International PhD student numbers in US hold steady — for now

International students in the USA defied predictions of a huge population decline. Data for the current academic year show that the number of foreign students, including candidates and newly minted PhDs, has remained virtually unchanged compared to last year.

US President Donald Trump's administration has shaken up the higher education landscape by revoking student visas. reduction in funding for institutions and imposing travel bans on certain countries. As a result, many higher education researchers expected that significant numbers of international students would turn away from U.S. academia.

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In July, NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. predicted that the number of international students in the US would decline by 15% between the previous school year and this one. And in October New York Times reported a 20 percent decline in the number of students arriving in the United States. in August 2025 compared to August 2024, based on US Department of Commerce data.

But data released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for September and October shows little change in the number of international students and recent graduates in the United States from this year to last—and experts say the data is more reliable than others.

“It doesn't appear to be as catastrophic as initially feared,” says Chris Glass, a higher education researcher at Boston College in Massachusetts.

Data points

The DHS statistics, which are part of a database called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), track students enrolled in institutions and recent graduates gaining work experience in a program called optional practical training (OPT). OPT is one of the largest pipelines of foreign talent in the US, supplying thousands of people to Amazon, Google and other leading companies. This is a key moment for people pursuing PhDs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), with 76% of recent graduates taking part between 2010 and 2022.

According to SEVIS, there are about 1.3 million international students and OPT participants in the United States in the 2025-26 school year—about the same number as in the 2024-25 school year. The total number of doctoral students also remained virtually unchanged from last year (see “Remarkable Stability”).

SEVIS data does not differentiate between recent graduates participating in OPT and students still enrolled in institutions. Glass says that given recent trends, the number of OPT participants could grow by about 15% between 2024 and 2025. If so, it would represent a “modest single-digit decline in enrollment,” leaving overall student and graduate numbers unchanged.

How, then, can explain the 20% decline in student arrivals in August recorded by the Commerce Department? The August arrival data “is not that good of an estimate” of the international student population, said Violet Buxton-Walsh, an immigration researcher at the Progress Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. Many international students might heed the advice to remain in the United States between the end of the 2024–25 school year and the beginning of the 2025–26 school year. If they had done so, they would not have been included in the August arrival data, Buxton-Walsh says. Others may have arrived in September rather than August due to visa delays.

The relatively stable numbers may seem puzzling given the headlines about anti-immigration actions of the Trump administration. But “international students are incredibly resilient,” says Melissa Whatley, a higher education researcher at William & Mary Normal School in Williamsburg, Virginia. “They're going to be attending school and getting degrees under circumstances that we think might hold them back.”

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