State of the Campus—Present and Future
International student enrollment at Gonzaga has fluctuated over the years. We have seen as high as over 500 international students on campus in the early 2000s. These numbers dwindled gradually throughout 2016 as Canadian Counseling program, Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission (SACM), and Brazil Science Without Border programs, which had been our largest international student sending countries, have gone through drastic changes due to economic, academic, and political changes in their respective countries and reflecting national and international trends. International student enrollment remained low from 2017 to 2020 hovering around 200 students until we started to see an increase thanks to Gonzaga Global partnership. International student enrollment is back above 400 as of fall 2023.
However, due to the changes above, the makeup of international student body has also shifted, with two thirds of students are now from China, Vietnam, and other Confucius Asian countries. Influenced by cultural and linguistic differences, students behave differently than a few years ago. This presents both a challenge and opportunity for Gonzaga to support this new demographic and learn how to best recognize different cultural variations in the classrooms.
Dashboard - international student trends