The students are coming. Hundreds of thousands of fresh-faced students are descending on college campuses across the US. In their wake trail parents hauling suitcases, mini fridges and Costco-size jugs of laundry detergent.
College officials will welcome overseas students with particular warmth. There was a massive drop in foreign enrolments in 2020 and 2021. Pre-pandemic, US colleges signed up a record 1.1mn foreign students in the 2018-2019 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). That number fell to just over 914,000 in 2020-2021.
Most universities expect student flows to recover this academic year, a recent IIE survey shows. It cannot come soon enough. College enrolments have retreated steadily over the past decade. Foreign students have emerged as a key source of income. That is particularly true for smaller, less-prestigious institutions in the US rustbelt. States such as Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan are among the top-10 receiving the most overseas students.