Foreign student enrolments in US dip by 18 percent

New York:  The Covid-19 pandemic and a flurry of immigration-related directives from the last US administration devastated enrolment of international students at US educational institutions in 2020, a media report said.
The number of international students, on their F-1 or M-1 visas, fell by 18 per cent last year, to 1.25 million, according to a new tally by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which manages the Department of Homeland Security’s student visa monitoring system.
Visa records for newly enrolled students tumbled by 72 per cent, and F-1 student visas went down by more than 90 per cent in August 2020 when the new school year started, Xinhua news agency quoted The Wall Street Journal report published on Saturday as saying.
F-1, M-1 visas The F-1 visa is issued to full-time academic student, while the M-1 visa category includes students in vocational or other non-academic programs.
“US consulates around the world paused nearly all routine visa processing last spring, meaning aspiring students weren’t able to schedule the required in-person interviews to be issued their visas,” the report said.
“A series of orders over the summer barring international students not already in the U.S. and whose courses were being taught entirely online further complicated the process for those holding out hope of getting to a US campus,” it added.