At a time when the United States can ill afford a further tarnishing of its international reputation, significantly fewer foreign students -- who typically return home to spread American goodwill -- will seek MBAs this fall in Georgia and across the nation.

Prestigious B-schools, like the one at the University of Chicago, and up-and-coming programs, like the University of Georgia's, reported last week receiving nearly one-third fewer applications for the upcoming school year than they received in 2002.

Foreign students comprise much of the dropoff. Their reasons for avoiding the United States are manifold: a still-anemic global economy; anti-U.S. sentiment; competition from foreign MBA programs; U.S. employers' reluctance to hire foreigners; a dip in the 25-34-year-old recruitment pool; weak local currencies, which drive up the cost of dollar-denominated MBAs; the war in Iraq.

But students, college administrators and education officials point to the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 crackdown on terrorism and, in particular, a more tangled visa issuance policy as perhaps the main reason foreign students are staying away this fall.

"Visas are a big deal," said Karen Loch, a department director at Georgia State's Robinson College of Business. "The length of time required to secure the visa makes it more difficult and, in some cases, discourages students."

One-third of GSU's 2,500 business school students hail from overseas, with China, India and Taiwan sending the most students to the downtown Atlanta campus. In all, 38 countries are represented at Robinson College.

This time last year, GSU had accepted roughly 240 international students into its MBA program. (Students don't always attend the school that accepts them.) This year, as of last week, only 182 had been accepted.

Loch and colleague Diane Fennig recently recounted several visa horror stories.

Fennig, director of Graduate Student and Alumni Services, told of an Indian student who had his visa denied last month. Fennig also mentioned a Chinese woman who returned home July 4 due to a family emergency. Her return to the United States was put on hold by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. She's now deferring enrollment until January.

"All of them are having a very difficult time just getting out of their country," Fennig said. "These people have dotted all their i's and crossed all their t's and done everything right, and then they go for their [embassy] interviews and are told 'no.' I don't know that they could have done anything differently."

Particularly harrowing to school administrators is the case of the Tunisian graduate who told Loch that his friends were applying to business schools in Canada instead of the United States.

"He said it would take too long and be too difficult" to get a U.S. visa, Loch recounted.

GSU's foreign student enrollment is mirrored nationwide. International students comprise 31.7 percent of all full-time MBA slots in this country, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

Yet business schools' woes can't solely be attributed to the paucity of foreign students. David Wilson, president of the Graduate Management Admission Council, the not-for-profit education group that sponsors the Graduate Management Admission Test, which is compulsory for business school entrants, wrote recently that "a clear majority of schools in our survey are reporting decreases in application volume."

Last year, a record 126,108 students the world over had taken the GMAT through June 2002. This year through June, only 108,052 students had sat for the grueling test.

And 35,593 foreigners took the GMAT this year, down from 43,253 last year.

"There's a lot of continuing uncertainty regarding the student visa process," said Dan LeClair, director of the business schools association's Knowledge Services. "Whenever you have something that's a little less than transparent, students tend to hedge their bets. They don't want to be caught in a situation where they're not able to begin their education right away."

MBA students, like most foreign students from grade school on up, enter the United States on an F-1 visa. On Aug. 1, the Bush administration mandated that virtually every F-1 visa applicant be interviewed, face to face, by a consular official at a U.S. Embassy.

Number screened falls

Scheduling interviews is time-consuming. So, too, is the White House's recent insistence that Washington-based intelligence officials -- not on-the-ground consular officials -- will ultimately decide if a foreign student receives a visa.

Two years ago, the State Department received 381,000 F-1 visa applications and refused 23 percent of them. Last year, U.S. embassies received 323,000 applications, refusing 27 percent.

Stuart Patt, a State Department spokesman, said 98 percent of the security reviews are completed within three weeks.

"We are not in any way trying to discourage foreign students coming to the United States," Patt said. "We hope they will continue to come. . . . But our national security concerns require us to be very cautious about our visa issuing process."

Cognizant of the crackdown, and fully aware that fewer U.S. companies are hiring students who stay on in the United States, many business schools decided this year to limit the number of slots available to international students.

Foreign students filled almost a third of UGA's 170 full-time MBA slots last year. This year, UGA will restrict international enrollment to 25 percent. Anne Cooper, though, expects even fewer foreigners at Georgia's flagship university.

"With the difficulty in international students getting jobs, we consciously made a decision that we were not going to bring in as many this year as we had last year," said Cooper, admissions director for Terry College of Business' full-time MBA program.

"It's a tremendous investment for them, and we felt it would be a bit dishonest, if not certainly selfish, on our part if we make promises we can't live up to."

UPS ends aid program

An MBA can cost nearly $50,000 a year -- serious money, particularly for Third World students. So, many foreigners expect to work in the United States at least a few years after graduation to help pay college bills. U.S. companies are required to sponsor a foreign employee's work visa, a costly endeavor that can run upward of $10,000.

Atlanta-based United Parcel Service, with a track record of hiring foreign UGA, Georgia State and Georgia Tech business grads, canceled its visa sponsorship program in December 2001.

"One reason is that it's expensive," said UPS spokeswoman Peggy Gardner. "But the bigger reason is that the economy has changed, and the quality of [U.S.] people looking for jobs has increased. So, with very few exceptions, it really became unnecessary to look outside the U.S. work force."

Not every MBA school will welcome fewer foreigners this year. Georgia Tech made a concerted -- and well-funded -- effort to attract more international students. Its DuPree College of Management will have 10 graduate assistant positions available to foreign students this year, up from one last year. Each student will earn a $6,000 annual stipend and a reduction in tuition.

Twenty percent of Tech's MBA students came from outside America last year. This year, at least one in four students will have home addresses outside the United States. Ann Johnston Scott, director of graduate programs at the DuPree College, said diversity is worth the expense.

International students "bring a different perspective [which] is a benefit to us to have -- a fairly broad and diverse group of students in the class," she said. "It's an education for students to learn from [different] cultures."

And it helps melt frosty international relations.

"Students who come to the States and develop friendships and understand more about how the U.S. system works will be our better friends," said GSU's Loch. "A very logical rationale explains why the visa bar was raised. But if, as a result of that, we become more insular, in the long run we hurt ourselves."