According to the most recent data from the Institute of International Education, the trend of international students enrolling at two-year institutions is increasing at a rate of nearly 20 percent during the course of four years. Whether a community college is engaged in active international student enrollment or not, most institutions attribute increases in international student enrollment to the vast amount of information now available via the Internet. Since approximately 90 percent of America s 1,200 community colleges have their own Web site addresses, institutions are inundated daily with requests for information. Some colleges even have areas of their Web site that are specifically addressed to international students. This proliferation of information is helping prospective inter-national students become aware of what exactly community colleges are, in addition to the variety of programs they offer.
Community colleges recruit international students for two main reasons.
First, there are obvious financial benefits to be gained from enrolling international students. More importantly, though, most colleges try to attract international students to their campuses to foster a diversified student population. This is particularly true for colleges in suburban and rural areas and in the Midwest, which generally have more homogeneous student populations. Colleges on the west and east coasts and in the border states vary in their international recruitment practices. It might be assumed that due to their locations, they don t need active international recruiting programs.