Trump makes academia face the truth about foreign students

Are American graduate schools still American?

That’s what President Donald Trump is asking as he takes action against Harvard University and its large international-student population.

His effort to restrict Harvard’s foreign-student visas seeks to address a growing problem in higher education: Many of our most renowned graduate schools are overwhelmingly non-American.

On Wednesday, Columbia University capitulated on the issue — agreeing in its deal with Trump to “take steps to decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment.”

The Ivy also promised to probe “international student-applicants [on] their reasons for wishing to study in the United States” — in other words, to keep out the sneaky saboteurs coming here to wreak havoc.

Significantly, Columbia’s decision signals to other top-tier schools, Harvard in particular, that it’s not worth fighting the administration over international-graduate-student enrollment.

And that is welcome news indeed.

We support international educational exchange, as most Americans do.

The problem is disproportionality: A huge influx of foreign students has changed the character of traditionally American institutions, leaving American students increasingly crowded out — and even making them targets of prejudice and discrimination.

The numbers speak for themselves.

During the 2023-2024 academic year, the United States hosted 1.1 million international students, a sharp 7% increase from the year prior.

Nearly half of them, 500,000-plus, were graduate students.

International grad-school enrollments grew by 10.2% between 2021 and 2022, as American enrollments dropped by 4.7%.

Some fields, mostly STEM-related, have seen a 100% international-student enrollment boom since the COVID-19 pandemic.

At Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, for example, the percentage of international students rose from 56% in 2023 to 59% in 2024.

At Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Columbia and others, international students make up 48% or more of the graduate-student body. At MIT, it’s 42%.

As the foreign graduate population soared, so too did antisemitism and anti-Americanism on college campuses.

Coincidence?

We don’t think so.

One analysis found that once the international-student population surpasses 13% at a university, campus protests double.

Any reasonable observer of the post-Oct. 7 campus troubles must notice the heavy involvement of foreign graduate students like Mahmoud Khalil, who reportedly helped organize a campaign of intimidation at Columbia.

Rather than trying to address the problem, schools like Harvard are fighting federal subpoenas seeking foreign students’ disciplinary records — while simultaneously claiming the government has no proof their foreign students are a problem.

Only intense pressure from Trump forced Columbia to confront the truth.

But the problem is not just campus culture — there’s strong evidence that international enrollment is shutting American students, particularly minorities, out of opportunities.

Harvard’s Kennedy School saw a 50% drop in “black or African American” enrollment in 2023 compared to 2021, while international enrollment rose.

In addition, multiple scholarship opportunities at publicly funded colleges are open only to illegal-immigrant students, excluding those who are American-born.

Our Equal Protection Project has filed legal challenges to such programs at five schools (so far — there are many more), prompting the US Department of Education to open investigations into our cases.

And there’s a hidden long-term cost to these disproportionate numbers of foreign students in America’s graduate programs: brain drain.

Most of the international students who gain higher-level degrees in American programs take their education and skills back to their home countries — talent and training lost to us domestically, because those spots could and should have been filled by Americans.

Only about 30% of all international graduate students eventually seek green cards and legal permanent US residency.

And there’s some evidence that those who do join the US workforce after graduation undercut their job-seeking American classmates — because employers can sponsor them for H-1B visas and hire them on the cheap.

Most international students come here for good reasons, but their disproportionate representation has undeniably created negative consequences.

Trump’s effort to force schools to address the problem is a step in the right direction — and the Columbia deal shows academia that ignoring it is no longer an option.

We love international students.

But we also love the American character of our American universities — and don’t want to see that lost.

William A. Jacobson is a clinical professor of law at Cornell University and founder of the Equal Protection Project and CriticalRace.org, where Kemberlee Kaye is operations and editorial director.