Number of International Students Coming to US Continues to Drop

The number of new international students attending American colleges and universities has dropped for the second straight year.

Newly arriving foreign students fell about 7 percent in the 2017-2018 school year, a not-for-profit research group found. The number of students dropped to about 271,000. The latest decrease followed a 3 percent drop during the 2016-2017 school year.

The information was released Tuesday in the 2018 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange. The report is a project of the New York-based Institute of International Education, or IIE, and the U.S. Department of State.

The report said sharper competition from schools in other nations – for example Australia and Canada – was a major reason for the drop in international students coming to the U.S. It also said rising education costs in the U.S. compared to other countries played a big part.