Class is back in session for most college campuses across the country.
As studies begin, there may be a noticeable change to some universities’ international student population.
“What we seen particularly with the start of the fall is a lot of students had difficulties getting appointments to get their visas,” said Fanta Aw, CEO and executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
Aw said her non-profit is seeing a decline in international students applying to attend American universities amid the Trump administration’s visa crackdown.
She said many are choosing to go to schools in other countries including Germany, Spain and Japan.
She said in addition to the enrollment decline, communities and businesses surrounding universities may also feel the loss.
“Our projection estimated that there will probably be about 100,000 fewer students, and that will lead to $3.4 billion in lost revenue for the United States,” said Aw. “And that is going to lead to close to 40,000 jobs that will be lost as a result of that.”
In New York, SUNY chancellor John B. King Jr. said the school doesn’t have the numbers for the fall semester, but last year, SUNY’s international student enrollment was down a little over 3%.
King was down in graduate students, but up for undergrads.
According to the school’s website, SUNY has a student population of more than 370,000 students. Of that amount, nearly 18,000 are international students from 180 nations around the world.
“We don’t know yet for fall,” King said. “My sense is that we’re likely to see further diminution of especially graduate enrollment of international students. The federal government has created a lot of new obstacles, harder to get a new visa. The environment for international students feels unwelcoming in the United States.”
The chancellor’s comments follow a recent report from The Wall Street Journal that blamed the federal government’s visa crackdown for Syracuse University’s international enrollment numbers declining “by half for undergraduate and graduate students” in 2025.
Spectrum News 1 reached out to Syracuse University for comment and did not immediately hear back.
At the University of Rochester, according to preliminary fall 2026 enrollment data, international students make up 25% of the school’s total student population. Last year, that proportion was 27%.
In July 2026, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a new regulation that establishes a fixed admission cap for international students that doesn’t exceed a maximum period of four years for foreign students.
The Trump administration said this is to crackdown on what it called “forever students” who allegedly enroll in classes to avoid having to leave the United States.