Top US universities raced to become global campuses. Under Trump, it's becoming a liability

WASHINGTON: Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%. Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world's best students.

Now, the booming international enrolment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation's borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education. Trump's latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

His proclamation applies only to Harvard, and the college on Thursday filed a legal challenge against it. But Trump's order poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform. It's rattling campuses under federal scrutiny, including Columbia University, where foreign students make up 40% of the campus.

As the Trump administration stepped up reviews of new student visas last week, a group of Columbia faculty and alumni raised concerns over Trump's gatekeeping powers. “Columbia's exposure to this stroke of pen' risk is uniquely high,” the Stand Columbia Society wrote in a newsletter.

Ivy League schools draw heavily on international students

People from other countries made up about 6% of all college students in the US in 2023, but they accounted for 27% of the eight schools in the Ivy League, according to an Associated Press analysis of Education Department data. Columbia's 40% was the largest concentration, followed by Harvard and Cornell at about 25%. Brown University had the smallest share at 20%.

As the middle class has grown in other countries, more families have been able to afford test prep and admissions guidance to compete for spots in the Ivy League, said Rajika Bhandari, who leads a firm of higher education consultants.

“The Ivy League brand is very strong overseas, especially in countries like India and China, where families are extremely brand-aware of top institutions in the U.S. and other competing countries,” she said. Over the last two decades, she said, US universities have increasingly recognized the benefits of international exchange, seeing it as a crucial revenue source that subsidizes US students and keeps enrolments up in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

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'Gold rush' in higher education

America's universities have been widening their doors to foreign students for decades, but the numbers shot upward starting around 2008, as Chinese students came to U.S. universities in rising numbers. It was part of a “gold rush” in higher education, said William Brustein, who orchestrated the international expansion of several universities.

“Whether you were private or you were public, you had to be out in front in terms of being able to claim you were the most global university," said Brustein, who led efforts at Ohio State University and West Virginia University. The race was driven in part by economics, he said.

Foreign students typically aren't eligible for financial aid and, at some schools, they pay much higher tuition than their American counterparts. Colleges also were eyeing global rankings that gave schools a boost if they recruited larger numbers of foreign students, he said.

Some wealthier universities — including Harvard — offer financial aid to foreign students. But students who get into those top-tier U.S. universities often have the means to pay higher tuition rates, Brustein said. Still, international enrolment didn't expand equally across all types of colleges.

Public universities often face pressure from state lawmakers to limit foreign enrolment and keep more seats open for state residents. Private universities don't face that pressure.

Supporters say foreign students benefit colleges — and the wider US economy: Proponents of international exchange say foreign students pour billions of dollars into the US economy, and many go on to support the nation's tech industry and other fields in need of skilled workers. Most international students study STEM fields.

International students in Ivy League schools

In the Ivy League, most international growth has been at the graduate level, while undergraduate numbers have seen more modest increases. Foreign graduate students make up more than half the students at Harvard's government and design schools, along with five of Columbia's schools.

Harvard's undergraduate foreign population increased by about 100 students from 2013 to 2023, while graduate numbers increased by nearly 2,000. Part of that growth can be explained by increasing global competition at the graduate level, said William Kirby, a historian at Harvard who has written about the evolution of higher education.

“If you don't recruit the very best students internationally in your most important graduate programs, particularly in science and engineering, then you will not be competitive," Kirby said. The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said.

He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings. “That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,'” he said.

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Trump's action and reaction

Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%. The university called Trump's latest action banning entry into the country to attend Harvard “yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights.”

In a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's previous attempt to block international students at Harvard, the university said its foreign student population was the result of “a painstaking, decades-long project” to attract the most qualified international students. Losing access to student visas would immediately harm the school's mission and reputation, it said.