen
- paxys 1y agoYou have not met many average US citizens if you really think that is the case
- churchill 1y agoSorry to break it to you, but the average American is quite...let's say, average. That's why they're average, lol. Likewise, the average Chinese. That's why their school system filters out tens of millions of schoolkids from higher education and puts them in trade school early. Same goes for India, Europe, etc. Gifted, driven kids, the kind who will leave their family and everything they've known, to cross an ocean to study in your country, are a scarce resource. I'm not saying you shouldn't prioritize locals, but if you want competitive, world-class educational system, you should be open to foreign students and faculty helping to keep your system competitive. It's the same worldwide, whether it's in Singapore's NUS, or Oxford, or Saudi Arabia's KAUST. But, what do I even know?
- the_real_cher 1y agoWhy not just stay and bring their gifts to their own country?
- churchill 1y agoSome of them actually do that. Like when the US expelled Qian Xuesen, the founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab and he went back and built China's ballistic missile and space program. So, yep. It's happened and will continue to happen to different degrees.
- the_real_cher 1y agothis is a great thing nuclear deterrence spread around the world is great because it keeps one country from bullying the rest
- churchill 1y agoI agree with you. We don't even have to imagine: the UK and US were planning preemptive nuclear strikes against the entire Soviet Union before they tested their first nuke. Operation Dropshot and Unthinkable called for hundreds of nukes and conventional bombs to be dropped on Soviet cities to, "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire." All in all, I don't even have a dog in the fight, but people like Qian Xuesen won't become retarded if they're expelled from the US. If I remember correctly, something like a third of all top-tier AI researchers are Chinese. If you count all those with an immigration background, they'll be close to 50-70%. They will simply create companies and products that compete and take market share from American companies. Are Americans - the country that votes out presidents for rising gas prices - willing to make do with a lower standard of living? Because that'd what you'll get when some the world's best innovators are no longer based in your country.
- NickC25 1y agoBut they pay several multiples of money more to study than the average US citizen, take on no debt, and most of the time are studying for advanced technical degrees. Most Americans are not. If we want to have top-tier universities, and produce graduates capable of innovating and taking big risk, we need to have universities who are strong in STEM. If we want to have universities who are strong in STEM, we need to fill up those seats because otherwise without students, there are no classes. IDGAF where they come from, to be honest.
- thrance 1y agoThe average US citizen voted in Trump, so no. You can't listen to his UN speech and go "that's the man to rule my country" if you're not seriously mentally impaired.
- chronic74939 1y ago> All those students, along with their talent and money and connections went _somewhere_ so that’s a shame for USA. Money? Yes. Talent and connections? Not necessarily. Top PhD students are still coming to America. It’s the money-grabbing 12-month masters programs that are the problem. Come buy a F-1 student visa for $200k! It’s the Trump silver card.
- oceansky 1y ago>Top PhD students are still coming to America. They probably are, and that won't stop anytime soon. The question is how much talent is being lost now.
- orwin 1y agoWell, the only astrogeologist I know chose northern Europe, and the two nuclear physicists I know are doing their thesis in Zurich despite one of them having been proposed a subject by the MIT and a Singaporean university (I think he took the better subject tbh, probably didn't have anything to do with the current immigration policies in the US). The admin stopping some research for no reason probably got a lot of PhD students quite distrustful of the US, that could cause some of them to go back after their thesis. Top PhD often choose countries for the lab director and the thesis subject. The US lost a few lab directors in the last 6 months, and at least in therapeutic engineering this year doesn't propose a lot of new thesis subjects (less than last year it seems), but maybe they keep them for their own students.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agoHuge win for US high school and college students. Not so good for bloated college administrations.
- HDThoreaun 1y agoZero sum ass mentality. Top performing international students are likely to start companies and create jobs which is great for US high school and college students.
- chucksta 1y agoAre top performing US students less likely to start companies and create jobs than international?
- HDThoreaun 1y ago1. No evidence but imo probably. Immigrants are by their nature entrepunerial go getters, thats how they got here. 2. Top performing US students arent being crowded out by international students anyway.
- chucksta 1y agoWhat about the first US child from a family of immigrants?
- HDThoreaun 1y agoWhat about them? Competent domestic students are not being crowded out by international students. Competent domestic workers are not being crowded out by immigrants. The opposite is happening, immigrants create new opportunities for natives out of thin air. That doesnt mean that natives dont, they both do.
- chucksta 1y ago
- akajshb 1y ago> that’s a shame for USA billionaires Fixed that for you. Wealth distribution is far from equitable and immigration by and large benefits the wealthy. They financially benefit from the cheap labor and are mostly immune from the downsides. The US did great for hundreds of years with the limited immigration we had from primarily European countries. The world we live in today was built with that approach. Remains to be seen if importing from recently modernized / 3rd world countries provides any long term benefit for median Americans. We’d be much better off installing billionaires who wish to invest in the people because they feel an attachment to the people (noblesse oblige). I can’t really see a good argument for foreigners outside of the Meiji government approach (learn from them to invest in our own) if you care about your people.
- ckemere 1y agoA visit to Ellis Island museum would suggest many waves of disfavored/impiverished “European” immigrants that faced significant discrimination for a generation. Or a visit to California railroad museum documenting Japanese immigrants building railroads?
