Key points:
- It’s wise to monitor monitoring international students’ documents, milestones, benchmarks, and payments
- AI, edtech can improve equity in college admissions
- How admissions will change in 2024
- For more news on enrollment, visit eCN’s Campus Leadership hub
Summer melt has long been an issue for colleges and universities. For all kinds of reasons, from a lack of funding to family issues, students who accepted an offer of admission and plunked down a deposit just months earlier never actually enroll in classes. The same is true among international students.
However, some higher education institutions are reporting that international student melt is growing at a rapid pace. International students are signing on to attend, but never turning up for classes or immediately requesting a transfer to another school as soon as they land. College administrators have shared stories about dozens of international students putting down deposits to enroll but only a handful showing up and staying.
U.S. institutions aren’t the only ones struggling with increasing ghosting concerns and other enrollment issues among international students. Officials in the United Kingdom and Australia have raised alarms about fraudulent applications. Canada recently capped the number of new international student permits amid concerns, in part, that students were enrolling in institutions as an easier path to permanent residence.
The issue, of course, is a costly one for institutions amid a looming enrollment cliff. Colleges and universities are spending money to recruit international students, only to lose out on needed tuition dollars. But many complicated factors are triggering these issues.
The U.S. Department of State is rejecting applicants for student visas at record rates, according to reports. Global visa wait times are getting longer. For some international students, it takes just days to get a visa; others are in limbo for more than 200 days, according to the U.S. Department of State.
And, as lawmakers and officials have identified in other countries, there is evidence of fraudulent activity to game immigration systems with applications being used to acquire F-1 visas to be sold to another individual. In fact, the U.S. Embassy in India recently updated its policy for student visa applicants to prevent fraud and abuse within its appointment system.
With so many factors prompting international student melt, there’s no easy fix. But there are solutions to identify potentially fraudulent applications and bring some certainty to your international student enrollment. Here are three.
- Work with agents in good faith.
Agents have emerged to play a crucial role in international student recruitment, earning a cut when a student they’ve recruited enrolls at an institution. But we’re increasingly seeing bad actors who are taking advantage of students and institutions. There’s some momentum to create best practices or accreditation for the profession. But, for now, institutions must do their due diligence to ensure that any agent they work with is acting in good faith. For example, what is their experience and/or success rate? Do they have testimonials or references from working with other universities?
- Establish an application process that accounts for interest and notes red flags
Ensure that your application process hones in on a student’s bonafide interest in pursuing an education in the United States. Keep an eye out for red flags that might indicate that the student doesn’t intend to actually study at a U.S. institution or that the application may be fraudulent in some way.
Unusual spikes or patterns in student applications from the same country or region may be one warning sign. Diving deeper into applications may be another way to weed out problematic prospective students, including closer scrutiny of their school records and financial resources.
- Follow students along their enrollment journey
To study in the United States, international students have plenty of obligations to meet. Higher education institutions can identify students attempting to game the system by following along their enrollment journey. A centralized system that manages and tracks their applications and other documents altogether is a good place to start.
With it, institutions can make sure students are meeting the deadlines for obtaining a visa; completing benchmarks such as registering for orientation and paying their deposit; and participating in virtual pre-arrival programs for incoming international students.
At each step, institutions should also look for other ways to streamline compliance and pre-admissions policies to ensure students stay on top of tasks. That could include canceling immigration documents if a student has not paid a nominal orientation deposit by a specific deadline.
Of course, there is no foolproof way to avoid every student with plans to ghost an institution. And melt will always happen among domestic and international students as understandable issues arise.
But zeroing in on the intentions of international applicants and monitoring their documents, milestones, benchmarks, and payments can shed some light on their plans and help ensure fewer vaporize from an institution’s rolls.
Travis Ulrich is a Terra Dotta senior vice president with more than a decade of international education and SEVIS compliance experience. He previously led and supported international student and scholar services and campus internationalization efforts at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
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