Foreign Students Sour on America, Jeopardizing a $39 Billion Industry
They provide critical revenue to U.S. universities. But the administration’s immigration crackdown has them going elsewhere.
Last May, Luis Carlos Soldevilla graduated with one of the best grade point averages in his Mexico City high school. For his senior project, he even tackled Goldbach’s conjecture, a famous number theory problem. Soldevilla considered attending Boston University and the University of Washington, both of which had accepted him. He also had fond memories of the University of California, Berkeley, where during the summer of 2016 he took a computer science course.
But instead of enrolling at a U.S. school, Soldevilla started this fall at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, where he’s pursuing a double major in computer science and mathematics. Why did he pick the Canadian school over those big American names?
“A very important factor of my decision was that there was no Trump,” the 19-year-old said.