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The number of foreign students coming to U.S. colleges and universities continued to fall last year, according to a new report, but the Trump administration says the drop should be blamed on high tuition costs and not students’ concerns over the nation’s political atmosphere. An annual report from the Institute of International Education found that the number of newly enrolled international students dipped by 1% in fall 2018 compared to the year before. It follows decreases of 7% and 3% in the previous two years, which were the first downturns in more than a decade. The downturn is a worry...

Syracuse, NY -- A Syracuse University student, who had stockpiled ammunition and gun accessories in his downtown apartment, was stopped before carrying out threats of a mass shooting, city police revealed today. Xiaoteng Zhan, 22, was deported back to China by federal agents March 20 as he returned to Syracuse from spring break in Mexico, Syracuse Deputy Police Chief Derek McGork said. Zhan told a friend that the "dark side" had pushed him to buy a gun, bulletproof vest and other items, McGork said, reading from an English translation of their messages. "I might use the gun to cause trouble,"...

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is seeking information on a federal program that allows private institutions to manage visas for foreign students seeking enrollment in a U.S.-based school with limited oversight. The program is susceptible to abuse by entities that pose as education institutions in order to secure visas for tuition-paying foreign students. The Student and Exchange Visitor Program allows “designated school officials” to help foreign students obtain certain three-year “practical training” work visas. However, some institutions offer little, if any, educational opportunities to tuition-paying foreign students seeking work opportunities. These “visa mills” profit from the foreign...

“[Yunsong] Zhao was arrested because he allegedly attached a 30-round magazine to a rifle,” richmond.com reports. “He was allowed to own both the gun and magazine, but when they were combined, the rifle qualified as an assault weapon prohibited to people with Zhao’s visa status.” Yes, you read that right . . . You can have as many 30-round rifle, handgun or shotgun ammunition magazines as you like in Virginia — as long as you don’t pop one into a gun. Zhao’s defense attorney isn’t challenging the box of rocks stupid mag law. As Jason Wolfrey asked the court...

Application and acceptance season is underway at America's colleges and universities. But this year, some institutions of higher learning may see a noticeable dip in attendance from one group purposely choosing to stay home: foreign students. Applications from international students from countries such as China, India and in particular, the Middle East, are down this year at nearly 40 percent of schools that answered a recent survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Educators, recruiters and school officials report that the perception of America has changed for international students, and it just doesn't seem to be...

Inside Higher Ed reported that Canadian universities and colleges are experiencing a surge and spike in applications to their higher education institutions, with some staffers claiming that it is due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies. This "Trump effect" will allow Canadian universities and colleges to make money with more expensive tuition charged to international students, a model that American universities heavily rely on for their budgets. Other staffers say that the rise in international student applications is on par with recent trends. American universities, as the article pointed out, are seeing a decline in their international student applications, while...

In a recent article, "Surge in foreign students may be crowding Americans out of elite colleges," The Washington Post stumbled on the truth about one of the factors affecting the rising cost of college for American students. The percentage of foreign students enrolling in both public and private colleges and universities has skyrocketed. Their sponsors, Middle East governments and regimes like China, buy their way into American colleges and universities for their own students, forcing up costs for the dwindling number of Americans fortunate enough to gain admission. It is estimated that over one million international students are enrolled in...

The Somali refugee who unleashed a brutal slashing rampage at the Ohio State University that left 11 injured on Monday, is just 18 years old according to NBC.  But with his balding hair, mustache and goatee, Abdul Razak Ali Artan has the appearance of someone who could be much older.  Authorities have not yet verified the terror suspect's age - but it is possible pretending to be younger could have helped Artan's immigration status in the US. Artan entered the U.S. in 2014 - when he was around 16, based on current reports of his age. 

Academia loves to dress up its appeal to international students in uplifting prose but a veteran professor suggests the move may be more than just a bit calculated towards self-preservation. “The historiography of education is very boring,” Wilfred McClay of Oklahoma University said at the Philadelphia Society’s regional meeting in Indianapolis last weekend. “It’s always crisis.” The Philadelphia Society is a group of conservative intellectuals that was formed in the wake of the Goldwater defeat in 1964. “Where would the students come from to fill those magnificent buildings constructed since V-J day?” Dr. McClay asked at the Indianapolis confab. “It...

Are public universities making up for the loss of American students by encouraging the cash-rich Chinese to send their college-age children to schoosl in the U.S?

