A new analysis of US immigration records has found a 6.7 per cent fall over two years in a combined measure of international students at four college degree levels and people taking part in post-study practical training.
The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a coalition of university and college leaders, says the selected records totalled approximately 1.09 million in October 2026, nearly 78,000 fewer than in October 2024. The organisation posted its analysis on 12 November and updated it on 13 November; the underlying government figures were already available before the analysis was published.
The group drew on the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, known as SEVIS. Its comparison covers active records classified at associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral level. The alliance says this measure also includes people undertaking post-completion Optional Practical Training, or OPT, connected to those programmes.
OPT allows eligible F-1 students to apply for temporary work authorisation related to their field of study. Some use it after completing their course, so the combined total should not be described simply as the number of people currently attending classes. Nor does it isolate new students starting a degree.
A sharper fall in the second year
A separate calculation from the degree-level totals now displayed in the government’s monthly tables gives 1,164,992 selected active records in October 2024 and 1,087,386 in October 2026. That is a difference of 77,606, or 6.7 per cent when rounded to one decimal place.
Most of the two-year reduction came in the second year. The alliance reports a 6.3 per cent fall from October 2025 to October 2026, compared with a much smaller decrease in the preceding 12 months. The currently displayed government tables likewise show a fall of about 73,000, or 6.3 per cent, in the later year.
The precise figures differ slightly: the alliance reports a one-year decline of 73,264, while the current public tables sum to a decline of 73,451 for the same four levels. The brief does not explain the difference. Both calculations support the rounded comparison, but the exact counts should be treated with care. Government SEVIS figures have been corrected in the past; that does not establish why these particular numbers differ.
The overall change also hides differences by level. In the currently displayed tables, records classified at master’s level fell by roughly 89,700 between October 2024 and October 2026, while doctoral-level records increased by about 16,400. Those categories can include post-study trainees as well as students, so the figures do not establish how many people were actually studying for each qualification at either date.
What the figures do and do not count
SEVIS is an administrative system that tracks students and exchange visitors. The government mapping tables used in the analysis cover students in F and M categories. The analysis selects only four education levels; it is not a count of everyone studying in the US from abroad. For example, it does not cover every language or vocational category, exchange visitors in J status, or international students studying under other immigration statuses.
The figures are snapshots of active records, not a flow of arrivals across the border. An arrival count records journeys during a period and can include someone who travels more than once. A SEVIS snapshot can include a continuing student who did not travel at all, as well as a person in post-completion training. Visa issuances, border entries and enrolment records therefore answer different questions and should not be added together or treated as interchangeable.
Using October in each year makes the comparison more like-for-like than comparing a summer month with the autumn start of classes. It does not eliminate every timing or reporting effect, and the figures do not reveal every change that occurred between snapshots. A decline in the total cannot by itself show whether fewer new students arrived, more continuing students left, or more people completed their training and moved out of the records.
Policy uncertainty, not proof of cause
The alliance argues that immigration policy changes have made planning less predictable for international students and institutions. The group is also a plaintiff in a challenge to a federal rule that would replace the usual duration-of-status framework for many students and exchange visitors with fixed admission periods. A federal court blocked the rule from taking effect while the litigation continues; it should not be treated as an implemented change.
Separately, 30 US senators asked the State Department to address reported shortages of timely student and exchange-visitor visa appointments at some consulates. They sought information on processing and proposed steps including adequate staffing. Those requests do not prove that appointment difficulties caused the change in the SEVIS totals.
For colleges, a sustained fall in the number of students physically enrolled could affect course planning and fee income, but the national figures do not establish the effect on a particular institution. More detailed enrolment and first-time student data, alongside information on visa processing and post-study training, would be needed to understand which parts of the pipeline changed and why.
