plummeting

Stitch Fix (SFIX -17.02%) stock was more or less humming merrily along at the start of this week, until it fell into a ditch Thursday morning. That gaping hole was the company’s latest set of quarterly earnings, which despite looking outwardly impressive had several areas of concern.

As a result, on a week-to-date basis the fashion stock was down notably in price Thursday night. According to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence, the company’s equity had lost almost 17% of its value in those days.

Stitched up

After market close Wednesday, Stitch Fix took the wraps off its fiscal fourth quarter of 2025. When adjusted for an extra week in the same period of 2024, the company’s net revenue rose by 4% year over year to slightly over $311 million. The GAAP net loss narrowed considerably, to under $8.6 million, or $0.07 per share, against the year-ago deficit of more than $36 million.

Image source: Getty Images.

Both headline figures beat the consensus analyst estimates. Pundits tracking Stitch Fix stock were modeling less than $305 million on the top line, and a net loss per share of $0.10.

Improvements and beats in those two important metrics would, all things being equal, inspire investors to push into any stock. Stitch Fix is different, however, as those achievements masked one particular concerning development.

Not getting a Fix

Stitch Fix is anchored by its Fix service, in which customers can subscribe to either occasional or regular deliveries of clothes picked by the company’s stylists, paying for the ones he or she elects to keep. So the service’s subscriber numbers are crucial — if they’re not rising, the company’s growth will likely not be robust.

And they’re not rising. Stitch Fix revealed that its count of active clients — defined as those who checked out a Fix or bought an item through the company’s Freestyle marketplace — was slightly more than 2.3 million for the quarter. That meant a worrying decrease pf nearly 8% year over year.

One international student after another told the University of Central Missouri this summer that they couldn’t get a visa, and many struggled to even land an interview for one.

Even though demand was just as high as ever, half as many new international graduate students showed up for fall classes compared with last year.

The decline represents a hit to the bottom line for Central Missouri, a small public university that operates close to its margins with an endowment of only $65 million. International students typically account for nearly a quarter of its tuition revenue.

“We aren’t able to subsidize domestic students as much when we have fewer international students who are bringing revenue to us,” said Roger Best, the university’s president.

Signs of a decline in international students have unsettled colleges around the U.S. Colleges with large numbers of foreign students and small endowments have little financial cushion to protect them from steep losses in tuition money.

International students represent at least 20% of enrollment at more than 100 colleges with endowments of less than $250,000 per student, according to an Associated Press analysis. Many are small Christian colleges, but the group also includes large universities such as Northeastern and Carnegie Mellon.

The extent of the change in enrollment will not be clear until the fall. Some groups have forecast a decline of as much as 40%, with a huge impact on college budgets and the wider U.S. economy.

International students face new scrutiny on several fronts

As part of a broader effort to reshape higher education, President Trump has pressed colleges to limit their numbers of international students and heightened scrutiny of student visas. His administration has moved to deport foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian activism, and new student visa appointments were put on hold for weeks as it ramped up vetting of applicants’ social media.

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said it will propose a rule that would put new limits on the time foreign students can stay in the U.S.

The policies have introduced severe financial instability for colleges, said Justin Gest, a professor at George Mason University who studies the politics of immigration.

Foreign students are not eligible for federal financial aid and often pay full price for tuition — double or even triple the in-state rate paid by domestic students at public universities.

“If an international student comes in and pays $80,000 a year in tuition, that gives universities the flexibility to offer lower fees and more scholarship money to American students,” Gest said.

A Sudanese student barely made it to the U.S. for the start of classes

Ahmed Ahmed, a Sudanese student, nearly didn’t make it to the U.S. for his freshman year at the University of Rochester.

The Trump administration in June announced a travel ban on 12 countries, including Sudan. Diplomatic officials assured Ahmed he could still enter the U.S. because his visa was issued before the ban. But when he tried to board a flight to leave for the United States from Uganda, where he stayed with family during the summer, he was turned away and advised to contact an embassy about his visa.

With the help of the University of Rochester’s international office, Ahmed was able to book another flight.

At Rochester, where he received a scholarship to study electrical engineering, Ahmed, 19, said he feels supported by the staff. But he also finds himself on edge and understands why other students might not want to subject themselves to the scrutiny in the U.S., particularly those who are entirely paying their own way.

“I feel like I made it through, but I’m one of the last people to make it through,” he said.

Colleges are taking steps to blunt the impact

In recent years, international students have made up about 30% of enrollment at Central Missouri, which has a total of around 12,800 students. In anticipation of the hit to international enrollment, Central Missouri cut a cost-of-living raise for employees. It has pushed off infrastructure improvements planned for its campus and has been looking for other ways to cut costs.

Small schools — typically classified as those with no more than 5,000 students — tend to have less financial flexibility and will be especially vulnerable, said Dick Startz, an economics professor at UC Santa Barbara.

Lee University, a Christian institution with 3,500 students in Tennessee, is expecting 50 to 60 international students enrolled this fall, down from 82 the previous school year, representing a significant drop in revenue for the school, said Roy Y. Chan, the university’s director of graduate studies.

The school already has increased tuition by 20% over the last five years to account for a decrease in overall enrollment, he said.

“Since we’re a smaller liberal arts campus, tuition cost is our main, primary revenue,” Chan said, as opposed to government funding or donations.

The strains on international enrollment only add to distress for schools already on the financial brink.

