Universities
See Trump’s Harvard Move as a Threat to Them, Too
College
officials fear that President Trump may use international enrollment as
leverage to demand changes on campuses elsewhere.
Laurel
Rosenhall Isabelle Taft Steven Rich Stephanie Saul
By Laurel
RosenhallIsabelle TaftSteven Rich and Stephanie Saul
May 24,
2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/us/harvard-trump-international-students-impact.html
If it
happened to Harvard University, could it happen anywhere?
The Trump
administration’s surprising bid to end Harvard’s international enrollment put
the higher education world on edge this week, looming as a larger threat
against academic autonomy.
Well beyond
the halls of Harvard this week, college leaders were shocked that one swift
move by the federal government could eliminate their ability to serve students
from abroad, a growing population that has infused their campuses with cachet
and wealth.
“This is a
grave moment,” Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, wrote in a message to her campus.
More than
5,000 miles away, Wendy Hensel, the president of the University of Hawaii, said
that it was “reverberating across higher education.”
President
Trump has already unnerved universities this year by launching investigations,
freezing grants, demanding changes in campus practices and attempting to deport
international students. He has justified his punitive approach as a means to
combat what he considers antisemitism. But he and his allies also have long
resented a perceived liberal bias and racial diversity efforts at prestigious
colleges.
The Trump
administration said Thursday that it revoked Harvard’s international student
certification because the university had failed to meet its demands, including
a request for records of student protest activity dating back five years.
To many
academics, that was a clear signal that Mr. Trump was prepared to use any
federal mechanism as leverage if he did not get what he wants.
“While
Harvard is the victim of the moment, it’s a warning and unprecedented attempt
of a hostile federal government to erode the autonomy of all major universities
in the U.S.,” said John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center
for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Mr. Trump
may not get his way in the end; a federal judge temporarily blocked his
maneuver on Friday, setting up another legal battle that Harvard is willing to
fight.
But the move
itself could still force campuses elsewhere to think harder about how far they
are willing to go to resist the president’s demands. And it likely will scare
off some international students who fear their college track in the United
States could be disrupted at any point.
“The
implication is a growing and great chill on attracting academic talent to the
U.S.,” Mr. Douglass said.
The reaction
highlights the increasing role international students have played in American
higher education, particularly at some of the most prestigious universities.
Across the nation, enrollment from abroad has doubled in the last 25 years,
with more than 1 million international students now studying in the United
States.
While
international students make up slightly more than 5 percent of university
students nationwide, some of the nation’s most selective schools rely far more
heavily on them. At New York University, home to nearly 60,000 students,
one-third of them are international. At Columbia, about two in five students
come from abroad. And at Harvard, more than a quarter of students come from
across the globe.
Universities
see many benefits from having a global student body that enriches the
intellectual, social and cultural life on campus. Drawing the world’s top
talent also helps develop outstanding academic programs and opportunities for
groundbreaking research.
Many
students who complete their degrees in the United States stay here afterward to
build their careers, whether in academia or private industry, fueling a global
economy.
But as
selective universities have grown more international, some conservatives say
American students are losing out.
“Upper
middle class children in America are having an increasingly hard time getting
into places like Harvard,” said Jay P. Greene, a senior research fellow at the
Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy. “More of those spaces are
consumed by foreigners and fewer are available to American students.”
Kristi Noem,
the homeland security secretary who terminated Harvard’s access to the federal
Student and Exchange Visitor Program, said on Thursday that the move was a
response to an unsafe campus environment for students, including many Jews. She
alleged that many protesters who have engaged in harassment and physical
assault were foreign students.
“Let this
serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the
country,” she said in a statement.
Abdullah
Shahid Sial, a sophomore at Harvard from Pakistan, welcomed the judge’s halt to
the federal order but said that the ruling will not undo the damage that has
already been inflicted on American higher education. Many international
students don’t feel comfortable living in the United States anymore, according
to Mr. Sial.
“They wanted
us to feel unwelcome,” he said. “They’ve done a pretty good job of that.”
Niall
Hegarty, a professor of management at St. John’s University in New York who has
researched international student enrollment trends, said the growth in
international students has slowed in recent years compared with the early
2000s.
Two decades
ago, he said, many wealthy Chinese families had aimed to send their children to
the United States to study. At the time, U.S. companies flocking to China were
likewise eager to hire Chinese employees who had been educated at American
universities.
That dynamic
exists around the world, as people educated in the United States can help
American companies operate effectively abroad, Mr. Hegarty said.
“I think the
takeaway is that our country needs them, they add value to the classroom, and
when they go home, they’re proponents of U.S. businesses,” he said of
international students.
Ms. Noem
suggested Thursday that universities were driven by a financial motive to admit
more international students, accusing schools of trying “to help pad their
multibillion-dollar endowments.”
The
University of California and other public institutions increased their
international enrollment in previous decades to offset state budget cuts and
keep tuition hikes in check for in-state residents. At public schools,
international students pay out-of-state tuition at rates far higher than
residents, though so do students from other states.
But it is
unclear whether international students drive much more revenue for Ivy League
schools like Harvard, which provides financial aid based on need and regardless
of citizenship. And the University of California has already retrenched from
earlier efforts to enroll international students after facing a backlash from
California families.
Mr. Greene,
the Heritage Foundation fellow, said that international study programs began
with twin motivations: to improve American education with perspectives from
overseas, and to help spread American political values around the world when
students return to their home countries.
Over time,
though, he said the predominance of international students on some campuses has
begun to undermine the original goals.
“When it
gets large enough, rather than expanding the perspectives that are available
for Americans in higher education, it allows for the dominance of other
perspectives from around the globe,” Mr. Greene said. “What is beneficial at a
low level becomes dangerous politically at a high level.”
Mr. Hegarty
himself came to the United States as an international student from Ireland in
1988 after being recruited to St. John’s University on a track scholarship. His
teammates included Jamaicans, Swedes and Canadians, in addition to Americans.
“It was a
fantastic experience of young people growing up together,” he said.
“Unfortunately, a lot of that, it appears, is going to be lost.”
Hafeez
Lakhani, a college admissions counselor in New York, said that he was already
aware of international students who chose Britain or Canada over the United
States because of actions by the Trump administration. The latest move against
Harvard is bound to amplify the trend.
“This sends
a signal to the rest of the world that not only is Harvard closed to the
international best and brightest, but that the U.S. is not a welcome place for
international students,” Mr. Lakhani said.
He added
that it could open up opportunities for more domestic students with compelling
records to land spots at the nation’s oldest and most prestigious university.
Miles J.
Herszenhorn and Troy Closson contributed reporting.
Laurel
Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and
government for The Times.
Isabelle
Taft is a reporter covering national news and a member of the 2024-25 Times
Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their career.
Steven Rich
is a data reporter at The Times, using data analysis to investigate major
issues and contextualize current events.
Stephanie
Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic
changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and
inclusion in higher education.
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