According to a recent report by the Institute of International Education, fewer college-aged students from other parts of the world are considering American universities. The rate of new international enrollment dropped 17% nationally this fall.
For this edition of Carolina Curious, WFDD’s David Ford wanted to know whether universities in the Triad are experiencing this particular trend. He went back to school to find out.
Over the past several years, across the country, there had been a slow but steady increase in the number of international students studying in the U.S., including the Tar Heel State: roughly 18,000 of them in 2020 to nearly 26,000 last year. But then a dip.
And while seven U.S. institutions appear in the top ten of this year’s World University rankings, just over 100 cracked the top 500 — the country’s worst showing since the rankings began just over 20 years ago.
In the Triad, Wake Forest University and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro have not been immune to these changes, but for different reasons.
In 2023, roughly 1,000 Wake students — undergraduates, graduate students and post-grads — came from outside the country. Last year, that number fell to just over 800, a roughly 20% drop.
Wake Forest Center for Immigration Services & Support Director Nathanial Lynch calls the Fall of 2025 an outlier, but he adds that there is some hesitancy from international students abroad.
"This is something that has been coming out from various resources, not specifically from our office, but [there's] also interest," says Lynch. "So, there still has been a lot of appetite, depending on the country, but there is still some hesitancy due to some of the changes in the political landscape, as well as various policies that have come down from the current administration."
Some of the changes include visa interview suspensions during peak issuance season for students looking to enroll in the U.S.; limited or no appointments available for international students at consulates; downward trends for issuing visas; and more.
This year, another headwind facing Wake Forest University was the U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings, where it didn’t perform as well as in years past.
Lynch says rankings are an issue, especially at what could be perceived as a high-cost institution.
"They do matter a lot to people from Asia," he says. "That's something that is a continued factor for students across the world, is that whenever there are various places they want to go to, rankings, or how they can first learn about what schools they should apply to in the United States. Some students may not have heard of Wake Forest University if they're from a certain country. Others have. It just depends on our connections to those markets."
Lynch is quick to point out that, beyond the rankings, however, international students are choosing Wake because of the quality of education, small classroom sizes, and more.
Understanding UNCG’s international student enrollment numbers is a bit more nuanced. They appeared to jump during the pandemic, but they were inflated because students had deferred acceptance and postponed applications during that period. Over the past few years, though, international student figures have been declining.
Associate Provost for Global Engagement Maria Anastasiou says several different factors are affecting this change.
"We have a number of programs that went online," says Anastasiou. "International students cannot participate in online programs. We had a decline in our Master's programs. We also had the ... major countries for us, where international students come from, are India, Ghana, Nigeria, and China. There's geopolitical changes that happened over there, and also the world economy has affected the Ghanaian and Nigerian markets."
Anastasiou says a lot is lost when international student enrollment declines.
"In North Carolina in ‘24 we had a little bit over 26,000 international students who contributed 886.3 million to the economy and supported more than 8,000 jobs," she says. "And UNCG Greensboro, with its 580 students in '24 they're estimating that they contributed 15.5 million to the local economy and supported 142 jobs."
Anastasiou says beyond money, there’s more that international students bring to campus and the broader community, especially in an increasingly global and connected world.
"International students add to the richness of our community with their different languages and different perspectives they bring with them, and they help us understand how we can engage with other countries and cultures," she says. "They bring new and fresh ideas in the classroom and in research labs. They bring a positive impact on solving large problems in our community. And many of these problems are ones that a lot of countries are also dealing with."