It was three months into the second presidential administration of Donald Trump when a small group of New England university administrators convened at a 1902 Beaux-Arts mansion owned by Boston University, just a few blocks from the main campus on an unobtrusive treelined side street in Brookline.

They filed into a high-ceilinged conference room in a one-time steel magnate’s estate turned events center, with huge picture windows overlooking the sleepy residential neighborhood. Representatives of the international student recruiting company that was hosting the meeting strategically positioned themselves at the entrances, handing out agendas.  

The peace and quiet were a stark contrast to the growing chaos in the broader world outside. Billions of dollars of federal research funding for many of the universities where these administrators worked was being cut, and investigations and sanctions were being fired at them by the Trump administration. Soon budgets would be slashed, programs shut down, and employees laid off. This day-long event was about a group that seemed to be facing yet another threat — one with equally grave implications for these schools and the larger Massachusetts economy: international students.

Just days earlier, masked agents had arrested a Tufts University doctoral student on a street in Somerville and whisked her to a detention center in Louisiana. Thousands of student visas were being revoked. International students already admitted to US universities faced a slowdown in appointments for required consular interviews and would soon be required to provide their social media histories. The administration would later try blocking Harvard from enrolling international students at all, limit the proportion other elite schools others could admit, restrict the time these students could stay in the country, and increase the cost of the follow-on visas many have historically used to remain and get jobs here.

A succession of speakers broached these topics at the conference, which was sponsored by the Norwegian international student recruiting company Keystone Education Group. Some triggered nervous laughter, and there were anxious whispers between sessions and over the buffet lunch, from which some attendees had to excuse themselves to take phone calls from colleagues helping international students worried they might also be detained or wouldn’t be allowed to return to the US if they went home for the summer. 

The message of the gathering was grim. The seemingly ceaseless flow of international students so critical to Massachusetts universities and colleges would almost certainly slow — probably dramatically.

“You cannot pretend that students from X countries are going to be coming to us in Y numbers anymore,” Vera Grek, director of graduate and international enrollment at Wentworth Institute of Technology, told the meeting.

That’s a $4 billion-a-year problem for Massachusetts alone, which ranks fourth among states  — after California, New York, and Texas  —  in the number of international students at its universities and colleges. More than 82,000 international students studied here last year, supporting an estimated 35,849 jobs.

But there was something else the officials in this room knew. The institutions that they represented largely had themselves to blame for becoming so financially dependent on international students. Many schools in Massachusetts recruited higher proportions of international students than colleges and universities almost anywhere else, federal data show, increasing their numbers year after year to help fill each successive class. That’s largely because of a demographic decline in the number of domestic students in the Northeast, and the comparatively high cost of higher education here, which makes it less appealing to American applicants from places in the country where the number of 18-year-olds is steady or rising.

While international students comprise less than 5 percent of total enrollment at US universities, they make up 35 percent at Northeastern University, 34 percent at Clark University and Babson College, 31 percent at MIT, 29 percent at Berklee College of Music, 27 percent at Brandeis University, and 26 percent at Harvard. Even onetime commuter schools like the Boston and Lowell campuses of the University of Massachusetts state system have hugely increased their number of international students. International graduate students in particular proved so lucrative that, on one Massachusetts campus — Northeastern — they had come to make up more than two-thirds of graduate enrollment.

Yet as international students became increasingly essential, there were signs that fewer of them were coming, even before the turmoil of Trump’s second term. Global demand for American higher education had already started slipping under pressure from geopolitical tensions, increased competition, and concerns among prospective applicants about cost and safety. Fewer of the international students who were still coming could afford to pay full tuition. While the United States is still where the largest proportion of international students end up, its lead has been eroding, Keystone data show, In the fall before Trump’s reelection, the number of international graduate students and new undergraduates had already started to decline, according to the Institute for International Education, or IIE, threatening Massachusetts colleges’ reliance on them.

“I’ve always worried about Massachusetts being a little too complacent about our position in the academic world,” says Richard Freeland, Northeastern’s former president, who was also state commissioner of higher education from 2009 to 2015. “Massachusetts has a brand internationally, so some of these international students have just come to us because of who we are.”

That complacency now presents a potential multibillion-dollar hit to the economy, if international student flows further decline, as projections suggest they will. The number of international students arriving in the United States in August, before the start of this semester, was down nearly 20 percent compared to the same period last year, new figures show. International students don’t only help universities balance their books and inject dollars into the local economy by patronizing restaurants, buying cars, and renting off-campus apartments. They also create research that fuels business, fill jobs in knowledge industries, and create their own startups.

