US reputation as safe destination for overseas students dramatically falling, survey finds

A recent survey suggests that students no longer find the USA a welcoming place to study, while the UK retained its spot as the most welcoming.

Canadian educational technology company ApplyBoard polled 400 recruitment professionals on student trends and suggested that the results were partially due to the negative perception of current educational policy in the USA.

According to ApplyBoard, “only 50% of survey respondents agreed the US was an open, safe, and welcoming destination for international students” in its most recent survey in fall 2025, which is a 24% drop from spring of this year.

The net perception rating of the USA has fallen from +22% to -5% in the last year

It suggested that this steep decline is due to the Trump administration’s “downsizing of the Department of Education”, as well as the State Department revoking 6,000 student visas earlier this year.

The mass revocation of visas was justified by the State Department as being due to “violations of US law and overstays”, but this also included “support for terrorism”, with some students targeted for their support for Palestine.

The Trump administration has overseen a negative swing in global US perception since taking office, with a survey from the Alliance of Democracies Foundation in May finding that the net perception rating of the USA has fallen from +22% to -5% in the last year.

This general negative perception may have also played a part in fewer students seeing the US as welcoming.

The UK has mostly retained its stability as the most positively viewed location for students to study

While there may be a more globally polarised environment in terms of the perception of many countries for studying abroad – the UK and Germany also had more respondents say they strongly disagreed that they are ‘welcoming’– the USA was an outlier, with such a large drop in perception.

Comparatively, the UK has mostly retained its stability as the most positively viewed location for students to study, seeing only a slight drop from 88.1% to 86.9% in those calling it welcoming from spring to fall this year.

Student visa demand in the second quarter of 2025 for the UK has also been 16% higher than it was in the same period in 2024.