Aging New Hampshire might be running short when it comes to home-grown college students but the number of international students attending college here is growing fast, more than in almost any other state, with an unusually high percentage attracted to master’s programs.
The number of non-immigrant foreigners attending school in New Hampshire has risen almost 40 percent in the past two years to 5,444 students, according to a quarterly report from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.
In the most recent year, from July 2015 to last month, New Hampshire saw a 19 percent increase in such students, the second largest jump of any state, behind only Arkansas.
This figure includes elementary and high school students, but more than four out of five are attending college at some level, according to an analysis from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), part of the Department of Homeland Security. The data concerns only students in the U.S. to study temporarily, as compared to foreign-born students who are trying to, or who have received, permission to stay permanently.
All this is good news to local colleges and universities, which are struggling with a decline in the number of graduating seniors throughout the region.
In New Hampshire, for example, the number of high school graduates peaked in 2007 and seems likely to decline through 2021, according to a study from the state Department of Higher Education, and the situation is even worse in Maine and Vermont.
Colleges looking to fill seats and keep their budgets balanced – keeping in mind the memory of Chester College, which closed in 2012, and cutbacks at a number of other schools – are increasingly looking overseas.
Nationwide, according to the report, the number of non-immigrant foreign students rose about 5.4 percent, driven by a surge of students from Asia, who usually come here for science and engineering studies. China alone makes up 87 percent of non-immigrant foreign students getting STEM degrees, or science, technology, engineering and mathematics, in this country.
One unusual item in the New Hampshire data released Tuesday is that almost half of all foreign students – 49 percent – are getting master’s degrees, rather than more common bachelor’s degree.
This percentage is far higher than in Maine (6 percent) or Vermont (7.5 percent), and is even higher than states with much larger foreign student populations and more internationally known schools, such as Massachusetts (33 percent) or New York state (35 percent).
It’s not clear exactly what is behind the unusual balance of degrees.
The bulk of foreigners studying in New Hampshire – almost four out of every five – are from Asia or the Middle East, especially China, India and Saudi Arabia. That has been the case for a number years – Saudi Arabia passed Canada as a sending country in 2013, according to earlier reports.
The analysis from the Department of Homeland Security echoes findings from the private Institute of International Education, which releases an annual report called Open Doors.
The 2015 Open Doors report for New Hampshire said a little more than 1,200 foreign students were enrolled at Dartmouth College last year and a little fewer than 1,200 enrolled at Southern New Hampshire University – a figure that may include SNHU’s industry-leading online courses.
Open Doors said 940 foreign students were at UNH in Durham last year. The only other school with a significant foreign enrollment was Rivier University in Nashua, which has a well-established nursing program.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
