Editor's note, June 5th at 9:45am (: After this article was published, Trump announced that he plans to block international students from entering the United States. The original story below was released on May 29th.
The Trump administration's recent decision to ban international students from attending Harvard University has been less of a policy decision than an act of war. The White House hoped that the opening salvo for the country's oldest university would bring about the immediate surrender that Columbia University offers. When Harvard chose to fight back instead, Trump decided to attack the university in the places it hurts the most.
The administration's actions were illegal and soon remained a federal judge. But that doesn't prevent real harm to students or higher education.
Harvard serves as a well-known elective undergraduate university, but most of the university's students are in graduate schools and vocational schools. A third of those older students have arrived from other countries. Overall, more than a quarter of Harvard's 25,000 students come from outside the United States. This has grown steadily over time. The proportion of international students at Harvard University has increased by 38% since 2006.
Even if the courts continue to block this move, it is difficult for everyone to study there, knowing that even if they are future queens of Belgium, they may be deported or imprisoned by a hostile regime. And leaving international students will harm universities far beyond Harvard, and American research and innovation itself will also be harmful.
The looming question for higher education is whether the ban on international students is just the next escalation of the Trump administration's apocalyptic campaign against a few elite institutions (as seen in the administration's announcement Tuesday to cancel the remaining federal contract with Harvard), or the beginning of a broader attempt to apply the principles of “America First” parents). The rapid growth of international university students in the 21st century represents a kind of global cooperation that White House isolationists want to destroy.
International students supported American universities to buoy after the Great Recession
Over the past decades, international registration has been shaped, with some places receiving higher education nationwide. According to the State Department, the number of F-1 student visas issued to international students per year has almost tripled from 216,000 in 2003 to 644,000 in 2015. During that time, many countries have sent more students to the United States, but the narrative of international university registration for the past 20 years is ruled by the People's Republic of China.
In 1997, approximately 12,000 F-1 visas were issued to Chinese students. This was one-third of the number issued to two largest student senders in Korea and Japan that year. China's registration began to accelerate with early Aughts, exploding 114,000 by 2010. 190,000 in 2012. The peak of 274,000 in 2015.
This change was driven by deep social and economic changes within China. Mao Zedong's cultural revolution essentially shut down university enrolments for ten years. When it ended in 1976 there was a large backlog of university students who graduated from the economic liberalization of Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. Many of them flourished, with children (often only one) who had grown older in the early 2000s. Visiting an American university was a status marker and an opportunity to become a global citizen.
At the same time, many universities were newly hungry for international registration. The Great Recession saved the university's finances. The state government has cut funds to public universities significantly, and families have less money to pay tuition at private universities.
Public universities offer low prices for state residents, and private schools typically increase sticker price tuition fees by more than 50% through grants and scholarships. However, these rules apply only to Americans. Recruiting so-called Full Pay international students has become an important strategy to reinforce revenue.
The university has always been unwise in managing the influx of students from overseas. Purdue University registered so many Chinese students so quickly that in 2013, it said that the main advantage of traveling 7,000 miles to West Lafayette, Indiana is improving language skills by talking to students from other parts of China. That same year, an administrator at a private university in Philadelphia's second tier said the university had tried to maintain registrations from one country below certain thresholds.
Federal law prohibits universities from paying recruiters based on the number of students signed up, but this also applies only to the US border. International students sometimes help intermediaries pay large sums of money and navigate the landscape of huge and diverse global universities. Many are legal, but some are prone to falsehood and fraud.
At the same time, the university used a new influx of students to expand its course offerings, build strong connections abroad, and diversify its academic community. One of the great educational benefits of going to university is learning among people from a wide range of experiences and backgrounds. There would never have been a better place to do that than the 21st century American College Campus. The most talented international students have studied the advantages of America's economic productivity and new heights.
F-1 visas fell sharply in 2016. This is due to an administrative change that allows Chinese students to receive a five-year visa in exchange for reapplying each year. However, the market itself was also changing. The Chinese government invested a huge amount of money to build the capacity of its research universities, giving students better options to stay home. Geopolitical tensions have risen, and American voters have chosen to elect a ferocious xenophobic president with Donald Trump. Covid fundamentally curtailed international registration in 2020, but even after recovery, China's F-1 visa in 2023 was only a third of its peak in 2015.
A university managed by recruiting students from other countries. India first surpassed 100,000 student visas in 2022. At the turn of the century there were fewer than 1,000 Vietnamese students who studied in the United States. Today, Vietnam is the fourth largest source of international students than Japan, Mexico, Germany or Brazil. Registration from Ghana has earned Quintuppled over the past decade.
The catastrophe of American science and innovation
If the Trump administration expands its burnt-earth student visa strategy beyond Harvard – it would be possible to revoke visas for Chinese students, so it would not just be a painless free enclave and snooty university town. Communities across the country feel urban and rural scars in red states and blue.
Some universities may end up in bankruptcy. Others will hire fewer for local employers and produce fewer graduates. Even before the visa ban, the Norwegian government threw away money to seduce American scholars whose research had been devastated by the deep Trump administration of scientific research. Other countries can certainly follow.
And if international students stop coming to the US, it will be a catastrophe for American leadership in science and technology. World-class research universities are magnets for global talent. Cambridge, Massachusetts is a global center for medical breakthroughs as Harvard University and its neighbor MIT attract some of the smartest people in the world.
The same dynamics drives technology innovations around Stanford in Silicon Valley and Berkeley, California, and university towns around the country. If you or a loved one benefited from a new cancer treatment, the person who saved your life may have come to America on a student visa like the Trump administration is trying to destroy. Choosing international students, as if they had a good relationship with Canada, is one of the invaluable things that Americans don't fully appreciate until someone is stupid enough to throw it away.
In 2021, JD Vance told a group of athletic conservatives that they “have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” The administration has more than good in his words. This is because voters are rapidly restructuring on education achievement, and university graduates can gather together in Democrats and move to the Republican side. Trump and his minions are training for opposition parties that elite colleges and universities consider enemy fortresses of the culture war and must be destroyed.
Modern universities look like the future that Maga fears most. Today, visitors to campus see students from many global communities, speak multiple languages and practice different cultural traditions. People from other countries are welcome, and there is no rule of the highest single race, nationality, or religion. People like JD Vance are so frightening about this vision that they want to destroy America's world-leading higher education system and terrorize the hundreds of thousands of people in this country legally.
Updated May 29th, 9:40am ET: The article was originally published on May 27th and updated to include news of the Trump administration's decision to target visas for Chinese students.
