BEIJING – A sharp decline in the number of visas the American government issues to students from China is causing consternation on both sides of the Pacific.

The difficulty in obtaining a visa for study in America is prompting a growing number of Chinese to seek degrees in England and Australia. The trend has become so pronounced that the presidents of some Ivy League universities are making dire predictions that it could eventually send American higher education into decline, particularly in the sciences. Businesses are making similar complaints about the difficulties of getting visas for business travel to America by Chinese businessmen.

According to a spokesman for the American embassy in Beijing, American diplomats in China granted approximately 21,000 student visas in 2001, 19,000 in 2002, and 16,000 in 2003.The outbreak of sudden acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in the spring of 2003 contributed to that year’s decline.

As classes get under way at many American universities this week, some foreign students are celebrating while others despair. Many young people have found that the biggest hurdle is not getting into a school; it’s getting a visa to enter America.

“The most important thing is not the school, not the offer. It’s the visa situation. That thing will break your dream at the last minute,” said one frustrated visa applicant, Gu Ning, 23.

Since May, Mr. Gu, who has been admitted to a graduate program in law at Indiana University, has met with American consular officers four times to seek a student visa. Each time he was rejected.

“After my first time, I was really angry,” Mr. Gu said. “I think it’s unfair,” he added.

Mr. Gu, who got a bachelor’s degree this year from one of China’s most prestigious schools, Tsinghua University, said he was given no clear reason for the denial. He said three of his friends were granted visas, while he and another student were turned down.

“There’s no standard,” Mr. Gu said.

Mr. Gu said he has been admitted to the University of Birmingham in England and is on the verge of giving up on his quest to study in America. “If there’s no action, next month I will be in Britain,” he said in an interview late last month.

A 22-year-old woman emerging from the American Embassy’s visa section told a similar story. She said she was giving up after being rejected four times in a little over a year.

“It’s no use,” said the woman, as she clutched forms showing that she was admitted to master’s degree program in public policy that began August 30 at a major public university on the East Coast. She asked that the school not be mentioned and that she be identified only by her English name, Kelly.

Kelly said she wants to use her degree to help rural areas in China achieve some of the prosperity that has swept the coastal cities. “It’s my honest thought to come back and work with Chinese farmers,” she said.

Kelly, who wore a pinstriped white business suit for the interview, said the visa officer rejected her before she even got a chance to explain what she wanted to study and why. “He stamped the rejection stamp first,” she said. Kelly said the officer doubted that she would return to China, particularly after her family paid more than $50,000 for two years of study in America.

Kelly said the experience has changed her view of America. “Some of my friends told me that the U.S. is a reasonable and flexible country, but now that they won’t let me in, I find the U.S. to be an unreasonable government,” she said.

Foreign students have been voicing similar complaints for years, but in the last few months, a number of high-pro file American academics have joined the chorus. The business community has also weighed in, stepping up pressure on the Bush administration for a more lenient visa policy.

In February, a coalition of American higher-education groups said 60% of their member institutions had reported a decline in graduate-school applications from abroad. Some university presidents blame visa delays and visa denials for the decrease.

“If the visa process remains complicated and filled with delays, we risk losing some of our most talented scientists and compromising our country’s position at the forefront of technological innovation,” warned Harvard’s president, Lawrence Summers, in an April letter to the secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge.

Mr. Summers said he was alarmed that applications from Chinese students in some graduate programs were off by as much as 40%.

Many foreign students and academics tie the visa problems to more careful scrutiny of applicants following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The overall statistics appear to bolster that argument.

Some Chinese students and American educators said the situation has eased a bit this year, in the wake of the complaints to Mr. Ridge and others. However, the American embassy declined to provide numbers for this year and did not respond to a request for comment for this story. A Freedom of Information Act request for detailed visa statistics, including rejection rates, has been pending for nearly a year without a response.

A General Accounting Office report issued in February said that the State Department issued about half a million study and exchange-student visas worldwide in the 2003 fiscal year. The report did not include data for prior years.

While some are now arguing that the visa process is too tight, others make the case that prior to September 11, 2001, procedures were dangerously lax. One of the men who hijacked aircraft that day, Hani Hanjour, entered America on a student visa but never showed up at the school where he said he planned to study English. Another man charged with early involvement in the plot, Zacarias Moussaoui, also entered America on a student visa. Two other hijackers entered America on visitor visas but successfully converted them to student visas after arriving.

Such lapses led to calls for a crackdown on the student visa program. In the weeks following the terrorist strikes, Senator Feinstein, a Democrat of California, went so far as to call for a six-month moratorium on student visa issuance. She quickly retreated from that position after higher-education leaders said that the move would be too disruptive. They agreed to adopt student-tracking procedures that they had previously resisted as too cumbersome and costly.

The basic law relating to visas has remained the same in recent years. In order to get a visa, applicants must overcome the presumption that they intend to remain in America. This is done most often by demonstrating financial or family ties to their home country.

There are no reliable statistics about how many foreign students take up residence in America, legally or illegally.

The September 11 attacks did prompt some changes in visa procedures. Several of the hijackers managed to get visas without being interviewed by a visa officer. In 2002, the State Department made such interviews mandatory for all foreigners who are required to have a visa. The American government has also instituted more thorough background checks on students, scholars, and businesspeople involved in a variety of technical fields that could have weapons-related applications.

In part because of reports in the late 1990s of Chinese espionage directed at America’s nuclear secrets, all Chinese citizens planning to study certain scientific subjects in America are now vetted by various agencies, including the FBI and CIA. This has caused delays of more than four months for some scholars seeking or renewing visas. American officials have said that new computer systems should shorten the wait to a few weeks in most instances.

Despite the complaints, some lawmakers maintain that visa policies are still too lax. “Nearly three years later, it’s still far too easy for a terrorist to get a visa to enter the United States,” Senator Kyl, a Republican of Arizona, wrote in June in the Washington Post.

Speaking at an education fair in Beijing recently, one American official said that the perception that security related procedures had made it harder to get a student visa was wrong.

“That’s just absolutely not true,” said the diplomat, Vlad Lipschutz. “They have had almost no effect on the actual number of students coming to study in the U.S.”

American college presidents complain in particular about the background checks. The academics say that the system makes students fearful about going home, even for family emergencies.

However, if applications from foreigners are indeed declining, American schools may share some of the blame. A three-day education exposition held here recently drew dozens of colleges and universities from around the world, but the only American presence was from the University of Minnesota. A booth belonging to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sat unattended. Colleges from Canada, Britain, and Australia were present en masse.

“They see what’s going on with some of the visa issues in America as an opportunity for them to tap into that part of the market,” said a University of Minnesota administrator, Robert Jones.

The United Kingdom issues student visas without an interview or appointment, usually on the same day. Australia grants student visas over the Internet.

American companies that seek business from China say they, too, have been hard hit by a tougher stance on visas. A study released in June by the U.S.-China Business Council said that the tighter policy cost American businesses $30 billion in lost contracts and related expenses.

The group’s president, Robert Kapp, said that German and Japanese companies have poached a number of contracts from American firms after the potential customers were denied visas to travel to America to pursue the deals. The German and Japanese firms had no trouble getting their embassies to grant visas to the Chinese businessmen.

“We have specific cases,” he said. “It’s just unreal.”