President Donald Trump has a historic opportunity to turn American academia back into an institution that serves Americans. He recently denied Harvard University additional international students in his crackdown on foreign subversion and discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Harvard won a temporary restraining order, but with the Supreme Court in safe hands, he is likely to win the war. 

American universities have become dependent on foreign students who pay full tuition, allowing them to continue their expansions and bloated bureaucracies. Universities then appeal to national prestige and competitiveness to convince Americans that this is a necessity. 

The outrage from Harvard and other universities over the potential loss of international students reveals a deeper problem in academia than the battle over DEI. It shows how reliant on foreign student visas they have become. This reliance cannot continue if these universities are to serve American interests. 

It’s time to force universities to change their business model toward one that returns American academia to an institution that serves American citizens, not just American GDP. But there’s a better way. Trump should drastically limit the availability of foreign student visas — not as a means of policy coercion alone but to restore academia for American citizens.

Educating International Students Isn’t Charity. It’s a Business Model.

The numbers tell a startling story. In the 2023–24 academic year, roughly 1.1 million foreign students attended American universities, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. This accounted for nearly 15 percent at universities with at least 1,000 enrolled students — nearly double the rate in 2000. 

In 2023, international students made up 27 percent of students at Ivy League schools. At Harvard, they made up 28 percent, and at Columbia University, 40 percent. Other prestigious, non-Ivy League schools also had outrageously high percentages of international students, including Johns Hopkins — 39 percent — and Carnegie Mellon — 44 percent.

But these universities aren’t exporting American higher education from a place of philanthropy. It’s a business model. The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Karin Fischer aptly noted that foreign students’ “tuition dollars are pretty important to keeping the lights on.” 

American universities have a financial incentive to bypass American applicants who often receive scholarships or pay in-state tuition. The children of foreign elites, however, pay two to three times more. Without that foreign revenue, universities would not be able to sustain armies of diversity scolds and “belonging” programs.

Besides the ideological rot and bureaucratic corruption, this cash infusion comes at a steep cost, transforming universities into finishing schools for global elites while American students struggle to afford skyrocketing tuition.

The “Best and Brightest” Trap

The argument that America must attract the “best and brightest” from abroad to stay competitive is seductive but cynical. University administrators, cloaking their appeals in patriotic rhetoric, claim foreign talent is essential for global leadership. Yet with nearly four million high school seniors graduating annually, America has no shortage of potential. It suffers from a shortage of quality high schools. If competitiveness were truly the goal, universities would collaborate more with high schools to cultivate domestic talent rather than recruiting foreign nationals. 

This dependency also creates grave national security risks. The FBI has warned that America’s culture of “academic collaboration” comes with serious risks of espionage and intellectual property theft. The latter annually costs the U.S. economy around half a trillion dollars. The FBI warned that “some foreign actors, particularly foreign state adversaries, seek to illicitly or illegitimately acquire U.S. academic research and information to advance their scientific, economic, and military development goals.”

China’s Young Thousand Talents program intentionally hacks America’s diversity cult to its own advantage. It incentivizes Chinese STEM graduates educated abroad to return and apply their expertise toward China’s advancement. A study by Stanford University’s Center on China’s Economy and Institutions found although Young Thousand Talents failed to recoup China’s best native talent, the lower-level researchers who did return became more prolific than the higher achievers who remained abroad and were more likely to become independent researchers after their return to China.

When Ivy League administrators pocket millions from Chinese partnerships and tuition while sensitive research leaks to Beijing, the “global talent” argument becomes a suicide pact. But even if international students and faculty never did anything nefarious, relying on foreign students to prop up American universities strengthens developing nations at the expense of young Americans’ higher educational potential.

They Weren’t Always Like This

America’s world-class university system exploded off the G.I. Bill’s promise to educate returning veterans, not to serve as a global prestige factory. The expansion continued in the 1960s and 70s as baby boomers went through their college years. During this era, American academia invested heavily in educating Americans. 

As the birthrate dropped off, however, universities had fewer customers. Federal student aid and universal, unsecured loans artificially boosted demand but that also created an expansion arms race in academia. As governments cut higher education funding during the Great Recession, universities — rather than adapt — boosted international enrollment to keep the gravy train rolling.

This reliance on foreign tuition perpetuates a vicious cycle of rising costs. With international students as a financial safety net, universities can raise tuition without fear of market consequences. This induces more American middle-class families to rely on federal aid and exacerbates the moral hazard of federal student loans. 

Meanwhile, because American business leaders care only about profits, they sponsor many of these foreign, U.S.-educated elites to remain and outcompete their debt-saddled American peers in the white-collar job market. 

The Solution: Removing the Foreign Student Safety Net

The federal government should drastically phase down the availability of foreign student visas until that number reaches 5 percent. Additionally, the government should reserve those slots for foreign nationals from allied countries — there’s no sense in educating and training America’s potential adversaries. 

For years, “experts” believed educating Chinese students in the U.S. would encourage the growth of free market democracy in China. That policy has utterly failed. Today, the Chinese Communist Party is as powerful as ever, and it benefits from America educating its youth.

Revising this policy would force universities to confront market realities. They would be forced to offer only what the American job market demands at costs American parents and young adults can afford. Likewise, CEOs would adjust their business model with the understanding that if they want future workers, they’ll have to draw them from among American citizens. This would incentivize corporate America to take a greater interest in America’s failing K-12 education system and the recruitment of American students into prestigious universities. 

Such a transition would be painful. Some smaller universities may close, and elite universities would need to downsize. But universities that can’t survive on American tuition alone deserve to face the same reality as any overextended business: adjust or perish. 

Universities will cry that reducing foreign enrollment will diminish America’s global influence. But influence built on foreign dependency is fragile and misaligned with national interests. Besides, the cynicism of this appeal is blaring. The same universities that plead for foreign students to maintain American “competitiveness” often teach that America is systemically racist and built on genocide and offer courses that relentlessly bash American capitalism. 

The federal government can allow American academia to continue down a path of dependency, rising tuition, and security risks or embrace short-term pain for long-term national renewal. Most universities, like most employers, care foremost about profits. This is why federal, coercive correction is necessary. By ending their addiction to foreign tuition, the government can force American universities can reconnect with their original mission: unlocking the potential of America’s citizens. 

The future belongs to nations that educate and recruit their own — not those that mortgage their children’s birthright for foreign cash.

Jacob Grandstaff is an investigative researcher for Restoration News covering immigration, labor policy, and election integrity.

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