The number of international students at Cornell from Latin American countries has declined sharply since the mid-1990s, according to a 2010-11 report from Cornell’s International Students and Scholars Office. While about 240 students enrolled in the University from Latin American in the late 1990s and 2000s, only 186 attended in 2011 — a decline of almost 23 percent.

The decrease is likely caused by economic conditions in Latin America and the rising cost of tuition, said Brendan O’Brien, director of the ISSO. The change coincides with a record high in international student enrollment, who now make up 17.5 percent of the total student body.

O’Brien cited insufficient financial aid as a possible cause of the decreasing number of international students from Latin America.

“Although Cornell has increased the amount of financial aid available for undergraduates, we haven’t been able to meet the full need of all international undergraduates,” O’Brien said. “So it may be hard for families to afford a Cornell education.”

Economic conditions in some Latin American relative to other countries may contribute to the declining representation of the region at Cornell, said David Angeles ’13, a student from Mexico.

“Whereas countries like India and China are experiencing an economic boom that’s enabling many middle class families to send their children abroad, Latin America is by and large not experiencing such a boom,” Angeles said. “We therefore have a smaller economic class that’s able to fund their own students to go abroad.”

In addition, “a number of graduate students in the past had been funded by various governments from countries in Latin America, and those funds may be decreasing,” O’Brien said. 

Because of this, the numbers of Latin American graduate and undergraduate students has decreased, O’Brien said.

For students from Mexico, Cornell previously had a separate pool of financial aid designated to Canadian and Mexican students. However, this pool was eliminated in the fall of 2008. Mexican and Canadian students are now awarded financial aid in the same pool as all other international students.

“We’re hopeful that the number of Mexicans will not decrease, but there’s a possibility that it will,” O’Brien said.

Although the percentage of international students from Latin America has been decreasing in recent years, the population of Latino students — U.S. citizens from Hispanic or Latino backgrounds — is at an all time high, said Jason Locke, director of the Undergraduate Admissions Office.

Still, Angeles, the student from Mexio, lamented the decrease in students attending Cornell from Latin America, saying it may have an adverse impact on the University’s diversity.

“Bringing more Latin American students to Cornell would enable us to have a different take, maybe even a better take, on some of the problems facing Cornell right now,” Angeles said. “I think it’s absolutely in the interest of Cornell to bring more international students here, and especially Latin American students, who are a good fit for Cornell.”

Angeles added that bringing Latin American students to Cornell would serve a public good, as many of these alumni return to help their countries.

“Educating any Latin Americans will, in the future, prove to be beneficial to the region as we go on to improve the academic, social and economic circumstances in our own countries,” Angeles said.

Pedro Pedroza ’12, a student from Mexico, also said the University stood to benefit from increasing the number of Latin American students in attendance.

“The benefits it has for the Cornell community are apparent when you have people from different backgrounds who bring not just their cultures, but different perspectives,” Pedroza said. “To know that people like me are going to be more and more rare is really unsettling at such a prestigious University.”

O’Brien also stressed the importance of having students at Cornell from many cultures and regions, and the impact this diversity has on the rest of the community.

“Cornell is definitely a much richer place when we have people from all over the world,” O’Brien said. “If the numbers of students from a certain country are going down, that does hurt the University as a whole.”