President Donald Trump‘s immigration crackdown on foreign students in the United States is expected to have a chilling effect on enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities this fall, according to higher education analysts.
School experts worry foreign enrollment at U.S. schools could take a nose dive as the Trump administration continues its immigration enforcement initiative that has targeted students who support the terrorist organization, Hamas, and federal immigration officers raid dorm rooms in search of student visa recipients who refuse to leave despite their status being revoked.
Dr. William Brustein, special assistant to the president for global affairs and a distinguished history professor at West Virginia University, said arrests and visa revocations in recent weeks will hurt America’s ability to attract international students to institutions.
“I am fairly confident that the Trump’s administration’s crackdown on student visa recipients who it alleges engaged in pro-Hamas protests in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of Israelis will indeed have a chilling effect on foreign student enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities this fall,” Brustein wrote in an email.
But a sharp decline in international students may serve the Trump administration’s ultimate agenda after it warned schools in March to cut the anti-Israel protests or face retribution.
House Education and Workforce Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) said the Trump administration was valid in pursuing changes in who is admitted to U.S. colleges and universities.
“While I support an individual’s ability to come to our country to pursue an education, we must ensure that schools are not enticed to choose foreign revenue streams over national security or safety for American students,” Walberg said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “For too long our universities have thrown caution to the wind while chasing foreign funds, and I support President Trump’s efforts to make sure our higher education system truly promotes American interests.”
Immigration enforcement amps up
Following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, Trump called for the Biden administration to rescind visas for any foreign nationals who praised the incident.
On his first day in office this year, Trump took executive action to crack down on antisemitism on college campuses, including by going after foreign students who led or participated in pro-Palestinian rallies at certain public and private universities in 2024.
The State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs was reported in early March to be using artificial intelligence to screen visa recipients’ social media pages for pro-Hamas comments.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters during Trump’s Cabinet meeting Thursday that no foreign student was above the law.
“The press covers student visas like they’re some sort of birthright,” Rubio said. “No, a student visa is like me inviting you into my home. If you come into my home and put all kinds of crap on my couch, I’m going to kick you out of my house.”
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, Rubio has the authority to rescind visas of noncitizens he determines to be a threat to U.S. interests.
The law states that students shall be stripped of their visas if they are suspended or expelled from school or arrested while studying in the U.S.
The State Department is now looking at internal databases to determine if any visa recipients were arrested but not removed from the country, given the wide-scale pro-Palestinian protests.
Visa and green card revocations begin
Among the State Department’s first revocations was that of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and recent graduate of Columbia University who helped lead protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.
Since Khalil, 140 higher education institutions have identified 700 instances where international students and recent graduates had their legal status changed by the government, according to Inside Higher Ed, forcing them to quickly leave the country or risk facing arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
As of April 11, Georgetown University reported six student visas had been revoked. University of Maryland in Baltimore County had four visas revoked and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore stood at 12 visas rescinded.
Public incidents and footage of students being approached by plainclothes federal immigration officers have sparked concern on campuses.
On April 4, the American Council on Education (ACE) sent Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a letter seeking a briefing on its recent targeting of foreign students.
“Recent actions have contributed to uncertainty and impedes the ability of our institutions to best advise international students and scholars,” ACE President Ted Mitchell wrote in the letter.
Impact on students and schools
The impact of visa revocations and subsequent immigration enforcement on college campuses is likely to negatively impact enrollment levels when the academic year begins, according to Brustein.
“Prospective international students and their parents will factor into their calculations vis a vis applying to and enrolling in U.S. institutions of higher education the perceived arbitrariness of the administration’s policies on what constitutes anti-American, anti-Israeli, and antisemitic acts or utterances (including social media posts),” Brustein wrote.
“This along with the rising cost of a U.S. academic degree, the observed ICE activity targeting foreign students, the freezing of federal research grants (e.g., NIH, NSF, etc…), and the improved academic reputation and noted affordability of higher education institutions in Asia and Europe will, in my view, dampen international student interests in pursuing higher education in the U.S. over the next few years,” said Brustein.
Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for the ACE’s government relations office, said there is “a lot of uncertainty and confusion right now” among the international student population and across higher education institutions nationwide.
“It is too early to say what repercussions there might be from the current actions and when they might occur, but anything that has the potential to negatively impact the United States’ status as the destination of choice for the world’s most talented students and scholars is concerning and should be addressed,” Spreitzer wrote in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
A cash cow for universities?
More than 19 million students attended undergraduate and graduate schools in Fall 2024, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Roughly 1 million of those students are international students, according to ACE. Foreign student enrollment contributes a $43.8 billion economic impact on the U.S.
As enrollment of U.S. citizen students has leveled out in recent years, universities have appealed to foreign students, who pay more than in-state students.
In an example of the difference in tuition, in-state tuition at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability graduate degree program is $27,904 compared to $55,100 for international and out-of-state students. International students also pay an additional $1,000 fee.
This past year, a record-high number of international students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities in the 2023-2024 academic year.
Dr. Jay P. Greene, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, said that while foreign students pay more than many U.S. students, the financial loss of losing international students will not significantly impact schools that have other revenue streams.
“I don’t think the main issue here is a tuition revenue issue, because again, these institutions mostly are getting their money from donations and research. That’s where the big money is,” said Greene in a phone call Friday.
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However, it is another way that the Trump administration can target colleges’ bottom line after freezing grant funding and pausing research aid, Greene added. The Trump administration has already pulled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University and put $9 billion under review at Harvard University as part of a broader crackdown on what it says is antisemitism on college campuses.
“They are squeezing a variety of sources of revenue at bad-acting universities,” said Greene. “And that gets their attention.”
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
