BUZZ
African student rejected 64 percent of the time, report says
President Donald Trump’s administration rejected 35 percent of student visa requests this school year, a new report finds.
A group called Shorelight released a report this month that details its findings when it comes to fall 2025 student visa data. Shorelight makes money by helping foreigners navigate the student visa system, and thus has an incentive to encourage lax immigration rules.
The group said there is a trend of “students from certain regions —particularly the Global South, and Africa in particular — fac[ing] disproportionately high visa denial rates compared to peers from other parts of the world.”
The report found:
Overall, F-1 student visa refusal rates have increased significantly over the past decade
and remain elevated. From 2015 through 2020, refusal rates rose steadily across many regions.Although refusal rates appeared to stabilize in 2023 and 2024, the latest data from 2025 indicates a renewed upward trend.
In 2025, Africa had the highest refusal rate, with 64% of F-1 student visa applications being rejected. However, this continent always had the highest rate going back to 2015, under Obama, Trump, and Biden.
Refusal rates continued to trend upward in both Africa and Asia under the Biden administration, although this coincided with COVID lockdowns.
Shorelight criticized the high refusal rates in some countries, including India:
With student visa refusals in India climbing up to 60%, we’re not just denying students, we’re cutting off a critical talent pipeline for U.S. universities, employers, and the economy.
Without expanding opportunities in other high-growth regions, we’re creating a self-inflicted talent shortage. In a global race for skilled workers, the U.S. cannot afford to turn away the very students who fuel our research, workforce, and competitiveness.
Inside Higher Ed noted that the Trump administration has sought to make it harder for foreigners to come here.
The research tracks with other reports finding lower numbers of foreigners studying in the country.
There are 20 percent fewer foreign students in the United States this school year, the New York Times reported.
A higher education expert previously told The Fix this is a positive sign and that only a handful of cities reap most of the economic benefits of more foreign students. However, he wants to see concrete changes that cannot be undone by future presidents.
“Fewer foreign students are coming not just to the U.S., but to the West more broadly,” Jared Gould told The Fix. He is the managing editor of Minding the Campus, an education commentary website run by the National Association of Scholars.
“But unfortunately, this trend is driven largely by rhetoric coming out of the White House—and what makes it particularly unfortunate is that this rhetoric is rarely matched by concrete policy,” Gould said last October.
