Patrioct Act at U of I

"...While some Illinois universities believe the USA Patriot Act has caused a decline in international student enrollment, there has been no evidence of such an effect at this University...", reported the Daily Illini today. In the print edition, the paper has a chart taken from Univ. of Illinois Office of International Student Affairs. It doesn't need much time to figure out that this news is at best misleading, if not lying. The chart says at Fall '99 the number of international students was 3,454; Fall '00 3,798; Fall '01 4,287; Fall '02 4,555; and Fall '03 4,769. That's it. No single word about the actual growth. In fact, from Fall '99 to Fall '00 the rate was 10%. The next year the rate grew to 13%. Then came the Patriot Act. Unsurprisingly, the rate at Fall '02 was down to 6.25% and even worse at Fall '03: 4.6%.