Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business has suffered a 6 per cent fall in applications for its MBA course in large part because anti-immigrant rhetoric and US-China trade tensions are driving foreign students away from top US universities.
The California university, which ranked number one in the 2019 Financial Times global MBA survey, is the latest to admit a decline in interest for the two-year full-time course that started this month. All of the top 10 US schools on the FT’s list have now suffered application declines in the last two years.
The tightening of US visa rules for overseas students in recent years has discouraged many of those who would like to work locally after graduation. MBA programme heads fear that this has been made worse by the trade battle with China, one of the biggest sources of overseas students for US business schools.