This fall’s international student population at the University of Washington dropped about 7% from last year.
There are 7,893 international students on UW's three campuses. University leadership said the decline in those numbers is a trend seen at colleges and universities across the country.
“The numbers, and the slight decline, is definitely in line with what we're seeing in national trends,” said Kim Lovaas, UW Seattle’s director of International Student Services. “So it's not alarming to us. It's what we were expecting and anticipating.”
Lovaas said the Seattle campus’ slight drop in international students could be due to a number of reasons. It’s possible international students were discouraged by recent federal policy shifts scrutinizing student visas. But her team was surprised to see minimal visa delays for incoming students this fall.
“We haven't actually seen an increase in students’ visas being denied, or any upticks in those numbers,” Lovaas said.
Lovaas said UW Admissions also tries to balance its ratios of in-state, out-of-state and international students.
“It's not just that international students aren't coming. There's also some planning that's happening there, as we're balancing out our classes,” she said.
David Bachman, an international studies professor at UW, said having fewer international students on campus comes with a cost.
“That's going to hurt the ways that Americans go about understanding the world and people in those societies go about understanding the United States, and that is one of the big longtime costs of this,” he said.
Bachman is also the chair of UW’s China Studies Program. Chinese students make up the largest population of international students at UW.
“The ranking of Chinese universities in particular has gone up, and it's harder for students to come here and find jobs,” he said.
Despite the drop in enrollment, Lovaas, the director, is cautiously optimistic. Her international student office supports many recent graduates who return to UW for further studies.
“We have a lot of students that do stay and continue their studies,” she said. “We're not seeing a trend towards that changing.”
