Colleges face financial struggles as Trump policies send international enrollment plummeting

Source: NBC News/AP

Aug. 30, 2025, 5:10 PM EDT / Source: The Associated Press


One international student after another told the University of Central Missouri this summer that they couldn’t get a visa, and many struggled to even land an interview for one. Even though demand was just as high as ever, half as many new international graduate students showed up for fall classes compared to last year.

The decline represents a hit to the bottom line for Central Missouri, a small public university that operates close to its margins with an endowment of only $65 million. International students typically account for nearly a quarter of its tuition revenue. “We aren’t able to subsidize domestic students as much when we have fewer international students who are bringing revenue to us,” said Roger Best, the university’s president.

Signs of a decline in international students have unsettled colleges around the U.S. Colleges with large numbers of foreign students and small endowments have little financial cushion to protect them from steep losses in tuition money.

International students represent at least 20% of enrollment at more than 100 colleges with endowments of less than $250,000 per student, according to an Associated Press analysis. Many are small Christian colleges, but the group also includes large universities such as Northeastern and Carnegie Mellon. The extent of the change in enrollment will not be clear until the fall, Some groups have forecast a decline of as much as 40%, with a huge impact on college budgets and the wider U.S. economy.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/colleges-face-financial-struggles-trump-policies-rcna228228