The nation’s most ethnically diverse state should be a lure to international college students, but Hawaii has failed to keep up with mainland institutions that have reaped the economic and social effects of increased foreign enrollment.

The University of Hawaii needs to boldly craft and lead a new drive to draw students from afar, especially China, to the state’s campuses.

While foreign students’ enrollment in the United States has grown from 572,509 in the 2003-2004 school year to 764,495, the number has slipped from 4,768 to the current year’s 4,446 total at Hawaii’s five colleges with the most foreign students.

At UH-Manoa alone, the number of foreign students has declined from 1,657 in 2003-2004 to 1,560 in 2011 and 1,390 in the current school year.

The economic reward is significant. A report last week by the Institute of International Education estimates that more than 70 percent of all foreign students receive the majority of their funds from sources outside of the U.S., including personal and family sources and their home country governments or universities.

International students typically pay full out-of-state tuition, which has nearly doubled at UH-Manoa since 2006-2007 to $23,232 annually.

The report indicates that foreign students contributed $107 million to Hawaii’s economy in the current academic year, down from $115 million the previous year.

UH should line up with universities that Peggy Blumenthal, senior counsellor at IIE, says "really are starting to realize the tuition from international students makes it possible for them to continue offering scholarships and financial aid to domestic students."

More than one-fourth of the foreign students at U.S. campuses are from China, where their number has grown from 157,558 to 194,029 students from the previous school year. Reed Dasenbrock, vice chancellor for academic affairs at UH-Manoa, says the university is expanding its international recruiting and marketing efforts, including an attempt to create "a larger presence in China. Other colleges have made the move there that we have not."

Indeed, better foresight and more creativity need to be employed if UH is serious about mining already existing, rich pipelines.

Faculty and staffers traveling to other countries, for instance, should be better equipped with recruitment tools and talking points, and a strategic program should be devised to enlist international alumni.

Smarter marketing and recruiting, too, should get under way via existing UH international programs in film, business, public health and architecture.

"We have all these rich programmatic connections," Dasenbrock said. "We haven’t always used them to be a vehicle for student recruitment, and somehow we have to do both."

More than a dozen of the 25 mainland campuses with the most international students have increased their numbers by more than 40 percent in just five years, and all but one are public, according to the IIE report.

A recent study found 40 percent of international students reported no close American friends, and nearly all Chinese students struggle with language and cultural barriers.

Even in obstacles such as these, though, Hawaii should have an upper hand in providing a more homelike atmosphere than that available at mainland institutions.

But unless UH and others here make serious efforts to "sell" the benefits of their campuses, the students will increasingly bypass Hawaii.