What’s ahead for the United States and international education?

At the Institute of International Education (IIE), we recently issued our first edition of Outlook 2030 opens in new tab/window, which will be an annual tracking report on what’s driving increases in international student mobility to the United States.

It contains good news for all.

By the end of this decade, it is likely that US colleges and universities will see enrollments of international students double, from 1 million to 2 million. This is not conventional wisdom. The headlines in the world education press paint a picture of US higher education facing increased competition from countries that have made doubling their international students a national priority and steadily losing its “market share,” which has declined from 50% in 2000 to less than 20% today. International surveys of prospective students rate the US as the least welcoming of the G7 countries, and problems encountered when applying for a student visa or entering the country with one only to be turned back often make headlines in the Global South.

Nevertheless, three factors support IIE’s forecast.

1. US ranks as top destination

First, the strong rebound of mobility to the United States in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is unlike anything we have seen in the aftermath of 11 previous pandemics.

IIE was founded in the middle of the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918–1920 and started doing an annual census of students coming to study here in 1920. From then until COVID-19, the pattern had shown slow and incremental growth of 1%–3% over several years after a pandemic was declared over. But as our latest annual Open Doors opens in new tab/window census and Snapshot opens in new tab/window surveys indicate, we started seeing overall growth rates in the 8%–12% range in 2022 and 2023, and almost twice that from some sending countries. Nothing on the horizon — even the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House — suggests that internationally mobile students have lost the desire to seek a degree “made in America” or will be deterred from intercontinental travel to obtain one. Despite all the headlines our politics and polarization generate today, global surveys of student preferences consistently rank the US as the top destination.

2. Shortage of university seats elsewhere

Second, the growth of the 18- to 24-year-old youth cohort is unprecedentedly large in nearly every world region outside of the US and Western Europe. And so is the shortage of university seats. China’s high education institutions enroll about 1 million new students each year, but another 3 million students apply for but do not get admission. In India, 1.5 million students annually apply to the country’s 23 Institutes of Technology, but there are only about 13,000 places at each of these institutions. In Brazil and Nigeria, for every seat at their universities, there are currently more than 60 qualified applicants for whom there is no room. And each year, the gap widens.

In short, the search for higher education opportunities outside one’s own country in the Global South will drive an overall increase in internationally mobile students from 6 million today to an anticipated 9 million by 2030.

3. Global challenges to international enrollment

Third, there is already a global shortage of capacity to enroll international students. The top 10 destination countries account for two-thirds of all international enrollment today. In the leading English-speaking countries, the total number of universities in Canada, Australia and the UK is just over 600, and international students make up more than 20% of total enrollment. This has exacerbated domestic housing shortages and ignited political backlashes over whether international students should be counted against national immigration quotas. Canada has capped certain student visas for the next two years, which the government expects to result in a 35% decline in study permits. The UK has all but eliminated visas for dependents of graduate students and is weighing caps on undergraduates as part of a strategy to reduce immigration. France and Germany report that international students comprise more than 10% of their total enrollment. And this has increased pressure from far-right political parties to cap foreign enrollments.

Along with precipitating opposition to expansion by nationalist and far-right parties, obtaining a student visa can be complex, and France recently made this more costly. Russia’s 701 universities had approximately 9 percent of their student population as international students, but in the past 2 years, the country has dropped out of the Bologna Process and no longer encourages international enrollments except from a few like-minded countries. China has approximately 1,200 universities authorized to admit international students out of its over 3,000 higher education institutions. It was on track to surpass Canada as the third major destination country before the pandemic. But how it treated international students during this period — and the introduction of mandatory political indoctrination on every campus — has led to hesitation on the part of international students and their parents about seeking admission.

Benefits outweigh problems in US

The US is in a vastly different position. With nearly 4,000 accredited colleges and universities, the 1 million international students in the 2022–23 academic year accounted for approximately 6% of total enrollment. In the world of international education today and especially tomorrow, this is a unique position. And while not every American college or university can take in more international students, there are literally hundreds that could.

Preoccupied as we are with the problems facing our institutions of higher education due to costs, inequities, complexities of applications and admissions processes, and the pandemic of gun violence, those of us in the field do wonder what makes the US so attractive still. Yet in virtually every survey done on student preferences, America is the first choice for quality, diversity of course offerings, equality of opportunity, and freedom from political indoctrination. And there is the belief that studying here provides a pathway to one day living here or working abroad for a company headquartered in America.

A call to action

These qualities and aspirations make it more important than ever for each US higher education institution to have a foreign policy — plus one in Washington — aimed at keeping our academic doors open. Doing so will provide international classmates for our own students who do not study abroad to learn and develop friendships so essential for future work in a globalized world — and in the process, enable people from every country to win the Nobel Prizes of the future.