- ttul 1y agoIt's a shame that Canada also decided to shut the door on international students. The point was to ease the housing crisis (understandable) but the knock-on effect is to de-fund universities and surprisingly also public schools, which derive a great deal of revenue by charging international students.
- morkalork 1y agoI'm not sure you can equate university students with the nonsense happening at diploma-mills
- wizee 1y agoIt's colleges they they have been clamping down on, as they were bringing in absolutely massive numbers of mostly Indian students who were coming mainly to work in low-end jobs and get out of India rather than to legitimately study. The number of graduate students being allowed in hasn't changed significantly, and undergraduate university students are also continuing to be brought in at rates similar to pre-pandemic times.
- ttul 1y agoI didn’t know this. Thank you for sharing.
- jeffbee 1y agoEducation, travel for education, and housing for education were important American export sectors, before Trump nuked them.
- tsycho 1y agoNext year will be even worse. This was the first year of Trump's new term and most of the anti-immigration executive orders happened in the last few months. By August, most international students had already accepted offers, made travel and stay plans, and likely paid some part of their tuition already, and just continued due to sunk costs and hope that things will stabilize. However, at this point, I think a lot more people will not even apply to US schools for next year.
- sct202 1y agoIt's going to be a rough time for a lot of colleges that have been using foreign students paying full price to fund their operations. Especially now that the incoming college aged population is beginning to shrink and the percentage attending college has peaked, so the domestic population probably won't be able to fill the seats at less competitive colleges.
- antonymoose 1y agoPerhaps they should tighten their belts and reduce administrative bloat. It’s not as if American society hadn’t collectively called for this for decades while tuition has risen astronomically.
- bix6 1y agoIf I’ve learned one thing from studying economics it’s that supply equals demand. If I’ve learned another it’s that prices never go down
- esalman 1y agoCan you explain in this context? Because prices do go down if supply exceed demand.
- bix6 1y agoTheoretically yes but not when everything has perfect pricing as seems to be the case these days.
- ModernMech 1y agoEducation is weird as a product, because you're delivering the same experience to students but they each pay a different bespoke price. Sometimes schools even pay their own customers! When a rich person sends their kid to school they get charged full sticker price. Then schools use some of that money to subsidize the educations of the other students. Given those dynamics, there's really no reason for the tuition sticker price to ever go down unless the uber-rich can't afford it anymore, because the actual price anyone pays is floating and can be whatever it needs to be for them.
- OGEnthusiast 1y agoSo more spots for Americans? Doesn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing to me.
- niek_pas 1y agoThe flow of smart and talented people to the United States has historically been incredibly beneficial for the latter. EDIT: further reading here: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/05/28/demand-for-american-degrees-is-sinking https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/05/28/demand-f...
- the_real_cher 1y ago[flagged]
- slater 1y agoEngland. Scotland. Germany.
- the_real_cher 1y agoPart of Western heritage. America was built on immigrants from Europe indeed founded it upon it. Non Europeans weren't allowed to immigrate (en masse) to America until 1970 Hart Cellar act. Not saying that's right or wrong it's just a fact. America is cultural and genetic sibling to Europe.
- mempko 1y agoIf you have resources and energy, anything is possible if you have a system to exploit them. The downside is of course draining the resources and destroying the ecology which also happened. There is nothing special in American blood vs anywhere else.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago[flagged]
- ilamont 1y agoThe loss of foreign students is already having an impact on the Boston rental market, with thousands of fewer students coming to the city this year: “I’ve been doing real estate and technology for 30 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Demetrios Salpoglou, CEO of Boston Pads, told Boston.com. “It’s very acute. It’s not impacting all neighborhoods … it’s really proximity to a lot of universities that have a heavy reliance on foreign money or foreign enrollment.” https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/08/21/apartments-could-sit-empty-sept-1-as-international-students-hesitate-to-sign-leases/ https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/08/21/apartments...
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agoI hope a similar thing is happening in Seattle's U-district. Housing costs are by far the largest line item expense for a student. Actual tuition/books is pretty affordable [1] [1] https://admit.washington.edu/costs/coa/ https://admit.washington.edu/costs/coa/
- esalman 1y agoNot familiar with Seattle U-distict, is it rental market? Because I hope foreign students are not impacting single family house prices. When I was grad student rent was indeed 50% of my stipend. Tuition was covered as part of research grants. Only way to reduce expenses was to get roommates. Having said that, mortgage is also 50% of our household income now. American dream is expensive...
- wolfd 1y agoI don’t know if this was one of the intended outcomes, but this will probably cause some struggling college and universities to shut down. International students raise quite a lot of money for higher-ed institutions because they pay full price without financial aid. The loss of that income is going to make a bad situation for higher-ed budgets much worse. Unless you are Harvard or Stanford (or a few other universities that are endowments with schools attached), you’re probably already in a budget crunch or eating into your endowment. A side note, one of the founders of the college I went to has been convinced that higher-ed needs an entirely new business model in order to survive, and is founding a new school called Greenway (https://www.greenwayinstitute.org https://www.greenwayinstitute.org) that is trying to blend internships and co-op programs into an engineering education.
- Cameri 1y agoThis is a huge win for the rest of the world. This won’t stop the bleeding of top talent to the US but put a significant dent in it.