The number of international students arriving in the United States for the start of the academic year has fallen to its lowest level since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to federal data reported by the journal Nature on November 13. Data from the National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) show that 277,000 student-visa holders arrived in August 2026, down from 387,000 in August 2024 — a fall of 28 per cent in two years.
Source: Nature
India and China drove the decline. Arrivals from India fell by about 50,000 between 2024 and 2026, and arrivals from China fell by about 23,000 over the same period, Nature reported from the NTTO figures. India is the largest source of international students in the United States, so a drop of this size lands directly on the families — including many Punjabi families — who plan for years around a US degree.
What the numbers count — and what they do not
The NTTO figures count student-visa holders physically arriving in August, the peak month for the start of the academic year. They measure the flow of new and returning students entering the country, not the total number enrolled at US universities. That makes the August figure an early-warning gauge: when it falls this sharply, universities feel it first in new intakes, and researchers feel it in the laboratories those students would have staffed.
A second dataset points the same way at the research end of the system. Applications from international students to US PhD programmes fell 21 per cent from 2025 to 2026, according to a survey of 55 member institutions of the Association of American Universities (AAU), a coalition of research-intensive universities, cited by Nature.
A separate college survey tells the same story
A survey of 203 US higher-education institutions, released on November 11 by NAFSA: Association of International Educators with Oxford University Press and the recruitment platform Studyportals, found that nearly six in ten colleges lost foreign graduate students this fall, with an average decline of 13 per cent, and 45 per cent saw fewer foreign undergraduates enrol. Some 90 per cent of respondents cited restrictive federal policies as a significant obstacle to international enrolment, Higher Ed Dive reported.
Source: Higher Ed Dive
Colleges in that survey described the change on the ground in India in particular. One institution quoted in the reporting said its agents in India were seeing a drastic decline in inquiries for US graduate study, with many prospective students either considering other destinations or postponing their plans. Another said it would pivot recruitment toward the Philippines, Canada and Colombia to offset losses from India, Bangladesh and Nepal — the countries it had traditionally drawn most of its foreign students from.
For thousands of Punjabi households, a US master's degree or PhD is a multi-year financial plan built on loans, savings and a student's visa interview. The new data do not say the door is closed — 277,000 students still arrived in August — but they show the flow narrowing fastest from India, and colleges themselves blaming policy uncertainty rather than demand.
Why researchers say students are staying away
Nature linked the fall to the series of visa and travel restrictions the administration of President Donald Trump has introduced since he took office in early 2025. Last month the administration also attempted to place a US$100,000 levy on science and engineering students enrolling in extended Optional Practical Training (OPT), the work programme used by hundreds of thousands of recent graduates and described by Nature as the largest pipeline of scientific talent into the United States. The Department of Homeland Security, which issued the proposal, said it was meant to “combat fraud, strengthen the integrity of the immigration system, and protect U.S. workers.” Federal judges have suspended the OPT charge and other efforts to curb immigration, Nature reported.
“I can’t imagine a more effective way for the US to cede its dominance in critical scientific fields to China and Europe than by reducing international students,” Nigel Goldenfeld, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, told Nature. In 2024, international students earned 38 per cent of the science and engineering PhDs awarded in the United States. Chris Glass, a higher-education researcher at Boston College in Massachusetts, told the journal: “Uncertainty has become policy, and that has registered in the hearts and minds of students.”
The decreases are squeezing already strained university budgets, Nature reported, and researchers worry about the impact on US science. The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia have also seen drops in international enrolment after placing new limits on those populations, but Glass said US policies are especially restrictive. A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to Nature’s request for comment.
What happens next
No new policy was announced alongside the data, and the suspended OPT levy remains tied up in court. For now, the clearest signals to watch are monthly visa issuance figures, the next application cycle, and whether colleges’ own expectations improve: in the NAFSA survey, 44 per cent of institutions expected international enrolment to stay at the same depressed levels next year and 37 per cent expected it to decline further. Universities, meanwhile, are redrawing recruitment maps — and students in India weighing a US application are making their decisions in a market where, on the colleges’ own account, uncertainty itself has become the deciding factor.