Published April 29, 2013 FoxNews.com WASHINGTON – SNIPPET: "On multiple occasions, first after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and again after 9/11, Congress mandated that immigration officials come up with a verifiable entry-exit system to track foreign visitors. To date, the Department of Homeland Security has failed, despite spending billions in tax dollars. The current system, known as USVISIT, does take fingerprints and photos of international visitors when they arrive at U.S. airports, but it has no similar biometric exit system. The goal is to match entry and exit records to determine which individuals comply with their visa and...

The Five co-host Bob Beckel waited until near the end of Tuesday afternoon’s show on Fox to address his recent controversial suggestion to “cut off Muslim students coming to this country,” but when he did, he stood by his statements. Beckel made the original comments during a panel discussion on The Five Monday, drawing some startled reactions from his more conservative co-hosts. Earlier today, he appeared on Fox with Megyn Kelly, who pushed him to explain what he meant and warned him that he was entering “dangerous” territory. That discussion evidently did not deter Beckel from tripling down on his...

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an inter-denominational student ministry that builds communities across campuses in the U.S., revealed that one of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing was involved with their organization. Chinese national Lingzi Lu, 23, was one of the three people who lost their lives in last week's twin blasts that rocked the Boston Marathon, which also injured more than 170 others. "(Lu) was involved with the international student ministry we have at Boston University. She attended a retreat that we sponsored last fall. She was friends with people in the InterVarsity International Student ministry with the graduate and...

(Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers Hani Hanhour (right) and Majed Moqed (left) at an ATM machine on Sept. 5, 2001.) (CNSNews.com) - The number of Saudi Arabian students in the United States has increased by more than 500 percent since Sept. 11, 2001--when Hani Hanjour, a Saudi national who came here on a student visa flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 189 people. According to the Institute of International Education--whose numbers on foreign students in the United States are used in official reports published by the U.S. Department of Education--there were 5,579 Saudi nationals enrolled in U.S....

The Saudi national who was initially detained and then ruled out as a suspect in the Boston Marathon terrorist attack had been flagged on a terror watch list and was granted a student visa without being properly vetted, sources have told me. A source close to the investigation revealed that Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi had been deemed inadmissible under the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act which declares ineligible for a visa – any alien who is engaged in or is likely to engage after entry – in terrorist activity. At least two additional sources have confirmed to me...

Foreign Students Walk Off Hershey’s Factory Job In Protest By Liz GoodwinAugust 18, 2011 Hundreds of foreign students on a State Department cultural exchange visa program walked off their factory jobs in protest on Wednesday. The J-1 visa program brings foreign students to the country to work for two months and learn English, and was designed in part to fill seasonal tourism jobs at resorts and seaside towns. The 400 students employed at a Pennsylvania factory that makes Hershey's candies told The New York Times that even though they make $8.35 an hour, their rent and program fees are deducted...

U.S. students had a much harder time getting into American graduate schools this past year than did their peers from China and the rest of the world. And while 1 year is far from a trend, a new report by the Council of Graduate Schools raises the question of how well Americans stack up against international students. Overall, the report says, 3% more international students received offers of admission for the 2010–11 academic year than in the previous year. That's the fifth increase in the past 6 years. But the survey from the Washington, D.C.,–based organization also found that 1%...

Chinese Returnees Bethany Stotts, April 23, 2010 Speakers at a recent Brookings Institution forum on Chinese returnees debated the impact that study abroad experiences will have on China’s political and social development. Around 1.6 million Chinese citizens have studied abroad or finished a fellowship at least a year in duration since 1978, said the panelists. About a half million have since returned, said Cheng Li, Director of Research at Brookings’ John L. Thornton China Center, citing data from the Chinese Embassy. “Those who study for four months or half a year are not counted” in this analysis, he noted, according...

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - The Nigerian suspected of trying to bring down a U.S. airliner with explosives might have used Arabic studies as a pretext for entering Yemen before disappearing for months, perhaps into one of the lawless country's al-Qaida strongholds, fellow students and teachers said. Interviews with staff and students at the Institute for the Arabic Language this week have revealed that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was frequently absent from classes and spent at most one month at the school in Yemen's capital, San'a, starting in late August before vanishing. Authorities say he didn't leave the country until December and...

LANTANA, Fla. – It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away. Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood. I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad." It was really bad, and not just for him....