New visa rules disuade international students

College officials across Indiana fear new visa restrictions adopted in response to the 2001 terrorist attacks could cause many foreign students to miss this year's fall semester.\nTo win permission to come to the United States, nearly all foreigners applying for visas will be required to undergo in-person interviews beginning Aug. 1. U.S. embassies around the world are expected to conduct millions of additional interviews of students, business travelers and tourists.\nThe restriction, intended to help authorities track down potential terrorists, could slow the visa process by several weeks to six months.\n"We're very worried about them getting here on time," said Lynn Schoch, an associate director for IU's International Services, told The Indianapolis Star. "We're hoping not to have a serious decline this fall."\nSome educators worry that more international students will choose to study in other countries because of the difficulty of coming to the United States.\n"It's going to make us increasingly uncompetitive with Britain, Canada and Australia, the other three top countries for international education, because they don't require this," said Cyrus Reed, assistant provost for international education at Ball State University.\nIU's enrollment of 3,495 international students in 2002-03 could drop by as much as 10 percent, Schoch said.\nPurdue, with the fourth-largest enrollment of foreign students in the country at 5,015, expects more than a 25 percent drop in new foreign graduate students this fall. About 500 new foreign students likely will enroll, down from 700 last year, said Michael Brzezinski, Purdue's director of international programs.\nAlready, IU and Purdue have heard from several students whose interviews are scheduled after the start of classes.\nEducators fear a drop in international students could erode classroom diversity and cause a loss of tuition revenue.\nIndiana public and private colleges enrolled about 12,875 international students in 2001-02, the latest statewide figure available.\nIndiana educators were somewhat heartened by news last week that the U.S. State Department had told its overseas consular offices to schedule students, professors and researchers first in interviews. The announcement came after four major national college associations asked Secretary of State Colin Powell to postpone or phase in the new in-person interview requirement.