Fewer international students are in Indianapolis this fall

There are fewer international students in Indianapolis this fall, according to enrollment data.

At IU Indianapolis, overall international student enrollment decreased by nearly 30% from fall 2024. IU spokespeople Teresa Mackin and Mark Bode did not respond to Mirror Indy’s request for comment in time for the publication of this story.

At Purdue in Indianapolis, enrollment increased slightly from 296 in fall 2024 to 333 this fall. Though Purdue’s international undergraduate population increased slightly at the Indy campus, the number of graduate students went down between 2024 to 2025.

Purdue spokesperson Derek Schultz declined to comment on this trend. However, at the university’s main campus in West Lafayette, international student enrollment decreased by nearly 7% overall, or about 640 students, from fall 2024.

The enrollment decline at IU and Purdue is tied to the Trump administration’s policies on international students this year, said Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education.

 

These policies include revoking students’ visas and legal statuses earlier this spring, pausing new student visa interviews for a month to implement a new social media vetting policy and banning student visas for people from 19 countries.

While Spreitzer doesn’t have nationwide data yet, she’s expecting a general downward trend in enrollment across the U.S.

“As much as that U.S. institution may want them to come,” Spreitzer said, “they may look at the changes to our visa policy and everything else going on and say, ‘It’s not worth the risk.’”

What policies are affecting international students?

Spreitzer said the Trump administration’s broad concerns about immigration — specifically fraud and overstaying visas — don’t make sense in the context of higher education.

“They’re not working, they generally are not overstaying,” Spreitzer said. “It’s not an immigrant visa. It’s not a pathway to citizenship.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration began revoking both international students’ visas and legal statuses, the latter meaning that students could no longer be in the country legally.

At least seven IU Indy and six Purdue University international students had their visas or legal statuses revoked by the Trump administration. The Trump administration has revoked about 6,000 student visas this year, according to the BBC.

Thousands of students’ legal statuses were eventually restored, including the IU and Purdue students. But the experience created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty for students.

And it’s not just that students might not choose to study in the U.S. — they may not be able to get permission to enter in time.

In addition to the visa interview pause, the Association of International Educators, or NAFSA, reported that many students were unable to get visa appointments over the summer. That trend affected China and India, which, the organization said, send the most students to the U.S.

Spreitzer thinks the new immigration policies, including screening students’ social media, is taking up time for employees at U.S. consulates abroad and generally delaying the process.

“It’s taking more time for them to process the visa,” she said, “And so therefore the student’s just kind of giving up and saying, ‘I’m not going to get to the United States this year. I’m going to start my studies elsewhere.’”

How will this enrollment decline affect universities?

A July analysis from NAFSA predicted that up to 150,000 fewer international students would come to the U.S. in fall 2025 as a result of Trump administration policies.

An analysis from Bloomberg News found that international student arrivals in the U.S. dropped 19% from last August to 313,000, driven primarily by a drop in students from India and China coming to the U.S. That’s the lowest number to arrive in August since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, according to Bloomberg.

Spreitzer’s concerned about the loss of global perspective at U.S. universities with fewer international students.

“You lose some of the talent that you otherwise would have had attending your institution,” she said.

Research also shows international students are important to the economy. Some universities rely on international students to pay full-price tuition to supplement financial aid offered to lower-income students.

And while international student enrollment may not make or break an institution, combined with federal research funding cuts and budget uncertainty, universities could be in a tough position going into next year.

“That’s all going to figure into your overall budget,” Spreitzer said.

What will happen next?

In recent days, the Trump administration has issued multiple new policies that affect international students.

These new policies include shortening the amount of time international students can stay in the U.S. after graduating and raising the price of an H-1B visa, the most common type of work visa for college-educated immigrants, to $100,000.

Spreitzer said she believes that colleges and universities will continue to recruit international students during the upcoming college application cycle.

But whether those students will choose to come to the U.S. for college is uncertain, especially because of the enormous financial cost and emotional burden of leaving their home country.

“Given the hoops that these students are going to have to jump through,” she said, “I think they’re going to decide to go to other countries.”

This article first appeared on Mirror Indy and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.