Foreign students look to Canada and Australia after Trump visa ban

Since President Donald Trump’s culling on foreign student visas to US universities on May 27th, young people from Gulf countries are turning elsewhere for tertiary education, namely Canada and Australia. According to The National, Gulf students are increasingly losing faith in an American education, and President Trump’s hardline exemptions have ensured they are looking at alternative international options, namely more liberal universities.

Statistics for the decrease in Arab students studying at US universities shows numbers of students from the UAE nearly halving between 2015 and 2023, whilst the number of Saudi students falling from 61,287 to 15,989. Madhav Juneja, director and country manager for the UAE and MENA region for Crimson Education, said students were “applying to more places, just so they’ve got ample choices depending on how things play out”.

Last week, the US State Department instructed consulates to cease interviews for students applying for visas to study there, in a bid to extend vetting of applicants’ social media accounts. This came after a report that over 1,000 international students’ visas were cancelled due to their involvement in pro-Palestine protests at American universities, notably Harvard.

The National