International Accents

Though it is the first week of the 2017-18 academic year, International Programs and many others around campus have been working hard over most of August to prepare a new group of international first-year graduates and undergraduates, transfer students, and visiting scholars to hit the ground running this fall semester. We will have a smaller incoming cohort of international undergraduates this fall. While we will not know the full story until we have final data and are able to compare it with our peers, most likely this change is attributable to factors that are out of our control, such as the current political climate in the U.S., fierce competition from other English-speaking countries, and the shifting winds of global demographics and sources of educational funding. The University of Iowa, likewise, reported a slightly smaller freshman class at 5,029 -- making it the third-largest class in UI history after two record-setting years. Our total enrollment remains up slightly -- at 33,564 from 33,334 last fall.