“The calling card for the Massachusetts economy for decades has always been access to the best talent in the world. That’s our sweet spot,” says JD Chesloff, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, an industry group. “People coming here to be educated and staying here has been a foundation of our innovation ecosystem for decades. You can’t help but appreciate how devastating that would be to our economy if they stopped coming.”

Massachusetts universities and colleges started doubling down on international student recruitment around 2011, when domestic enrollment began a long decline. Since then, the number of students overall has fallen by more than 14 percent, but the number of international undergraduates at Massachusetts colleges and universities jumped by about 20 percent, an analysis of federal data show. The number in graduate programs, which are big money makers for universities, nearly doubled.

University admissions offices employ designated international recruiters who spend months living out of suitcases as they travel across the globe to entice students. Some team up with schools that teach English to prospective applicants and with companies like Keystone, which works with 5,500 institutions in more than 190 countries. These recruiting agents generate leads from online inquiries and help students pick countries and schools, complete their applications, and find places to live. As an indication of how important international students have become, many universities pay commissions to these agents, according to the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.

However they recruit, there were plenty of signs, even before Trump, that it was becoming harder for US universities to enroll international students — especially those who could afford to pay full American tuition. Instead, the market has shifted away from China and the Middle East to students from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, where many need financial aid. This means less revenue than in the past for the US universities they choose.

“The countries where [cost] is not a hurdle are flattening,” Anne Corriveau, BU’s director of international admissions, told the meeting at the mansion.

In 2023, the last year for which the figures are available by country, the number of international students from China fell by four percent after years of increases, the IIE reports. Numbers were also down from other more affluent nations, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Japan, and flat from Europe, but up from places in the world with less wealth, including Mexico, Bangladesh, Colombia, and Ghana.

Meanwhile, there has been intensifying competition from other countries — notably Canada, Australia, and the UK, which last year surpassed the United States as a preferred destination, according to a 2024 Keystone survey. Interest in Italy and Spain is also up. Schools in these countries charge less, on average, than colleges in the United States, and generally make it easier for international students to stay and work when they graduate. Far higher proportions of prospective international students also say they feel more welcome and safe in those places than the United States, another Keystone survey of more than 41,000 students worldwide found in April — though two-thirds said their biggest concern about going to college in the US was the cost.

How vulnerable US universities and colleges were to their reliance on international students was laid bare by the pandemic, federal data show; the number of new international enrollments fell by 72 percent in calendar year 2020 alone. The greatest decline was in the Northeast, which saw a drop of nearly 20 percent in total international enrollment, both new and existing. Even before Trump returned to office, more than 40 percent of student visa applications to the United States last year were denied under the Biden administration, up from 15 percent 10 years ago.

The impact on enrollment of the Trump administration’s visa revocations and research funding cuts will take time to know conclusively. NAFSA: Association of International Educators, which represents international education professionals worldwide, projects based on available State Department data that the number of international students will decline by 30 percent to 40 percent this year nationwide with an estimated $7 billion economic hit. The association’s numbers suggest the Massachusetts economy will lose nearly $620 million — more than any other state except for California and New York. (Other estimates are less dire, an indication of how hard it is to track this, and of mistrust in federal data.) Even before the election, however, the enrollment of international students declined in two key nationwide measures. The number in graduate programs dropped by 2 percent last fall, or more than 10,000 enrollees, according to IIE, after years of increases and in spite of pent-up demand that accumulated during Covid. The number of first-time international undergraduates also fell by 5 percent.

“We often think about year-to-year enrollment, and really that’s not where we can see change. It’s about the slow erosion of what America represents,” says Chris Glass, a professor of higher education at Boston College who studies international shifts. “There are actually concerning trends that have been happening for years.”

Massachusetts universities prefer not to talk about this. Northeastern, for example, did not respond to repeated requests to for an interview. Most of the international student administrators at that Brookline conference wouldn’t go on the record. Another school, Gordon College, gave a response that has become typical across higher education. It “decided to pause on providing comment due to the deep sensitivity surrounding international students and ongoing current events,” a spokeswoman wrote.

All of this comes at a time when university enrollment overall is projected to decline further starting next year, as the number of 18-year-old prospective first-year students plummets – a product of the low birth rates coming out of the 2008 Great Recession called the “demographic cliff.” US high school graduates have also started going to college at lower rates, questioning the return on the investment.

