SEVIS DATA & COVID

Abstract

SEVIS by the Numbers data are readily available, but rarely used. Coming from visa information, the data are reliable and more up-to-date than other commonly used data sources. This data analysis from January and September 2020 shows the impact of COVID on international student numbers in the US in terms of multiple comparative variables.

Important Links

• Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) https://www.ice.gov/sevis

• Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) https://www.ice.gov/sevis/overview

• SEVIS Data Mapping Tool https://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/sevis-data-mapping-tool

• SEVIS Data Accessible Page https://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/sevis-by-the-numbers/sevis-by-the-numbers-data

Gathering Data

• Unfortunately, SEVIS does not have a convenient way to export their data. Instead, it is presented in webpage. See March 2021 data here for example. 

• It is necessary to highlight and copy the entire table from the webpage. 

• Paste the data into a spreadsheet. 

• Examine the data to ensure that it copied well. For example, sometimes Trinidad and Tobago occupies two rows with “Trinidad and” in one and “Tobago” in the other. These are easy to locate due to the entire row of data being blank. They are also easy to correct.

• Some countries do not have regions associated with them – e.g. “Stateless” and “South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands” – which need to be handled in some way. They can either be removed from the data-set or given their own category such as “other”

• If doing multiple time frames, create a column with the date. For example, the March 2021 data could be called Mar 2021 for all cells in the table. 

• Repeat above with other time-frames and add to a master table with all the data. 

• Finally, put your Excel pivot table and chart abilities to work to look at the data from different perspectives. 

Publicly Available Variables (Column Headers)

Country of Citizenship, Continent, Region, # of Active Students, Male, Female, ASSOCIATE, BACHELOR'S, DOCTORATE, FLIGHT TRAINING, HIGH SCHOOL, LANGUAGE TRAINING, MASTER'S, OTHER, OTHER VOCATIONAL SCHOOL, PRIMARY, SECONDARY, and all individual US states and territories

Closing Thoughts and Further Discussion

I want to share this information with colleagues and those interested to see where SEVIS data can take us as a field. Often, the field relies on IIE Open Doors data and analyses, but these data rely on surveys which take time resulting in information that is a year old at best. SEVIS data is much more up-to-date and relies on SEVP data gleaned from visas and I-20s. SEVP offers quite a bit of data online, but through a FIOA request, we could get much more. I'd like to meet like-minded individuals interested in working more in-depth with SEVIS data. There is a ton we can learn from this relatively untapped resource.