Are students in the U.S. looking to escape president-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming term?
According to search patterns on Studyportals, a global platform that helps students find and compare academic programs, the answer is potentially yes. In the wake of Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, the company saw a significant spike in student interest in pursuing a degree at universities outside of the country.
The number of searches by U.S. students for foreign bachelor’s and master’s programs—normally averaging around 2,000 daily—shot up to nearly 11,000 after the election, reflecting a wave of interest in universities across the U.K., Canada, Germany, and Ireland.
“In the previous Trump presidency, we saw similar trends,” said Studyportals CEO Edwin van Rest. “However, the magnitude of the spike we have not seen before.”
This jump in interest in studying overseas occurs amid a broader decline in confidence in U.S. higher education. According to analytics and advisory company Gallup, nearly as many U.S. adults have little or no confidence in higher education as those who have high confidence. In contrast, when Gallup first measured confidence in higher education in 2015, 57% had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence, compared with 10% who had little or none.
Many in the higher education sector expect a second Trump presidency to target what Republicans see as progressive ideology at universities. Indeed, according to Gallup, confidence in higher education has fallen in all key subgroups of the U.S. population over the past twenty years, but more so among Republicans.
Today, only 20% of Republicans have confidence in higher education, and 50% have little or no confidence.
“Americans who lack confidence in higher education today say their concerns lie in colleges pushing political agendas, not teaching relevant skills, and being overly expensive,” Gallup notes in its research.
In addition to waning public confidence in colleges, recent resignations of Ivy League leaders and scrutiny of university protest responses have left institutions vulnerable. Trump has said that, if elected, he would crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses and expel student demonstrators. At the start of this year’s fall term, campus protests against the war in Gaza continued.
Whether a rise in student search interest in universities overseas translates into an increase in enrollments remains to be seen. Compared with students from countries such as China and India, American students study abroad at comparatively lower levels. In the 2021-2022 academic year, 188,753 U.S. students studied abroad, according to data from the Institute of International Education.
However, considering the potential for higher education to be a focus during Trump’s second term, and generally lower tuition fees at universities overseas, some believe more American students will be incentivized to study abroad.
“On the basis of this demand, growth is likely,” says Studyportals’ van Rest. “The magnitude is hard to predict at this stage. The spike is huge, but we have yet to see to what extent interest persists.”