US schools are creating contingency plans for international students

Kirk Carapezza: Yeah, so the University of Toronto and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government announced a backup plan this week. If visa restrictions block students from returning to the US this fall, some of their graduate students could continue their studies north of the border in Canada, and students could take government courses in Toronto that are co-taught by faculty from both schools.

No, other schools have also opened their doors, offering spots to US-bound students this fall. American University of Nigeria and Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. At Franklin University in Switzerland, there are 40 seats this fall for students from colleges in the US, and the school is even offering scholarships. Marjorie Haas is president of the Council of Independent Colleges here in the US, and she says more schools are looking abroad for help, to survive what she calls Trump’s “chaos tax,” and Haas tells me, just knowing that some schools have international partners ready to jump in, even on a student-by-student basis at the last minute, it’s a huge relief.

Sure. So, just to review, the Department of Homeland Security says Harvard, specifically, shouldn’t be allowed to enroll any international students because some of them participated in Gaza-related protests that some on the right have characterized as either anti-American or antisemitic. The government has said that enrolling international students is a privilege, not a right. Harvard has sued the government and, for now, a federal judge in Boston has blocked the move. But the fallout is already here. I mean, if you look at Harvard Kennedy School, they’re already laying off staff. Last year, more than half of the students there came from abroad. And in a message to faculty [last] week, the dean blamed, “unprecedented headwinds,” including threats to international students and deep federal research cuts. Colleges are drawing up many different budget plans, ranging from “it’s going to be ‘business as usual'” to “what if zero students come back in the fall?”

International students, right.

Yeah, so the interviews are back on, but they’re increasing scrutiny of students’ social media accounts. It’s easy to get sucked into Harvard because it grabs so many headlines, but if you just look at Worcester here in Massachusetts, there’s a school, Clark University, where two-thirds of their graduate students are from abroad, and they’re planning to cut a third of their faculty over the next few years because they’re so afraid of enrollment dropping.

They say that the schools are overreacting and that this scrutiny is long overdue. They point to similar changes and updates that went into effect after 9/11, and they say this all might slow things down for a while but, in the end, there will be some rejections for students who in the past might have gotten in. I spoke with Simon Hankinson. He’s a senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation, and he says these changes shouldn’t make a huge difference unless a school is overwhelmingly reliant on foreign students, and Hankinson says schools are cherry-picking sad visa stories to win back public support.

Yeah, they’re quietly hosting international students who chose not to leave this summer, just to avoid any visa issues. One small college in the Midwest is putting up more than a hundred students who otherwise would have gone home for the summer. About half of their incoming international class has their visas but others are still in limbo. Some are getting interviews some are not.