Arizona State University has seen a decline in international student enrollment over the last three years.
Enrollment fell from 6,066 students in 2017 to 5,388 students in 2018, according to documents from the University Office of Institutional Analysis.
A university spokesperson said in an email that the reason for enrollment declines cannot be contributed to a single thing.
“What we can say is that our international students are graduating at a certain pace – they graduate on time, spending four years at the university,” the spokesperson said in an email. “In order to maintain or grow our enrollment, we have to continue to recruit and enroll more students to keep up with the graduation rate.”
One possible reason the enrollment has declined could be restrictions on international enrollment from embassies in different countries.
According to an AZCentral article, the number of students from Kuwait enrolled at ASU dropped from 600 in 2017 to 258 in 2019.
“In Kuwait, for example, to go to study in the United States, we have to go to the approved list that is imposed by the embassy of Kuwait in Washington. As of (2016), the embassy kind of blocked ASU for all bachelors students,” Mohammed Madouh, a downtown international Ph.D. student from Kuwait, said.
Madouh said the block occurred because the embassy wants to spread Kuwaiti students to other schools across the United States. The Kuwait Cultural Office website said undergraduate enrollment is restricted due to over-enrollment of Kuwaiti students.
The hardest part about getting into ASU was going through the bureaucracy in Kuwait Madouh said.
“I would say the process of just getting approved took me like three months and then the process of getting my papers done through the Kuwait embassy was another process of six months,” Madouh said.
Madouh, who was born in Kuwait but spent most of his childhood in Florida, attended ASU for his bachelor’s degree before moving to Kuwait. He decided to come back to ASU for his Ph.D.
“To be honest, I didn’t realize that there’s a decline in ASU for international students because it is known for ASU to host a variety of culture,” Madouh said. “But I would say that the decline is due to economic reasons, more or less. Other than that, I’d be surprised on the reason why it is declining.”
He is able to attend ASU through financial help from investments in Dubai, his family and his job, which pays him a basic salary.
International undergraduate student tuition is around $31,200 according to ASU’s international cost and aid webpage, which is about three times as much as in-state student tuition. Many international students use scholarships or outside funding to attend ASU.
Unlike Kuwait, the number of students enrolling into ASU from Pakistan has increased from 38 in 2017 to 49 in 2019, according to the AZ Central article.
Shahbaz Aslam, a downtown international Ph.D. student from Pakistan, said that he is able to attend ASU through government funding.
“In my case, my research has been funded by the government to focus on higher education in Pakistan. So I haven’t found any kind of difficulty regarding funding,” Aslam said. “However, I know about (a) number of students who are from Pakistan and India who are having difficulty to pay their tuition fees.”
Aslam said that even if he didn’t have the funding, he still would have chosen to come to ASU but it would have been more difficult to attend. He chose ASU because of its student innovation.
“The problem we are facing back in Pakistan is that we are following very traditional approaches. Of course, (in) everything. Not only education, not only limited to journalistic education, but the problems that are in our social life, in our collective national life,” Aslam said. “We are following traditional approaches, we are very much resistant to innovations.”
ASU is currently working on raising the international student enrollment.
“Currently, we are on a path to recover from that situation and enhance the numbers and diversity of our international students at ASU, a demographic of students that we believe enriches the learning experiences for our Arizona and out-of-state students,” the ASU spokesperson said.
Contact the reporter at Vewahl@asu.edu.
