Foreign students also added financial resources to U.S. universities because they tended to pay full tuition and sometimes brought with them large donations from wealthy foreign governments or families. In the context of the Cold War struggle between the Soviet Union and the West, foreign students who learned about the American political system and its values could bring ideas about individual liberty and representative democracy back to their home countries.
After 1977, foreign enrollment at U.S. universities crept higher, slowly at first, before it dramatically skyrocketed over the last two decades. Nationwide, the percentage of international students on college campuses has now nearly tripled since 1977. At our leading universities, the percentage of students from abroad has reached critical mass, averaging about a third but sometimes approaching half of total enrollments.
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