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.
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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.
