International College/University Students

This week, the current U.S. Government administration announced that they were going to make changes as to how long an international college student could  stay in this country.

The announcement stated, “that beginning September 15, 2026, an international student, entering under an F-1 Visa, would only be allowed to stay for four years, tied to their academic program.”

Previously, a student could stay as long as they were enrolled in a college program and followed visa regulations.

Under the proposed new regulations, assuming that a court doesn’t block them, if the course of study is greater than 4 years, the student must apply to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service for an extension.

The new rule would also require the student to leave the United States, after finishing the program, within 30 days. Currently it is 60 days.

Some Universities, educators and international-student organizations have filed suit, to stop these new regulations from going into effect.

The case is currently pending, but the new regulation is still scheduled to become effective September 15, 2026.

This new regulation would particularly affect Doctorial students, students transitioning from undergraduate to graduate programs, medical students, and those students who may need more time for a number of personal reasons.

There are two types of Visa’s that affect these students, the F-1 and the J-1.

The F class of visa’s allows foreigners ( non-immigrant students) to pursue academic studies in the United States. The F-1 is for a fulltime student, while the F-2 is for spouses, or children of holders of an F-1 visa.

There is also an F-3 visa, which is for residents of Mexico and Canada to remain in their home country but to travel to and from school in the United States.

The F-1 visa is only issued by U.S. Embassies and Consulates. The individual must first be accepted for admission by a college or university, and then must apply for the visa and go through an extensive process.

The J-1 visa is a visa that is issued to research scholars, professors and cultural exchange program participants. The recipient must have a U.S. sponsor. The permitted length of stay varies by type of program the recipient is involved in. It can be for as little as a few weeks to as long as 7 years.

Upon expiration of the visa, the recipient must leave the country for 2 years. Under certain conditions, that 2 year window may be waived. At the present time, no changes are proposed for this visa.

This announcement caused me to reflect back to 1988, when I was a participant in a U.S. Small Business Administration Program that involved traveling to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea.

The purpose of the trip was to meet executives of manufacturing companies in these locations, view their manufacturing processes, and determine applicability to our industries.

The thing that stood out to me was what these companies were doing that was making them competitive, world- wide.

At the time, I had joined Tony Welters in a new venture, American Coastal Industries (ACI). Tony had recently reached an agreement to purchase ACI. I was recruited to assist in acquiring additional government contracts.

ACI was a small business manufacturer, overhauling railcars. They had recently received a contract from the U.S. Navy to manufacture seasheds in Renovo, PA. The prior manufacturer had gone bankrupt. We looked at the contract requirements and believed that we could manufacture them at a profit. The facility in Renovo was previously a Pennsylvania Railroad facility. I was familiar with the area as my hometown was about an hour and a half away.

A seashed was a 60,000 pound, steel apparatus, that held an M1-Tank inside the hull of a ship, during transit from one location to another. We continued to look at other government contracts that required the welding and assembly capabilities that we had in Renovo.

As a result we were successful in winning contracts to manufacture a 20 foot ammunition container, and sea buoys.

Being a small business manufacturing company, we were invited to be part of the group participating in the Small Business Program.

One of the facilities we visited in South Korea manufactured sea going containers similar to our ammunition container. Everything was automated, from welding to assembly to painting. Their pricing was also half of ours. They were fully automated while  we  did everything manually. Their automation line however cost $5 million.

In Taiwan, we visited a facility that was manufacturing desktop computers for Acer, IBM and Dell. Here we  met with senior management and then their senior engineers. They had three lines set up for their manufacturing process, and each was especially efficient.

The most interesting part of the visit was when I met a number of their engineers in their offices. All were all graduates of United States universities, with engineering degrees.

They were graduates of MIT, California Poly, Georgia Tech, Stanford and Purdue. Their diplomas were hanging on their office walls.

I found this interesting, because at that time, you were not allowed to take a portable computer out of the United States. They didn’t need to, they were educated here, at the best schools, and had taken that knowledge home.

In the past 38 years, nothing much had changed. We are continuing to educate the worlds brightest from abroad.  After they are educated here,  we tell them to go home, you can’t stay here. What stupidity on our part!  No wonder China and India are surging ahead of us in many technological fields.