A mile and a half from the Wightman Mansion, where university officials huddled to discuss international student enrollment, the smell of Korean barbecue wafted through a neighborhood of boba tea cafes, dumpling dives, ramen shops, and restaurants that sell malatang, a particularly spicy kind of hot pot. Young people balancing book bags and backpacks pedaled on Blue Bikes past storefronts advertising rental apartments. Others fidgeted with their phones while waiting for the 57 bus to Boston University. This bustling enclave in the student-packed Allston neighborhood of Boston is increasingly embracing its identity as a reminder of home for some of the tens of thousands of students who pour into Massachusetts from around the globe to go to college.

Upstairs at Stage Karaoke, a sleek space hung with video screens, LED lights, and lyrics projected in various languages, owner Alex Vichienrat says international students make up most of his business. Private, soundproofed VIP rooms encircle a communal main stage, where karaoke brings cultures together. “This is our melting pot space,” Vichienrat said. Without international students, he added, “this entire neighborhood would be gone.”

These more nuanced contributions of international students are often celebrated by advocates of international education. They’re also easy to see, in places such as Allston.

International students broaden the experience on campuses for everyone, says Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which represents public college and university faculty and staff.

“This is an increasingly interconnected, global world. We want to train our young people to understand the rest of the world,” Page says. Without international students, “you don’t get exposed to other people and their ideas and it can breed a narrowness of thinking. That would be a real loss, if that kind of thing was to stop.”

Less evident are the long-term economic implications of what could happen here if international students stop coming. 

The preponderance of international students in graduate programs isn’t entirely because of universities trying to meet revenue targets. It’s also because Americans are comparatively less well prepared for science, technology, and other fields. US students score lower than those in 36 other countries in math on the Program for International Student Assessment, a test  that measures how well 15-year-olds can solve real-life challenges using skills they’ve learned. Only one in five college-bound American high school students is equipped to pursue a major in science, technology, engineering, or math, the National Science and Technology Council has found.

International students now earn nearly two-thirds of all master’s degrees from US universities in computer science and more than half in engineering. Two-thirds of graduate students in artificial intelligence at American universities are foreign born.

This portends another grim scenario for Massachusetts if the slide continues or accelerates in the number of international student numbers already under way: There will be fewer of them to work in or help start businesses in increasingly competitive industries. More foreign-born than native-born residents in Massachusetts have graduate degrees, and nearly three in 10 workers here in science, technology, engineering, or math come from other countries, according to the American Immigration Council, a nonpartisan nonprofit that supports immigration.

One bright spot — for US universities, if not for students — is that competing destinations have begun to impose their own restrictions. Canada has tightened international student caps. In Australia, the government failed in a proposal to put a limit on international students last year. But it increased visa fees and slowed down processing times. While the UK has a goal of increasing the number of international students, it has restricted most of them from bringing dependents, required them to prove they have enough money to support themselves, and banned them from working until they finish their degrees.

Massachusetts could have an edge with international students who still want to come to the United States but to a place more outwardly accepting of migrants, some experts say. That’s been a concerted approach at BU, for instance, Corriveau said at the April conference in Brookline. “I used to try to sell the US in general, and now I focus more locally,” she said. “I think it’s more important that students understand what it means to be in Boston.” BU even produced a video for prospective international students acknowledging “recent events” but promoting Boston as “remarkably diverse and inclusive.”

Many international students in Massachusetts stuck around for the summer, instead of going home, out of fear they might not be allowed to re-enter the country, university administrators say. Schools including Wentworth helped find them houses and summer jobs, Grek said at the BU meeting. UMass Amherst set up a fund to help them. Bunker Hill Community College canceled summer study abroad programs out of fear that international students wouldn’t be allowed to come back.

Over the longer term, however, the state’s strength in attracting international students makes it more vulnerable than other places in the United States to a continued decline in the number of them, says Chris Slatter, Boston-based managing director at the education consulting firm Huron.

“They rent apartments, they spend in local businesses, they support innovation through research, and in many cases they contribute to the workforce,” Slatter says. “International students are the cornerstone of both institutional strategy and regional economic vitality in Massachusetts.”

If they don’t keep coming, “and, when appropriate stay, and work here, what we’d have is a different economy,” says Tom Dretler, CEO of the Boston-based international student recruitment company Shorelight. “We would be a poorer state.”

Jon Marcus is senior higher education reporter for The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom that covers education in collaboration with news organization including The Washington Post and NPR.

Clarification: This story has been updated to include additional information about the decline in the number of new international students in 2020 across the country and how that relates to the decline of both new and existing international enrollment in the Northeast.