Kayla Susalla
Kayla Susalla
One of the slew of executive orders President Donald Trump issued since assuming office includes re-evaluating visa programs to weed out potential national security threats. In response, federal agents have detained, and are seeking to deport, multiple international college students and faculty members, and universities have issued warnings advising students that traveling to certain countries could impact their ability to re-enter the US. While keeping Americans safe remains a top priority, it is important to recognize the benefits international students bring to the US.
The US brings in far more students from abroad than leave the country to study elsewhere. In the 2022- 2023 school year, the US hosted over one million international students, while 280,716 students left for study abroad programs, and 125,398 enrolled overseas for non-credit experiential activities, online global learning experiences, and full-degree programs.
International students are a major revenue source for US colleges and often pay double the rates of in-state students. One report estimates that during the 2023–2024 academic year, international students contributed $43.8 billion to the economy through job creation and spending in the higher education, accommodation, dining, retail, transportation, telecommunications, and health insurance sectors. About 25 percent of billion-dollar startup companies in the US have a founder who initially came to America as an international student. Additionally, some research concludes that because international students are paying full-price tuition, universities can keep prices lower for in-state students.
Beyond providing immediate economic fuel, international students make major contributions to American innovation. Chinese native Fei-Fei Li earned degrees at Princeton and Caltech before creating ImageNet, an image database used to advance computer vision and deep learning research. Originally from India, Rattan Lal earned his PhD at the Ohio State University and has received numerous accolades for his work on sustainable agriculture. Born in Lebanon, Ardem Patapoutian studied at UCLA and Caltech and earned a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering an ion channel responsible for sensory input. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/international-students-benefit-united-states