Trump’s War on International Students

Co-hosts Anne Kim and Garrett Epps speak with Washington Monthly College Guide Data Editor Robert Kelchen of the University of Tennessee about the impacts of the Trump administration’s attempted ban on foreign students. 

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Below is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity:

Anne Kim: Okay, so Trump has opened up a new front in his war against higher education just last week, and that’s to limit international students coming to the country, particularly at Harvard University. Can you catch us up on his latest moves on this front?

Robert Kelchen: We’re almost out of fronts in the higher ed wars. The only front that’s even kind of remaining right now is financial aid going directly to students, and that front may be opening next through actions taken against Columbia University’s accreditor.

For international students, the actions taken have included a pause on visa interviews, significant delays in visas even more than normal, attempts to completely stop all visa processing for Harvard, and potential additional social media scrutiny. On top of that, there was a limited travel ban put in place that affects individuals coming from about a dozen countries, most notably Iran, which is a relative powerhouse in PhD admissions—even though it’s only about 12,000 students as a whole across the country. So there’s a lot going on once again.

Garrett Epps: We talk about international students as a generic term, but there’s a fairly complex set of backgrounds. I gather there were about 1.1 million international students last school year. Who are they? Can you lay that out for us?

Robert Kelchen: It’s a mix of undergraduate and graduate students coming from many different countries across the world. The two biggest countries, representing roughly half of all enrollment, are China and India. Enrollment from China has been volatile in the past with the Trump administration’s policies the first time around.

Enrollment from China is particularly politically interesting right now because the Trump administration has stated that they want to keep everyone who’s connected to the Chinese Communist Party out of the US. But that’s also how individuals get into the US—through connections. That’s how they get the ability to go. The Chinese government’s pretty upset about this, and that’s one of the factors continuing this trade war.

Anne Kim: These Chinese students aren’t all just going to Harvard and Columbia, right? They’re diffused across the country—there are state schools that rely on international students and Chinese students as well?

Robert Kelchen: Yeah, they are all over the country because there are very good universities all over the country. Even for some of our regional public institutions, they’re enrolling substantial shares of international students. Some of it’s by word of mouth, and some of it’s because institutions in bigger cities have international populations and attract international students as well.

Anne Kim: Can you give us a few examples of regional public schools or state schools that maybe some of us wouldn’t automatically think of as heavily reliant on international students?

Robert Kelchen: I think of a place like the City University of New York, where they enroll quite a few international students because it’s New York City—there’s just a lot more comfort there. But even in smaller regional public institutions, like the University of Central Missouri, they’ve historically enrolled a couple hundred international students, many of them from India. There’s a pipeline there that’s helping to diversify the student body and also helping to stabilize the budget.

Garrett Epps: There’s an economic impact beyond the direct impact to institutions. I live in a college town with a state university and significant international student population. Studies suggest that international students themselves support as many as 400,000 jobs in this country. What will the overall economic impact be if there’s a real interruption in the flow?

Robert Kelchen: It would hurt local economies, especially outside the biggest cities. Several countries like Australia, Canada, and to some extent the UK have limited international student enrollment because they’re concerned about effects on housing prices by importing large numbers of students. That’s a lesser concern in the US because our overall international student population is about five to six percent of overall enrollment, but they do help fill up apartments. They eat, some of them work, they have cars—they drive economic activity. In an era where enrollment in higher education is generally flat or down, that’s an important source of students for colleges and their communities.

Anne Kim: One of the ironies is that Donald Trump is very obsessed with the trade deficit, and education exports—which is basically what this is when an international student comes to the United States—are one of the few areas where the United States actually has a trade surplus. We had a $43 billion trade surplus in education exports in 2024. One consequence of this ban on international students is it’s going to worsen the trade deficit.

Robert Kelchen: It absolutely will. But even going beyond the direct economics, we are exposing people to the American way of life, the American way of doing things. We’re exporting soft power. That has been extremely helpful around the world, helping to shape the development of much of the world. We think about what’s happened in Latin America and Africa—we’ve educated elites from those countries for decades and exported American capitalism instead of the Russian or Chinese way of doing things. So it helps with the trade deficit and also makes people more comfortable with America. Hopefully they’ll buy more of our stuff because they’re comfortable with America, and if we’ve done a good job, they’re making more money back home.

Anne Kim: Going back to the direct impacts on universities—can Harvard actually survive losing all of its international students? What’s going to be the impact on a place like Central Missouri as far as their survival and viability?

Robert Kelchen: Harvard plays by a different set of rules than most of American higher ed and they’re being targeted in a different way. If the international student pipeline just gets shut off, Harvard can’t replace everyone immediately, especially if returning students are affected, but over time they could enroll a class that’s 100 percent American or at least 100 percent non-Chinese. They may not get quite as much in tuition revenue, but their bigger concerns are: are they able to be that global engine? And are they able to do as quality education at the graduate level? In a lot of our STEM fields, we have masters and PhD students from other countries who then teach our students as well.

At the end of the day, Harvard and the Ivy Leagues are going to be okay. It’s the regional public institutions and smaller privates where they’re not going to be able to replace those students because there aren’t enough American students to go around to fill a 1.1 million student gap. With all the cuts to research funding, the big public research universities are going to try to expand enrollment. They have the market power to do it, but it further stretches the regional institutions who may both lose their international students and lose domestic students who have the chance to go somewhere more selective.

Garrett Epps: The administration claims there’s an issue of fairness in bringing international students in because they take up spots at a place like Harvard that should go to Americans. How do you assess that argument?

