Overseas students are now refusing to enroll in US colleges as President Donald Trump intensifies his radical foreign policies. A lot of them express fear amid the changing stance of America towards Islam.
Four out of 10 American universities are seeing a significant drop in their foreign applications. More than 250 educational institutions participated in the survey, which is scheduled to be fully released by the end of March. For now, it is known that a lower 35 percent experienced an increase in international applications while 26 percent said the situation did not change.
What is causing the decline?
The New York Times reported that that the Trump "Muslim ban" greatly affected the turnouts of foreign applications for schools. Accordingly, a lot of US colleges recruit students and hire teachers from the seven target countries. These include Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya.
The report was published by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admission Officers. Basically, the students who have inclinations to Islam fear the changing political climate in the US. For fairness, senior officials in the White House earlier noted that green card holders and dual citizens in any of the targeted countries are exempted to the immigration ban.
Nevertheless, the damage has been done already with reports of noteworthy drops in applications from China too. The US President and Chinese ruler Xi-Jin Ping are recently not in very good terms. China, alongside India, provides almost half of all international students in America.
Biggest chunk
Obviously, the largest drop in applications came from the Middle East. Although, do note that American colleges are already experiencing declines from Saudi Arabia even before the Muslim ban. They were attributed to the Saudi government's changes in the country's foreign scholarship programs. Before that, Saudi was the third country of origin for international enrollees in the US.
Well, an earlier University Herald report noted that these overseas students are migrating to Canada. The report further said that Americans are among the transferees. Aside from the fact that there is no radical immigration policy there, the tuition fees are actually cheaper. Apparently, this started right after Hillary Clinton lost in the presidential race.
