Foreign Students Spend a Billion Dollars in Georgia Each Year. That Run Could be Coming to an End

For the second straight year in 2024-25, foreign students spent more than a billion dollars on tuition in Georgia, but that run could be in jeopardy as U.S. consulates abroad issue fewer student visas. 

Education has long been an impactful service export for the state, but it eclipsed $1 billion for the first time in the 2023-24 Open Doors Report, issued each November on a one-year lag by the Institute of International Education. 

On the surface, the 2024-25 edition told a story of resilience amid increasing concerns that President Trump’s strident stance on immigration enforcement at home, travel bans affecting many countries and cuts to national research funding. 

Foreign student enrollment grew 5 percent overall in the U.S., with India again picking up the slack as the top sender after a Chinese pullback (the two countries still account for half of all international students enrolled in the U.S.). 

Georgia was behind the pace at 2.5 percent growth, putting it at No. 13 among states for attracting students. International student tuition spending in the state was flat at $1.05 billion, and the top five places of origin — India (26.7 percent), China (24.4 percent), South Korea (6 percent), Nigeria (4.1 percent) and Taiwan (2.1 percent)— stayed fixed in that order, with roughly the same makeup. 

But the honeymoon could be over, The Chronicle of Higher Education pointed out in reporting this March, based on an analysis of State Department data on visa issuances.

F-1 student visas, the publication reported, were down 36 percent for May-August 2025. That’s 97,000 fewer visas than the previous year, according to the latest data available, which would constitute an 8 percent nationwide drop in enrollment based on the 1.2 million students who came to the U.S. in 2024-25. 

The decline is partly attributed to a State Department decision to pause visa processing in June to institute the vetting of applicants’ social media accounts.

Some of the steepest enrollment declines hit some of Georgia’s — and the U.S.’s — top countries. India visas issued fell by 62 percent, China by 34 percent and Nigeria by 70 percent. Vietnam, also seen as a strong alternative to China, saw issuances drop by 25 percent. 

The effects could take some time to bite, as Chronicle reporter Karin Fischer put it in her Latitudes newsletter: 

The real impact might not be felt for another year or two. The post-pandemic surge is still working its way through colleges, meaning that larger previous cohorts of students are masking the impact of declines in new students, keeping overall international enrollments stable. For now.

While foreign students make up only 6 percent of overall U.S., they have an outsized impact on the financial health of universities, given their elevated out-of-state (and international) tuition rates. 

NAFSA’s fall 2025 report predicted an even steeper new enrollment decline of 17 percent and a loss of $1.1 billion in spending across the U.S. as the stock of students still here overall drops by about a percentage point overall.

That could translate to $27.1 million in foregone revenue in Georgia, where international education supports more than 9,148 jobs. See NAFSA’s Georgia impact report | See the full fall snapshot report

Workforce effects from a drop could also be significant, as more than half of foreign students are participating in STEM programs where workers are increasingly hard to find. Nearly 300,000 graduates are now working on student visas for U.S. companies under an Optional Practical Training, or OPT, designation. The option has grown in popularity, rising 21 percent last year as traditional employment visa pathways dried up. 

More than half of U.S. institutions surveyed by NAFSA and its partners reported drops in international student enrollment in fall 2025.

Schools with the highest proportions of foreign students would be hit hardest by any changes. In Georgia, the top five are: 

• Georgia Institute of Technology — 8,756 international students
• Georgia State University — 4,222
• Savannah College of Art and Design — 3,756 
• Emory University — 3,397
• University of Georgia — 3,061

These five institutions attract 80 percent of the international students in Georgia. 

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