First came the funding cuts. Almost as soon as he took office President Donald Trump began slashing research budgets. Then came the visa restrictions. By May thousands of international students had their visas temporarily revoked; in June nearly all new foreign students bound for Harvard were temporarily barred from entering the country. Concerns about academic freedoms have mounted. Some prominent scientists have resigned. Many universities, in exchange for federal funding, have accepted closer government oversight of their curricula.
These attacks on science and universities were expected to put foreigners off studying in America this academic year. Yet, surprisingly, the data so far suggest no drastic drop in enrolments this autumn.
Earlier in the year signs pointed the other way. Studyportals, an online directory for degree programmes, found that first-quarter traffic to American undergraduate and master’s listings from abroad fell by more than 20% compared with last year. Traffic to doctoral courses was down by a third.
Read more at The Economist.