Colleges around the country have been closing as they cope with declines in domestic enrollment, a consequence of changing demographics and the effects of the pandemic. Nationwide, private colleges have been closing at a rate of about two per month, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Assn.

The number of high school graduates in the U.S. is expected to decline through 2041, when there will be 13% fewer compared with 2024, according to projections from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

“That means that if you lost participation from international students, it’s even worse,” Startz said.

Vileira, Seminera and Binkley write for the Associated Press.

Millions of people around the world are unable to have the number of children they desire, and financial constraints, lack of quality healthcare and gender inequality are some of the barriers to reproductive choices, according to a UN report.

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) unveiled its State of the World Population report on Tuesday, warning that a rising number of people are being denied the freedom to start families due to elevated living costs, wars and lack of suitable partners and not because they reject parenthood.

Roughly 40 percent of respondents cited economic barriers – such as the costs of raising children, job insecurity and expensive housing – as the main reason for having fewer children than they would like, according to the report based on an online survey conducted by the UN agency and YouGov.

Fertility rates have fallen to below 2.1 births per woman – the threshold needed for population stability without immigration – in more than half of all countries that took part in the survey.

On the flip side, life expectancy continues to grow across almost all regions of the world, according to the survey conducted in 14 countries that are home to one-third of the world’s population.

Right-wing nationalist governments, including in the United States and Hungary, are increasingly blaming falling fertility rates on a rejection of parenthood.

But the 2025 State of the World Population report found most people did indeed want children. The survey findings indicated that the world is not facing a crisis of falling birth rates but a crisis of reproductive agency.

How was the study conducted?

UNFPA surveyed 14,000 people from four countries in Europe, four in Asia, three in Africa and three in the Americas.

The study examined a mix of low-, middle- and high-income countries and those with low and high fertility rates.

They were picked to try to represent “a wide variety of countries with different cultural contexts, fertility rates and policy approaches”, according to the report’s editor, Rebecca Zerzan.

South Korea, which is included in the study, has the lowest fertility rate in the world. The report also looked at Nigeria, which has one of the highest birth rates in the world.

The other countries included, in order of population size, are India, the US, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Thailand, South Africa, Italy, Morocco, Sweden and Hungary.

The survey is a pilot for research in 50 countries later this year.

When it comes to age groups within countries, the sample sizes in the initial survey are too small to make conclusions.

But some findings are clear.

What were the key findings from the report?

According to UNFPA, 39 percent of people said financial limitations prevented them from having a child.

Job insecurity and fear of the future – from climate change to war – were cited by 21 percent and 19 percent of respondents, respectively, for reasons to avoid reproducing.

Elsewhere, 13 percent of women and 8 percent of men pointed to the unequal division of domestic labour as a factor in having fewer children than desired.

Only 12 percent of people cited infertility or difficulty conceiving for not having the number of children they wanted.

That figure was higher in countries like Thailand (19 percent), the US (16 percent) and South Africa (15 percent).

In many cases, there were significant differences in responses depending on which country people were reporting from.

But for Natalia Kanem, executive director at UNFPA, a universal finding from the report is that “fertility rates are falling in large part because many feel unable to create the families they want.”

In South Korea, three in five respondents reported financial limitations as an obstacle to having children.

It was just 19 percent in Sweden, where both men and women are entitled to 480 days of paid parental leave per child, which may also be transferred to grandparents.

Still, birth rates in Sweden are among the lowest in the world.

Zerzan pointed out that one factor alone does not account for falling fertility rates.

“I fully agree with that,” said Arkadiusz Wisniowski, professor of social statistics and demography at the University of Manchester.

“The decision to have a child is complex. Yes, it’s about money. But it’s also about time and access to the right kind of childcare,” he told Al Jazeera.

What role can immigration play?

When deaths outpace births, that is an indication that fertility rates are falling. “That’s not currently true at the global level,” Wisniowski said. “But it is true for numerous countries around the world, especially wealthier nations.”

“And some governments are having to navigate the reality of falling birth rates against the backlash against immigration. Clearly, immigrants can fill labour market gaps, and there is evidence they contribute to economic growth,” he said.

“But it’s no panacea.”

What can governments do about this?

“We can see both the problem and solution clearly,” the UNFPA report noted. “The answer lies in reproductive agency, a person’s ability to make free and informed choices about sex, contraception and starting a family – if, when and with whom they want.”

UNFPA warns against simplistic and coercive responses to falling birth rates, such as baby bonuses or fertility targets, which are often ineffective and risk violating human rights.

“We also see that when people feel their reproductive choices are being steered, when policies are even just perceived as being too coercive, people react and they are less likely to have children,” Kanem said.

Instead, the UN body urged governments to expand choices by removing barriers to parenthood identified by their populations.

Its recommended actions included making parenthood more affordable through investments in housing, decent work, paid parental leave and access to comprehensive reproductive health services.

“The recommendations [in the report] are all good,” Wisniowski said. “They would all empower people to try and achieve their family-linked aspirations. But these comprehensive policies will come with a cost.”

For years, labour economists have warned that falling fertility poses a threat to future prosperity because it increases fiscal pressures due to ageing populations – when the number of pensioners in relation to workers rises.

“Governments may need to tax working people more or take on more debt to address the reality of fewer young people,” Wisniowski noted. “But fertility isn’t something that you can easily tinker with. We are facing considerable uncertainty.”