Adjusting for that decline, applications by school leavers were only 1% lower than last year, when a bumper crop dashed off to university to avoid the fee increase.
But it's been a rocky road lately: After two quarters of double-digit revenue declines, application sales were down 3% to $609 million in the first quarter.
Declining applications are typically followed by more hiring, but job gains have slowed in recent months.
A fourth consecutive week of declining applications for mortgages further suggested a cooling in the housing market.
And even in states like Pennsylvania, where the number of high school graduates is declining, applications to public universities are growing.
Nonetheless, the issue of declining applications, Mr. Safir said, had little to do with the department's ability to fill its ranks.
But it was struggling with budget deficits and declining applications, partly because Jews were no longer restricted in their choice of colleges.
Faced with rising student debt and declining applications to law schools, a task force of the American Bar Association is calling for sweeping changes in legal education, including training people without law degrees to provide limited legal services and opening the bar to those who have not completed four years of college and three years of law school.
Alejandro Mayorkas, director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the fee increase was necessary because declining applications for documents in the past two years had lowered revenues and left his agency — which is 90 percent financed by fees — with a budget shortfall of about $200 million for the coming fiscal year.
The decline in application for unemployment benefits has been matched by a surge in hiring.
The insurer may decline your application or offer you a policy with no exclusions, but with the premium raised or "loaded" to reflect the increase risk associated with your health record.
