While there has been a constant decline against the Euro over a significant time span, in just the last year, the dollar has fallen significantly against the Chinese Yuan, the Russian Ruble, The Indian Rupee and several other currencies from less developed nations.
While the changes aren't as obvious as the rising gas prices, they are having an effect on students and potential students here at Virginia Tech.
Junior mechanical engineering major Tory Smith has spent this summer studying and doing research in Darmstadt, Germany. He has certainly felt the pain of the weak dollar in his back pocket.
"The place where I am getting squeezed by the exchange rates is on travel," said Smith. "The trains here are pretty expensive. Gasoline, if adjusted to dollars/gallon, is running about $9 or $10 right now. The dollar is pretty lame."
While the pocketbook pinch might seem to hurt study abroad students, people are still participating in the programs in increasing numbers.
"The overall picture is that over the past three years, the number of students doing study abroad for credit has gone up," said Steven Duke, assistant program director of education abroad at Virginia Tech.
Duke said that while it is getting more expensive to study abroad, students are getting more encouragement from their departments, their parents and the education abroad office to take part in the experience.
Duke also explained that the cost of study abroad programs is not a linear function of exchange rates. Many programs offer students the possibility of paying Tech tuition, and compared with the big picture of college expenses, the exchange rate has only a minimal affect on those students.
In addition, students may be acting with rational foresight with regards to exchange rates. Basic macroeconomics would suggest that if students expect that the exchange rates will be worse in the years to come, they would choose to go sooner rather than later.
The number of students continuing to study abroad seems to support this idea.
The exchange rates have also affected prospective international students to U.S. colleges and universities.
According to the Institute of International Education, the international student enrollment in the US has increased to 582,984 from 547,867 since 2001. Those numbers include a drop off after Sept. 11, but a particularly large increase in enrollment with the fall of the dollar between 2006 and 2007.
According to the Boston Globe, the large number of foreign students who went to U.S. colleges in 2007 was the highest in the past five years.
In 2002, there were more restrictions on student visas and a possible growing anti-American sentiment in other countries that also caused enrollments to decline.
Some admissions officers question the exchange rate's role in bringing students. According to the Boston Globe, university financial packages make money less of an issue in the decision to study in the United States.
At Tech, most of the increased enrollment has been among graduate students in engineering and the sciences, where many students are fully funded.
According to numbers from the Cranwell International Center, since 2002, the international student population has increased to 2,151 from 2,088. While graduate international student enrollment has increased by 321, undergraduate enrollment has actually decreased by about 250, suggesting that the increases in undergraduate tuition may be outweighing the benefit of the exchange rate.
International student enrollment has not been uniformly increasing. Consistent with the report from the IIE, enrollment has fluctuated over the last five years as a host of other factors have been affecting international students.
However, in the last year, when the dollar has lost the most significant more than 20 percent against the Chinese Yuan, Chinese student enrollment has increased by 60 students, making China the most represented foreign country at Virginia Tech.
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