The reason you see so many foreigners now is two fold. 1) in undergrad situations they are here solely to get an education that will help them scam out an H1-B visa, then green card, then citizenship, so they pay more willingly and the university obliges, 2) for the grad students there are here for industrial and scientific data collection and high tuitions are paid by their state countries (one is China).
I used to work research projects with university professors and we had a strict no non-citizens on the projects. Most of the professors blithely violated this rule (based on ITARS and EAR federal regulations and it was very hard policing it because I had to examine student time sheets. I used to joke that what was learned there in the daytime ended up in Beijing by nightfall.
I did IT contract work for the N.J. Judiciary in Trenton for 11 and 1/2 years. Half of the staff were contractors, and about 2/3 of the contractors were on green cards. Some had access to actual live data, court cases, etc. How nuts is that? But that aside there is a lot of aid for foreign students that citizens of the same state are not privy to.