I recently shared an article on LinkedIn highlighting a reported decline of 130,000 international students in the 12 months leading up to March 2025 - a period preceding any of the new administration's actions to suppress international enrollment. But yesterday, that same blogger published the results of his investigation into what happened. He found that it was all the result of a reporting error by DHS. There was no decline. In fact, international enrollment grew by 200k.

Many will stop reading the article there. There will be relief that the the "apple cart" has not been upset, and assume that the data error is just a sign of our new "business as usual." But it's not. The error started in August '24 under a well-meaning - if flawed - administration. If you keep reading, you will see that through Fall 2024, the historic rise that began as soon as Biden became president continued through the last semester he was in office. But that's where the good news stops. The corrected data show that international enrollment and the indicators of next year's enrollment tumbled from January to June 2025. Just three alarming statistics:

1. In that period 12,000 fewer Chinese students were enrolled.

2. 25,000 fewer student visas were processed.

3. Visa processing in just two Indian cities (which have become our largest source of international students) decreased by more than 50 percent.

This all preceded the June "pause" on visa processing and the requirement for social media reviews. The article closes with the sobering projection that rather than processing an average of 338,663 student visas in advance of the September start, our consulates and embassies will process between 130,000-225,000. Let's imagine that we WILL see more than 100,000 fewer international students next fall. What do they do? My Take: The answer MUST be to enroll more domestic students in high demand programs. This does not mean creating new programs, it means identifying existing programs that are under-performing, making the attractive to the ways students want to learn, and then effectively marketing them. These are the things that I've focused on my whole career and I want to be able to help your institution too.