sci.research.careers

Looks like a lot of the visa problems created after 9/11 may have been
fixed. From MSNBC: ( /id/20393318/)

> Enrollment of international students in . universities could be showing the first signs of recovery after years of weakness following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as the government refined the visa application process and schools try to get ahead in the global competition for foreign talent.
>
> In the 2005-2006 school year, 564,766 international students attended accredited . higher education institutions, according to the most recent report by the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit partly funded by the federal government to track student mobility in and out of . borders.
>
> The number was flat compared to the year before, but it marked the end of a two-year decline first seen in 2003, which raised alarms within academic circles and among education officials.
>
> Because most international students spend years in their programs, the total enrollment number moves slower than the new enrollment number, which was up 8 percent in the fall of 2005.

As the article notes, total enrollments are a lagging indicator, and
this is data from 2005, so it's already old to start with.

The article cites two other sources:

> A more recent IIE [Institute of International Education] online survey shows the recovery holding up. In the 2006-2007 school year, 52 percent of . campuses reported increases in new international enrollments, and only 20 percent reported declines.

and

> Although international graduate school applications began to rise again in 2005, the total number for 2007 was still 27 percent lower than 2003, according to CGS [Council of Graduate Schools].

I'm not familiar with the IIE survey. The CGS numbers are
interesting, but from what I have heard from more knowledgeable
people, they don't disaggregate their numbers in some critical ways,
which renders their data much less informative than it could be, and
they won't share their raw data.

I have been working with the NSF's Survey of Graduate Students and
Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering ( /
statistics/srvygradpostdoc/) this week, and I realized that this data
set could easily provide some more timely information than IPEDS.
There are questions about numbers of first-year students broken out by
citizenship, so it's straightforward to track first-year foreign
student enrollments from year to year. After 10 minutes wrestling
with WebCASPAR ( ), I get the following numbers
for first year graduate enrollments in S&E programs (excluding health
fields):

Year US Foreign Total
2000 61,036 33,304 94,340
2001 62,421 35,691 98,112
2002 70,374 33,810 104,184
2003 76,498 31,217 107,715
2004 77,442 29,138 106,580
2005 80,054 30,347 110,401

There has been quite an increase in enrollments by US citizens, but
foreign student enrollments are still well below 2001 levels. It's
interesting that the numbers of first-years continued to decline for
several years after 2002.

So maybe the visa problem is not quite as fixed as one might hope? Or
maybe the headaches were so great that people are continuing to shy
away from applying for visas even after things have improved?

On the plus side, it looks like things are on the rise again, but at
the rate the 2004-2005 increase suggests, it may be another year or so
before we return to 2001 levels.

For context, here are the total numbers of S&E graduate students
broken out by citizenship:

Year US Foreign Total
1996 391,095 102,984 494,079
1997 383,327 103,881 487,208
1998 378,560 107,067 485,627
1999 377,802 115,454 493,256
2000 364,954 128,357 493,311
2001 368,840 140,780 509,620
2002 387,532 152,885 540,417
2003 412,282 154,888 567,170
2004 424,147 150,790 574,937
2005 436,530 146,696 583,226

The first year enrollment numbers aren't available before 2000, but
the rapid rise in total numbers from 1996-2003 indicate that there
must have been pretty rapid growth in first year numbers from
1994-2001 or so. To have killed off that much growth must have taken
quite a fiasco in processing visas and in the US's reputation abroad.