IT'S the married couple candidates for PhDs who have flown home to Chengdu with their 8-year-old daughter for her grandparents funeral and who are unable to return to their lab. It's the Ivy-league post-doctoral fellow, marooned in Beijing while a US$1.5 million US Government grant collects dust. It's the bio-engineering masters student, home to see her sick mother and stranded for months, her husband still in the US.

Now-infamous stories of student visa hold-ups and hassles have been rehashed in countless newspapers across the globe. In them, Chinese students, home from the US for holidays or on emergency visits, are stranded indefinitely, waiting for visa renewals that will allow them to return to America and complete their degrees - even complete research that is funded by a different arm of the same government now blocking their re-entry.

Lost in a bureaucracy that they described as arbitrary and uncertain, some of the students vented their frustration in small demonstrations outside the US Embassy in Beijing as long ago as August 2002.

Top university administrators and student advocacy groups have taken up their cause in the US, petitioning the administration and lobbying Congress to relax restrictions and address serious kinks they see in post 9/11 reforms.

"If the visa process remains complicated and filled with delays, we risk losing some of our most talented scientists and compromising our country's position at the forefront of technological innovation," Harvard president Larry Summers wrote in an April letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"If other countries feel that we do not welcome their citizens, these countries may feel less inclined to help America."

Sagging enrollment

International student enrollment slowed at US institutions for the first time in years, up only 0.6 per cent in 2002-03, after annual gains of as much as 6.4 per cent in 2000 and 2001, according to an annual survey of more than 2,700 US schools conducted by the Institute of International Education (IIE).

The number of Chinese students enrolled in the US also slowed noticeably, increasing only 2.4 per cent, after 10 per cent growth as recently as 1999. Net enrollment varied widely by country.

The US is still the top overseas destination for Chinese students: 64,757 studied there in 2002-03 - more than ever before - 80 per cent at the graduate level. But after years as the top supplier of foreign brainpower to US schools, China was displaced by India in 2001, which now sends more students to the US than any other nation.

IIE polled educators online and found 59 per cent blamed declining international enrollment on "new visa applications processes".

Plunging applications

But it may be the perception of tougher visa restrictions, rather than the restrictions themselves, that are keeping students away: surveys show not only stagnating enrollment, but diving application rates.

One study, conducted this spring by the Washington-based Council of Graduate Schools, found that 90 per cent of responding US graduate institutions reported a decrease in the number of international applications they received this year - chalking up an across-the-board 32 per cent plunge in applications while 76 per cent of schools reported declines in applications from China.

According to the State Department, student visa applications have fallen 22 per cent since 9/11 - still less than the 31 per cent drop seen in all other types of visa applications, including for business and tourist travel.

In theory, it seems it would be easier than ever to study in the US: fewer people are applying, but the numbers of visas being issued continues, albeit more slowly, to increase.

Perceived hassles

Yet as thousands of graduating Chinese students sit for college exams this month, few seem worried that post-9/11 visa restrictions will trigger their rejection from an American university. Instead, they seem to doubt that the hassle of application is worth it.

The number of Beijing students who signed up for the required TOEFL English-language exam dropped by 65 per cent last year, according to China Radio International, and the nation's leading test-prep centre, New Oriental, has been embroiled in a lawsuit with American testmakers ETS and GMAC, who sued when the centre published copies of their tests in 2001.

"It's quite hard for students to get a visa to go to the States," says a 24-year old Chinese with a business administration degree from a Shanghai university, who did not apply abroad. He questions the payoff, noting that a foreign MBA isn't as unusual or distinguishing as it used to be.

"The word of mouth is out in certain countries about the difficulty of getting a visa. And the perception is having as much of an impact as the delays," IIE vice-president for educational services Peggy Blumenthal told the New York-based weekly, India Abroad.

"It is not just the policies themselves, but the understanding and perception of the policies that have really affected the numbers."

Reasons of decline

International student enrollment has increased every year in the US since 1948, when statistics were first kept. Student origins have fluctuated widely, influenced by political, economic, and diplomatic circumstances as well as by policy.

Petrodollar scholarships, for example, put Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria among the top four countries of origin in 1982. The Asian economic crisis saw enrollment sag in 1994 and 1995, but come roaring back with the late 1990s boom.

This time, sagging application rates are likely defined by a combination of factors: real restrictions; perceived restrictions and hassles; rising anti-Americanism, among those who oppose its policies or simply don't feel welcome; fear of terror; and, notably, competition for students.

British, Australian and Canadian universities have stepped up recruiting - in one case in India, a "Study in the UK" billboard was erected directly across the street from the US consulate.

Lingering cost

International enrollment accordingly surged 16.5 per cent in Australia in 2002, and saw a 25 per cent increase among Chinese students the following year, according to figures provided The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times. The UK saw a 36 per cent increase in Chinese students - 12 times the increase seen that year in the US

Should these trends continue, the US has a lot to lose. Nearly half of all NIH scientific and medical workers are from overseas and 40 per cent of physical sciences PhDs are awarded to foreign nationals. US universities rely on foreign graduate students for research and as a source of low-wage teaching labour. And, international students themselves spend money, contributing nearly US$12 billion to the US economy in 2003. According to the US Department of Commerce, higher education is the country's fifth largest service sector export.

The horror stories of visa-related hassles are real. Especially during the summer of 2002, as new policies were crafted and introduced, student applicants experienced significant delays and received little guidance.

"People aren't going to take that for very long, and when the word gets out to others, they will start going elsewhere," Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Congress this spring. "This hurts us. It is not serving our interests. And we really do have to work on it."

Perfected reforms have yet to stop the migration but, for now, stores of goodwill persist, reminiscent of a more innocent time. A 16-year-old schoolgirl, Mengfei Pan, reports that two of her classmates have the chance to study for a year in Germany and Norway. "But," she writes, "America would be better from what they said. Because America is a developed country and has many famous universities. I believe life there is better than here. It doesn't mean that I don't love my country. I just hope I can get a chance to go there to further my study and get a Bachelor's. Perhaps it will be good for my career."