Among groups singing the letter were the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, Association of American Universities, Council of Graduate Schools, Council of Christian Colleges and Universities and the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students.

More than 30 groups signed on to the letter, including the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the American Council on Education, the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students, and the Council of Graduate Schools.

Economic and workforce-related factors are driving Indian graduate students to study in the U.S., said Hironao Okahana, associate vice president of research and policy analysis at the Council of Graduate Schools.

Full-time enrollment is down across master’s and doctoral programs in the arts and humanities, education and social sciences, according to an October report by the Council of Graduate Schools. Over the last five years, online and part-time degrees have gained ground in those fields, the data show.

While I can understand the sentiment behind the term “alt-ac” (having used the phrase myself as I was beginning to explore the field), it all too often becomes  shorthand for university staff jobs that are taken in desperation, the plan B (or Q or Z) that people can fall back on when the tenure track doesn’t work out. This is hardly a new critique of the term and the Council of Graduate Schools offers some other possible phrasing for these career pathways here.

The brief also says that international students bolster US academic programs. It quotes a February 2019 survey from The Council of Graduate Schools, which revealed that the new international enrollment declined through the previous two fall admission cycles.

The number of Chinese students in the U.S. has not declined yet: the IIE data show a 2 percent gain in Chinese undergraduate students and a 4 percent gain in Chinese graduate students from fall 2017 to fall 2018, while data from the Council of Graduate Schools found that the number of new Chinese students at American graduate schools did not change from fall 2017 to fall 2018.

The trend continued for graduate students, who have declined in rates of both application and enrollment for two consecutive years, according to a Council of Graduate Schools report released in February.

Advanced degrees have long been associated with better career prospects and higher earnings. Women seem to be especially aware of that, as the Council of Graduate Schools/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees noted that, in the fall of 2017, the majority of first-time graduate students at all levels were women. Among master’s degree candidates that fall, 59 percent were female while 53.5 percent of doctoral candidates were women.

According to a Council of Graduate Schools survey of more than 240 institutions, international graduate student applications fell by four percent between the fall of 2017 and the fall of 2018.  While the total number of international students in the U.S. grew last year to a total of over 1 million, new student enrollment declined by over six percent over the same period.