David Suter
Community Colleges Draw From Abroad
For many American universities and colleges, the world is getting farther away. International enrollment in the United States is flat or down after many years when visitors flocked here to learn.
The reasons are familiar: a less welcoming environment, tightened visa rules, competition from other countries for students. First-time international enrollments at United States colleges fell 6.6 percent last year, new figures show. And the number of graduate school applications from abroad declined for the second year in a row.
Buried in these numbers, however, is a surprising trend: Tens of thousands of the international students still coming here are not going to research universities or elite institutions, but to community colleges.