Suchita Farkiwala, a DePaul University senior from Ahmedabad, India, vividly remembers the day she flew into O’Hare International Airport more than three years ago to enroll in undergraduate classes.
Despite having no family or friends in the city, she had a crew of DePaul community members who met her at the airport, welcoming her to Chicago.
Since that first day in the city, she has assumed the role of mentor to younger students from around the world pursuing higher education.
“You never walk alone,” Farkiwala said of being an international student at DePaul. “You walk with support from all of the teachers and the community.”
Farkiwala is one of more than 1 million international students who enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs during the 2022-23 school year, when international enrollment in the United States jumped 11.5%, according to federal data published in November. Roughly 55,000 international students attended colleges in Illinois in the 2022-23 academic year, ranking the state fifth in the nation for international enrollment.
The uptick in international students has been especially spurred by students from India, which became the most populous country in the world in April 2023.
At DePaul, administrators pride themselves on being a school with a large international student community. The number of international students doubled — even as overall enrollment at the university is down.
DePaul’s administration attributed the increase to a jump in Indian students, as more Indian families seek out higher education, in addition to targeted marketing and admissions strategies by the school.
“We’ve expanded strategic partnerships in some of the target countries and regions that we’re looking to expand our international student enrollments from,” said Kari Costello, DePaul’s assistant vice president for international admission and recruitment.
To attract international students, DePaul also offers academic scholarships — which can be a rare opportunity for those students.
“We’re one of the few institutions that offers international student scholarships. A lot of institutions don’t do that,” Costello said.
These enrollment statistics could be viewed simply as a recovery from the pandemic, which created pent-up demand for both recent high school graduates and students who delayed their studies, said Rajika Bhandari, who founded a New York City-based international education consulting firm in 2019 focused on students studying in the United States and India.
However, the surge is also the result of two larger trends.
Bhandari said growing youth populations in South Asian and African countries with an appetite for higher education also contribute. In addition, recent visa restrictions in other countries have inversely led to more students applying to American colleges.
Indian students spur growth
In response to changing policies in education and a population boom, U.S. leaders in higher education circles are investing time and resources to attract more prospective students from India.
Last month, a delegation of 31 higher education advocates from 17 institutions, including two representatives from DePaul, traveled to cities across the South Asian country on a trip with the Institute for International Education, a century-old foundation that facilitates international programs.
Indian government officials estimate that over the next 25 years an additional 50 million seats in higher education will be needed for the college-aged population, according to Sarah Ilchman, co-president of the Institute of International Education.
“That’s a daunting number, and so clearly, countries like the United States will be an important partner with this baby boom,” Ilchman said.
The U.S. is particularly well situated for this boom, according to Ilchman. It has arguably the most diverse higher education system in the world, with “different types of institutions — large, small, urban, rural, public, private,” she said.
Students are more likely to pay for an American education at a well-known school, Ilchman said. “Students are looking for a brand name and studying in the U.S. and attending an American institution is a brand name around the world that people are eager to compete for, and quite frankly, pay for,” Ilchman said.
For international students looking to study abroad, safety, career opportunities and visa availability tend to be the top considerations, Bhandari said.
Safety considerations include whether students are afraid of being targeted for their race or ethnicity. become victims of a hate crime.”] Those considerations are especially true for native Indian students.
For instance, in 2017, an Indian student was shot and killed while working at a bar in Kansas. International student enrollment in Kansas subsequently declined in the years following his death, Bhandari said. The gunman later pleaded guilty to hate crime charges.
Professional opportunities also heavily influence international students’ educational choices. But challenges can remain on the path to postgraduate work, Bhandari said
For Farkiwala, future career opportunities remain stalled as she awaits word of her eligibility for a work visa. As an undergraduate, she completed an internship with Deloitte through a benefit with her international student visa that allows her to work while in college.
“We’re fortunate that so many students are interested in coming here to study, but the challenges that really remain … is what I call a broken pathway between higher education and immigration,” Bhandari said. “If they want to stay on and work, that pathway is incredibly difficult and challenging for most students.”
Finding community miles from home
Beemnet Desta had three priorities when looking at American colleges: location, program and diversity.
She remembers applying to more colleges than she could keep track of before eventually choosing DePaul, she said, because it had a strong computing program and was one of the more diverse schools she considered. And Desta liked the campus in the heart of Chicago, even though it was miles from her home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Now, as a graduate student, Desta organizes opportunities for students to meet each other — and nearly every international student at DePaul knows her name.
On a frosty afternoon in January, almost 100 international students gathered in a creative “makerspace” classroom at DePaul’s downtown Loop campus. Inside, groups huddled around various stations to make tote bags, buttons and T-shirts, complete with stickers of Chicago landmarks. As students crafted, loud conversations filled the room.
“Being an international student can be hard because your family isn’t here, and you’re trying to make new friends, but there could be cultural differences, language barriers, so when they’re here, they’re trying to get outside their comfort zone,” said Desta, a data science graduate student who plans the weekly international student events through Global DePaul, a student organization.
Campuses are working to be as inclusive as possible, Bhandari said, but not everything is in the control of college students or administrators.
“It’s more what might be happening off campus,” Bhandari said of possible tension with more international students attending higher education institutions in the United States. “An international student visa is not enough armor to protect someone if they’re out on the streets and become a victim of a hate crime.”
Weekly events to bring international students together, which Desta said regularly have good attendance, range from visiting local restaurants with international cuisines to exploring neighborhoods across Chicago.
Cultural centers and ethnic student associations also serve as support systems for international student populations.
For Carlos Daniel Guerrero Gaspar, a DePaul sophom*ore from Mexico City studying economic data analytics, the Latino Cultural Center serves as a cornerstone of his identity, from when he attends class to when he gives tours encouraging others to attend the university.
“That’s how I keep in touch with my identity and meet other people who come from similar backgrounds as me,” he said.
aguffey@chicagotribune.com
