The Biden administration on Tuesday said it was easing travel restrictions on Chinese and other international students into the US this autumn, a change that could provide financial help to some colleges whose enrollments declined during the coronavirus pandemic.

The US state department said in a statement it is expanding its national interest exemptions to cover students and academics around the world starting on August 1 after it made the change in March for European students.

Reuters first reported the planned announcement for Chinese students, the largest number of international students in the US. About 35 per cent of international students in the 2019-20 school year were from China, according to the International Education Exchange (IEE), nearly twice as high as the second highest, India.

The government has barred most non-US citizens who have been in China, Brazil, South Africa, Iran and most of Europe within the prior two weeks. Now students from all those countries will be eligible to enter the US for autumn classes. In the 2019-20 academic year 372,000 Chinese nationals attended universities and colleges in the US, the IEE said in a November 2020 report.