Robert Kelchen: Harvard is unlikely to expand its capacity in any meaningful way because it’s so expensive to add a new residential college, and I don’t think the locals in Cambridge would allow a big expansion. So yeah, for a few institutions, it is a zero-sum game, but for most of American higher education, we do not have capacity issues. If anything, the research backs this up—by bringing in a lot of full-price paying international students, that allows institutions to expand their capacity to hire more people, serve more American students, and offer financial aid.

But in the eyes of the administration, the Ivy Leagues are higher education. Even though they bash the Ivy Leagues, that’s where many of them went to school—that’s all they think about. They might throw in a reference to NYU every once in a while because I think one of the Trumps goes there.

Anne Kim: The tuition being paid by international students subsidizes middle class and lower income students, right? If you open up the slots available at Harvard for those students, it’s not likely that a low income student—especially at a regional public college—there may be less financial aid when you don’t have the tuition dollars available to subsidize it.

Robert Kelchen: Yes, the regional schools and even public big universities don’t have enormous financial aid budgets. The way they get money is through out-of-state, but especially international students, because they’re the ones who pay full price. There aren’t a lot of American students who pay full price at the undergraduate level.

Garrett Epps: The AAUP study said that the number of international students was already beginning to fall. Between March 2024 and March 2025, it fell by four or five percent. How extreme is the decline likely to be?

Robert Kelchen: At this point, I think anything between 10 percent and 100 percent is on the table. This is the biggest challenge, not just for college leaders, but for anyone in university communities. If you’re running an apartment complex, you don’t know how many people you’re going to have. That’s a problem. We could see a range of outcomes from pretty much the status quo to them dragging their feet on any visas so nobody international can study in the US. Both are very possible. We’re sitting here only six to eight weeks away from students needing to move to the US to get ready for the fall term, and we have absolutely no idea what could happen.

Anne Kim: Robert, you’ve done groundbreaking research on school closures, particularly around small private college closures. How is that population of colleges going to come out in all of this? Are there particular types of colleges you see as particularly vulnerable to the combination of financial pressures now bearing down on higher education?

Robert Kelchen: Assuming no changes to financial aid for students, the way most smaller private and public colleges are affected is through increased competition for students. Most of these institutions don’t have a lot of international students. If there are 500 students struggling to make ends meet, they likely don’t have an international market for their institution. They may be paying some broker to try to get international students, but they’re paying that broker so much money, they’re not getting a lot of tuition revenue out of it.

So they’re affected more by what happens farther up the prestige chain. If the big public research universities try to expand their enrollment, they may poach from the regional publics. The regional publics try, then community colleges or these really small struggling privates—their students start to get sucked up as well. But I think the bigger concern for colleges on the brink of closure is what happens to financial aid. Does that get out to students on time? If not, can colleges make payroll? That’s what I’m concerned about for that sector come August.

Garrett Epps: It’s been perceived in the opinion journalism sphere that Americans in general have begun to sour on higher education, that the image of institutions are in trouble. Do you think any of Trump’s critique of higher education is valid? Anything that they need to walk away from this episode determined to reform?

Robert Kelchen: I don’t know if there’s really the ability to do much reform with the second administration here. The first Trump administration, I think they were more open to reform. But here, I think there’s more of a mindset of “this is what we want to do.”

Conversely, we’ll see if we end up with a new secretary of education soon because Linda McMahon just said to Bloomberg, “I think there’s such merit in having international students be a part of our university populations. Culturally, it’s very beneficial.”

Anne Kim: Whoops.

Garrett Epps: She didn’t get the memo.

Robert Kelchen: But I think it also highlights the divide between different wings of the Republican Party. There’s the wing that is anti-immigrant in any way, and then there’s the more traditional pro-business wing that is perfectly happy with immigration. It’s kind of the debate fallout with Elon Musk versus Steve Bannon, where they represent different wings of the party.

Anne Kim: What options do universities have to weather this particular storm? Do enough colleges have endowment dollars that aren’t already spoken for that they can draw down on as a rainy day fund? What options do universities have to get through this?

Robert Kelchen: The easiest option is budget cuts because that’s something they can readily control. It’s painful, especially this late in the game thinking about fall. But most institutions either have budget cuts planned or contingency plans out there. Even at the red state public universities, publicly they’re saying everything’s okay, but privately, they’re also thinking about what budget cuts look like.

Endowments can be helpful for a small number of institutions, but most institutions have relatively small endowments on a per-student basis. Even for the Harvards of the world, 70 to 80 percent of their endowment funds are restricted for particular purposes, like very narrow student scholarships or supporting faculty in particular disciplines. Given how the Ivies operate like hedge funds, they can’t go out and sell a lot of their assets right now because they’re tied up in a million acres of land in Brazil or other alternative investments, which means they can’t get all the cash right now.

These big endowment colleges are also worried about the possibility of an endowment tax that could take away quite a bit of their earnings and make it less attractive for donors to give money. All financial hands are on deck right now, but the easiest thing to do is cut and then maybe see if you can use any other funds you have between the couch cushions to get through right now.

Garrett Epps: The big bill has some changes to endowment taxation. What are they and how would they play out?

Robert Kelchen: There are a couple of big changes. First is taking the tax rate that was 1.4 percent in 2017 up to as much as 21 percent. There have also been proposals to get rid of the tax-preferred status for donations—that’s not in the bill, but I believe that’s another thing the administration has talked about. The biggest thing really is just the tax rate going up so much.

Anne Kim: Just to clarify, the tax rate would be on investment income earnings rather than the corpus of the endowment, right?

Robert Kelchen: Yes, which also gives institutions an incentive to put their money someplace that doesn’t generate earnings right away.

Anne Kim: Right. So liquidity is going to be a gigantic problem for a lot of institutions come this fall and going forward. Well, thank you Robert for keeping an eye on this. I’m sure we’ll be back to you very soon with another update on what’s happening, and hopefully the news will be better.

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