SEVIS With A Smile? Or ‘A Delusion, A Mockery And A Snare’?

Data-driven predictions of future international student enrollments can be very useful for international recruiters, university budgeting and potential investors in higher education.  Recent commentary using Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) data shows how visa data can be characterized in a way that suggests the challenges faced by US higher education are overstated.  But clarity around what this data source includes and where it might exaggerate or diminish trends is vital to avoid misdirection and poor decision making.     

The increasingly user-friendly ‘SEVIS By the Numbers’ web-site provides good access to visa data complete with interactive maps and is a popular source.  It claims it ‘illustrates trends and information on international students studying in the United States’ but it does not disaggregate between those enrolled at universities and those on student visas taking the Optional Practical Training (OPT) extension which allows for post-study work.  Confusing or conflating the two is unhelpful in understanding the implications for the state of US higher education.  

Executive action in 2016 increased the maximum length of employment under OPT for foreign students with STEM degrees to 36 months, which, along with a booming US economy, resulted in a material increase in the number of STEM graduates staying on to work in the US.  While these students hold F-1 visas (and are reported in the SEVIS numbers), they are not tuition-paying students enrolled in a US university.    

To give a sense of materiality of the OPT numbers, the Institute of International Education (IIE) Open Doors Report reports shows that the proportion of OPT students rose to 18.6% of ‘total international students’ in 2017/18 from 12.4% in 2014/15.  When the IIE announced that the ‘number of international students’ increased to reach a new high of 1,094,000 in 2017/18, the growth in OPT numbers masked the reality that students enrolled in full-time study in US universities actually declined year-on-year and were lower than 2015/16.

A better guide to the health and future of international student recruitment may be provided by IIE’s data which shows that both undergraduate and postgraduate new enrollments have fallen for two years in a row, and non-degree enrollments for three.  Critically, between 2015/16 and 2017/18 the number of undergraduates and graduates enrolled fell by over 17,000 while the number of non-degree students fell by less than 5,000.  While percentage falls in non-degree students can look high, the number of students is relatively low compared to the main body of academic students.        

Master’s Level Enrollments and Students From India

Thinking of SEVIS data as a proxy for enrollments is particularly distorting at Master’s level and for understanding trends for students from India.  SEVIS suggests that the number of Master’s ‘students’ grew by 27.7% between 2014 and 2017 while IIE data indicates that numbers actually enrolled in universities grew by only 8.4%.  The difference is driven by the 69.1% increase in OPT numbers (83,175) shown in IIE data over the four years.    

Note: The SEVIS data and the IIE Enrollment data is not synchronous.

The Pew Research Centre has reported that students from India are significantly more likely to utilise the OPT opportunity than other international students.  IIE’s breakdown indicates that between 2016/17 and 2017/18 the number of students from India enrolled on Graduate programmes declined by nearly 10,000 while the numbers doing OPT increased by over 18,000.  The increase in numbers doing OPT appears to be slowing which is likely to reflect emerging options around the world and the declining competitiveness of the US in retaining international talent. 

At undergraduate level, which is unaffected by OPT,  IIE and SEVIS both show a small growth in students from India year-on-year to 2017/18 but this should be seen in the context of growth in Canada which had 123,000 students from India in 2017 – 63% more than the year before.  This was largely driven by an increase of 67% (86,900) going into colleges, presumably as a result of the opportunities for progression to university, work and citizenship.  It will be interesting to see how far growth in Indian undergraduates in the US goes when these routes seem more straightforward and available in Canada.

The 1st Baron Denman coined the phrase ‘a delusion, a mockery and a snare’ in a legal context in the 1840s, and imprecise use or understanding of data has a similar potential to lure, deceive and trap the unwary.  No source of information is without flaws and weaknesses but it is also foolhardy to take one source, view or instance as giving definitive guidance. In that respect there is plenty of evidence that competitors are challenging the US, that global student mobility is changing, that demographics are shifting and that technology is disrupting the established order.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay