RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesAdvocates worry the changes will cause tens of thousands of lost jobs and potential cuts at university programs
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In the wake of Trump administration restrictions on the immigration system , international student enrollment could fall by nearly 10 percent this school year.
The White House’s policy agenda — which has included travel bans applying to numerous countries and restrictions on student visas — could prompt a 9.5 percent drop in international enrollment, removing up to 111,000 students from the system and depriving local economies of $3.4 billion in spending and more than 39,000 jobs, according to estimates from NAFSA: Association of International Educators .
“All Americans lose when international students and scholars are driven to more welcoming countries,” NAFSA CEO Fanta Aw said in a statement. “Forfeiting U.S position as the top destination for global talent hurts students, hospitals, research laboratories, the economies—and carries the real risk that the next big invention will not happen on U.S. soil.”
Education advocates have been warning for months about a decline, coming right as enrollment was ticking back up after Covid.
In 2025, a survey of more than 800 colleges’ fall enrollment data found that new international student enrollment was down nearly 20 percent compared with 2024. Meanwhile, international student submissions to the Common App were down 9 percent for the 2026-2027 school year, compared with the previous one.
The Trump administration has cracked down on universities with a variety of immigration-related actions.
In July, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled a new rule restricting many foreign students and researchers on visas to a four-year stay. The administration said the change was meant to target “forever students” and eliminate fraud. The president is also reportedly considering a $100,000 fine on a visa used by foreign-born graduates to work in the United States.
Throughout last year, the administration terminated the status of roughly 1,800 international students, many of them from Muslim-majority countries. As The Independent reported, others had been involved in pro-Palestine activism on campus .
It also required new visa applicants to make their social media accounts public for vetting, potentially putting a further chill on enrollment.
Beyond the visa system itself, the administration has carried out high-profile immigration arrests of international students on campus , and has used international student enrollment as a bargaining chip in its broader attempts to force changes at major universities, mostly notably at Harvard .
The administration’s attempts to cut billions of dollars in federal funding to universities may also be impacting enrollment, especially in graduate programs, where certain majors, such as those in the hard sciences, are highly reliant upon government dollars.
U.S. adversaries have reportedly welcomed American cuts to higher ed.
A think tank at China’s Renmin University recently published a report , “Thank Trump,” which credited the president for hastening the “twilight of an empire,” in part by undermining American scientific prowess.
China is now nearly equaling American rates of generating new drug candidates, a phenomenon some credit with experts increasingly choosing to work in China rather than the U.S., creating another industry where Beijing has outpaced Washington.
“People in Washington are worried that biotech is the next E.V.s,” an American executive told The New Yorker . “We’ve scared all of this f***ing talent back to China. If you look at the guys who are doing this, they used to work for Western pharma giants, or they were running a top university department somewhere.”
The Independent has contacted the White House and the Departments of State and Homeland Security for comment.
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