🔒Student visa revocations, growing visa backlog may drastically shrink international student enrollment – and revenue – at CT colleges

For college leaders that value the cultural diversity — and tuition dollars — that international students provide, there is mounting fear about the lack of visas being approved by the federal government, and the impacts on enrollment and revenue next year.

Amid a growing backlog of international students waiting for visas, a rash of student-visa revocations nationwide and a general uneasiness about the Trump administration’s policies toward non-citizens, U.S. colleges are bracing for steep declines in international student enrollment.

That could have a significant financial impact on schools in Connecticut — including the University of New Haven (UNH), Yale, UConn, Sacred Heart and the University of Bridgeport — that enroll thousands of foreign students who often pay the highest tuition prices.

UNH, which has the largest share of international students in the state, expects its foreign student population to drop from 3,108 in 2024 to about 1,800 next year.

“We’re seeing lower visa rates, we’re seeing more visa denials, it’s obviously deeply troubling for us,” University of New Haven President Jens Frederiksen said in a recent interview with the Hartford Business Journal.

Between fall 2019 and fall 2023, the West Haven-based school’s international student population surged 349%, from 820 to 3,682, according to federal data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Frederiksen, a Denmark native, attributed much of the increase to a catch-up period following the COVID-19 pandemic, but said the school seeks to recruit students from diverse perspectives.

Its international pupils currently hail from about 80 countries.

“Our motto is ‘local field, global reach,’” Frederiksen said. “We’ve been a very active school internationally because we genuinely do believe in the importance of an elite global workforce, both for our domestic students and for our international students. … We’re not looking to change that.”

In 2024, the school’s international student body dropped for the first time in three years. Students from overseas still comprised about a third of UNH’s 9,229 student population in 2024 — mostly at the graduate level.

But that level will be difficult for the school — known for its criminal justice, forensic science, business and engineering programs — to maintain.

“We’re seeing applications down, but we have plenty of accepted students that are waiting for visas, just very few have been granted,” Frederiksen said.

Status revoked

Currently, more than 3,200 international students who have been accepted to UNH are stuck waiting for the U.S. Department of State to grant their entry visas.

The backlog preceded the Trump administration.

In May 2024, NAFSA, an agency that promotes international education, along with the U.S. for Success Coalition, asked Congress to “take urgent action to expand visa processing capacity” due to an unprecedented rise in applications for student visas, particularly from countries like India and Africa.

At the time, wait times were as long as 350 days, depending on the student’s country of origin.

Since then, college leaders say the backlog has ballooned as uncertainty over Trump administration policies causes more confusion and delays.

Meantime, hundreds of international students — including some at UConn and Yale, according to published reports — have recently had their visas terminated, often for reasons that are unclear, and that they are unable to contest.

Immigration attorney Dana R. Bucin, a member of the law firm Harris Beach Murtha, said the federal government isn’t just revoking students’ visas, but terminating their residency status, which can lead to them “literally being snatched off the streets,” without a warrant, then detained and deported.

“This is very disconcerting, because as an attorney, I am all of the sudden feeling protective of the rights of these students who have just been notified that they are suddenly deportable,” Bucin said.

In the past, students who lost their visas often were able to complete their studies.

Recently, international students have had their status revoked under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which is controlled by the Department of Homeland Security, meaning they can be immediately removed from the country.

Bucin said it’s “unusually cruel” to prevent students from completing the spring semester, with less than a month remaining.

“Let them finish their tuition-paid semester, and I’m sure they will opt to not come back again if they’ve had their visa revoked,” Bucin said. “But don’t interrupt their studies before the graduation date, or before the semester ends, before they even take their finals, or before they file their dissertation and finish their studies for which they paid.”

Bucin said the administration’s policies have made international students “walking targets” who are being deprived of their rights.

‘Substantial challenge’

The changes have left international students seeking to study in the U.S. unsure of their futures, and domestic universities unable to recruit as many international students as they would like.

So far, for the coming 2025-26 academic year, University of New Haven’s applications from international students are down more than 50% from two years ago, Frederiksen said.

“For an enrollment-driven institution like the University of New Haven, any disruption significantly impacts our bottom line,” Frederiksen said. “Given the proportionally large international graduate population at UNH, this decline undoubtedly presents a substantial challenge, and we will be closely monitoring the visa granting/denial process for this fall’s incoming class.”

While any drop in student enrollment would affect a university’s revenue, international students have long been considered among the best customers.

International students generally pay full, non-discounted tuition, often exceeding what domestic out-of-state students pay at public universities, according to the American Council on Education.

There were 19,990 international students at Connecticut colleges and universities who made $777 million in economic contributions and supported 6,650 jobs during the 2023-24 academic year, according to information from NAFSA.

Nationally, overseas students studying at U.S. colleges and universities contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy and supported 378,175 jobs, according to the same study. The data includes spending on education, accommodations, dining, retail, transportation, telecommunications and health insurance.

International boom

Like UNH, other universities in Connecticut, up until recently, saw exponential post-pandemic gains in their international student enrollment.

Fairfield-based Sacred Heart University, which declined to be interviewed for this article, saw a 698% increase in international students between 2019 and 2023 (247 vs. 1,971).

The University of Bridgeport also saw a triple-digit percentage increase (161.4%) in its foreign student population — from 560 in 2019, to 1,464 in 2023.

“It is anticipated that, with the change in administration, our international enrollment numbers will be negatively impacted for the upcoming academic year,” said Allison Garris, dean of admissions at University of Bridgeport.

The school, which was recently acquired by Goodwin University, said it projects a 10% to 15% reduction in incoming international students for the fall 2025 semester.

University of Bridgeport, which had total student enrollment of 3,838 in 2024, is “optimistic” that it can maintain level enrollment for the upcoming academic year, “due to growth domestically with both undergrad and graduate applications,” Garris said.

That growth, she added, is mainly driven by a new master’s degree in medical science and a STEM-focused MBA program. Also, a two-year associate degree program in nursing is garnering significant interest.

“Once the international student enrollment numbers bounce back, which we’re confident they will given the maintained level of interest, we’ll be in an even stronger position,” Garris said.

Meantime, Yale University and UConn maintained relatively constant foreign student populations of between 3,000 and 4,000 from 2019 and 2023, federal data shows.

In 2023, University of New Haven had the highest percentage of international students in the state at 37.5%, followed by Yale (23.6%) and UConn (12.4%), including undergraduate and graduate students.

At UConn, international students comprised 7% of the undergraduate student body and 21% of graduate students at the start of the fall 2024 semester, according to Stephanie Reitz, a spokeswoman for the university.

Those figures were similar to pre-pandemic levels.

Reitz said UConn will “continue to follow news of potential policy and procedural changes at the federal level that could affect visa issuances, but it’s too soon to predict what impacts, if any, they might have on UConn.”

She said the impact of a potential decline in international students on UConn’s financial outlook “has been mitigated by significant growth of applicants from inside the U.S.”

UConn received 5,000 more applications from out-of-state students in fall 2024, compared with the previous year.

“This allows for a more natural increase in out-of-state students, if and when we might experience a decline in international students,” Reitz said.

At the end of the day, Frederiksen, the UNH president, said the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has led international students to rethink the benefits of a college education in the U.S. against the risks.

“It just creates a climate where, if you are a student that’s thinking, ‘I’ve always dreamt of this,’ now you might think, ‘Maybe I’m going to hold off,’” Frederiksen said.