PORT ANGELES – Fewer international students are coming to the United States. That’s hurting American colleges and universities as well as the US economy.

Here at home, Peninsula College has seen a 25% drop in international student enrollment over the last four years. College President Dr. Luke Robins and Jack Huls, vice president for student services, were quoted extensively in a recent article at cnn.com on that very subject. Both men spoke with us about their concerns and plans for dealing with the problem.

Huls tells KONP that one of the reasons for the downturn is a strong US dollar.

“One of the countries is Indonesia and, as an example, one of the folks that we work with had more students being placed in Canada, in both Victoria and Vancouver this year, than in Peninsula College. So I could say that directly…that some of those new students that we have typically got have gone to Canada because of the fact that their dollar will go farther there than it will go into the United States right now.”

Robins and Huls also point out that recent US/China trade relations, as well as the unrest in Hong Kong, have made it more difficult to get a visa in the US and contributed to a steep downturn in enrollment from China.

At Peninsula College, international students are charged about $10,000 a year in tuition, while in-state students pay about $5,000, so the decline in enrollments is significant to the school’s budget.

That said, Robins considers the economic effect secondary to the cultural effect that diversity brings to the student body and staff.

“You know, we are living in an increasingly global economy. And it’s really important, we feel, for all of our students to have experiences with people from other cultures and other traditions than what they grew up in, because that’s a mutually enriching process and a real learning experience for all of our students. So we really feel it’s a really positive thing. The money is, you know, it’s of concern to us, but you know, for us, that’s not the bottom line. The bottom line is having a diverse student body that has a lot of interaction and can share with each other.”

So what to do? Robins says he’s stepping up his program of active recruitment worldwide.

“What we’re focusing on is really countries where students do get visas, where that isn’t a problem. And that’s countries like Japan and South Korea, and Europe. And we just came back from a recruiting trip and there are students looking to come to the U.S. And so that’s what we’ll be focusing on. We have to look at the whole lay of the land and focus our efforts where we know where students are more than likely to be able to obtain a visa to come here and study in the U.S.”