Bolt from the blue

Enrollments drop

New Indian enrollments in the US plummeted in August 2025 by 40 to 45 percent compared with the previous year amid Trump's immigration policy shifts.

Meanwhile, Indian students are exploring other countries, with a 370 percent rise in applications to Germany in early 2026, and a 25 percent increase to Singapore.

New enrollments from China, the second-largest source of international students in the US, have already been falling, from a record about 373,000 in the 2019-20 school year down to less than 266,000 in 2024-25.

The "not-so-friendly" message in the new visa regulations will likely add to the uncertainty that Chinese students in the US already face today, and could also accelerate the falling trend of enrollments, said Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, a think tank in Beijing.

While he did not foresee any major issues for PhD students who may need extensions, he added: "There's a concern that if one applies for an extension, the review process will be stricter, which could interrupt one's studies. This has actually happened in the past few years. Students from China were studying abroad, and everything was going well, but then, for various reasons, their visas were denied."

This could benefit universities in other places that have become relatively more popular for students from the Chinese mainland, such as China's Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Europe, Britain and Canada, Xiong said.

The high cost of overseas education and the improvement in the quality of Chinese universities mean more Chinese students are also likely to stay home to further their studies.