I just went to a small alumni event from my university yesterday and spoke to some of the "development" people. One of the initiatives the university has had in the last 4-5 years has been increasing the undergrad enrollment by ~30% (very controversial with the alumni). Part of that strategy it to greatly increase foreign undergrad enrollment. The people from the university said that in the last couple of years the university endowment has down better than many of its "peer institutions", in large part due to the full tuition paying international students. In contrast to the NYT story, it seems that many of the international students I've heard about are actually being paid for by their governments, although a lot are just from (relatively) rich families as well.
