Numbers of international students attending the University of Colorado at Boulder have dropped from 1,199 in fall 2002 to 1,107 this fall, primarily due to changes in visa requirements made by the U.S. Department of State, according to Larry Bell, interim director of International Education at CU-Boulder.
Though the loss of 92 international students, or nearly 8 percent, is not welcome, Bell said CU-Boulder has been affected much less than some campuses across the country and is in better shape than other Colorado institutions.
"We certainly don't like to see any sort of decline in numbers but our situation is not bad, given that some campuses are experiencing much larger drops," he said.
The reason for the dip in international students at CU-Boulder and nationally relates directly "to difficulty students are having obtaining visas from the State Department because of changes in the system making it unpredictable and inefficient," Bell said.
The drop is a concern for several reasons including the fact that CU-Boulder international student numbers "had only gone up over the past decade until these changes were made by the State Department," Bell said.
From 1989 to 2002, international student enrollment grew about 32 percent from 910 students in 1989 to 1,199 in 2002. International student enrollment also has been higher for graduate students than undergraduates, and this year the number of new international graduate students dropped by 75, or 30 percent, from last fall's high of 858 to 783.
"It's not only a concern for our campus but for campuses across the country. We're losing some of the best and the brightest students and our economy is losing the money associated with their schooling here in the U.S.," he said. "The U.S. is losing students to Canada and the UK and Australia, all of which are actively recruiting international students."
Delays in visa approvals are due in large part to more cross-checking of names by the State Department, which can result in delays of visa approval. Bell cited one example of a delayed visa for a student from a Scandinavian country because of the student's name.
"In some situations the delays are particularly hard to understand, as it was in this case last summer of a female student coming from Scandinavia," Bell said. "The whole visa process was slowed because of the name check. Her name matched another name so it had to go through a further check and that caused quite a delay."
Security checks are not the only reasons for delays, Bell said. Â鶹ÒùÔº coming from China and India who are majoring in certain disciplines are subject to delays related to concerns about technology transfer, he said.
"Â鶹ÒùÔº who might come here and learn to do 'X' and then take that knowledge home with them are getting more scrutiny when applying for visas," said Bell. The State Department's "technology alert list" covers students in the natural sciences and engineering including computer sciences, telecommunications, physics, chemistry and biology.
"For students who are coming from China, India and also Brazil and Sweden in those particular disciplines, there is an added layer of security before they can come," he said. "Most of them eventually will get through the process. But for some the delays can mean they will lose a teaching assistantship and then it may be too expensive for them to come.
"It's becoming more expensive for international students to get their visas, it's taking longer and it's less certain that it will happen at all," Bell said. "We're concerned that some of these students will be less willing to put up with the arbitrary nature of the process and will wind up studying in other countries."