I decided to do some research on international students here in the U.S. The following is a capsule look at what I have found.

During the 2024-2025 school year, U.S. colleges and universities had 1,177,766  international students attending. Approximately 671,000, or 57% were enrolled in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) classes. Of that number, approximately 306,000 were enrolled in math or computer science and 212,000 in engineering.

Undergraduates totaled 357,231, while graduate students totaled 488,481. The remaining non-degree students totaled 37,801 and optional practical training students totaled 294,253.

The Optional Practical Training Program (OPT) allows international graduates to work in the United States, after graduation. It is seeing a significant reduction in applications, because of the current administration’s policies. . These graduates do research support, and assist in teaching. The reduction is creating serious issues here.

In 2024-2025,  international students were approximately 6% of all U.S. higher education students. It is estimated that in 2024, they contributed $55 billion to the U.S. economy, as well as supported 355,000 jobs in the U.S.

The President and CEO of the Institute of International Education, states “International students come to the United States to advance their education and contribute to U.S. colleges and communities.”

 He believes that this drive, innovation, and advance scholarship, strengthens cross-cultural understanding.

The country with the largest number of students in 2024-2025 was India with 363,019. China was second with 265,919. South Korea was third with 42,293. India has been showing a steady increase while China has been showing a decrease.

As a comparison, the U.S. only had 298,180 students studying abroad in 2023-2024. Italy, Spain, the U.K., and France were the leading host destinations for U.S. students abroad. Most of the U.S. students were studying business and social scienses. Only 16,933 were studying engineering.

California had the greatest number of international students, 139,351, followed by New York with 137,799. Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri , followed with a total of 461,001.

When one looks at the totality of international students studying the U.S., you have to wonder what is this current administration thinking?

The U.S. Department of State has been “promoting the United States as the leading higher education destination for students around the world and maintaining that position is a priority.” In a U.S. Government pamphlet, it states,  “The internationalism of American university campuses has become an integral aspect of the excellence and dynamism of the U.S. higher education system.” That doesn’t appear to be consistent with the current administration’s policies.

It appears that fewer international students are planning to study in the U.S. If so, this could be catastrophic for many colleges and universities, and the economy. The “Common App”  indicated that for the 2026-2027 academic year, the number of international applicants fell 10%.

Fitsh Ratings believes that capping student visa stays at 4 years could put some schools in financial jeopardy. Elite schools like Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Duke won’t be affected.

The second tier schools will see the greatest disruption.

Local economies will be affected. F-1 visa’s  issued in the first half of 2025 were 15% lower than the previous year. China visa applications are significantly lower. It appears that graduate students are bearing a major part of the decline.

Another factor that affects the various colleges and universities, is the loss of revenue. International students generally pay a higher tuition. The loss of that revenue has a major impact on school budgets.

The Association of International Educators and JB International estimates that there could be 111,000 fewer international students at American colleges and universities in the fall of 2026.

The reduction in enrollment of international students could result in a loss of 40,000 jobs and $3.4 billion in revenue. Since these students attend every state, every state will fell the impact. Those states that could see the largest impact are California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

The factor driving this reduction is primarily the current administrations attitude toward international students. They have been making it more difficult to obtain a travel visa, and creating bottlenecks to obtain an F-1 visa.

Approximately 25 percent of billion dollar startups in this country were founded by someone who was a former international student. It is also thought that , because international students pay a higher tuition, tuition for U.S. students is generally lower.

It has also been proven that international students make major contributions to American innovation. Fei-Fei Li,  Chinese,and a former international student, earned degrees at Princeton and Caltech (MS & PhD). She started the company  ImageNet in 2010. Its specialty was computer vision, an image data base company.

She is currently co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence and co-director of the Stanford Vison and Learning Lab. She is considered the god-mother of AI.

She is also a Professor of  Computer Science at Stanford. In 2023 she was named one of the Time 100 AI Most Influential People.

Some might say that she wasn’t a typical international student because she and her mother  immigrated to the U.S. when she was 16, to join her father. However, her background is typical of most international students.

Rattan Lai is from India and received his PhD at Ohio State. He has received accolades for his work in sustainable agriculture. He received his undergraduate and master degrees in India but came to the U.S. to study for his PhD.

He has worked in Australia and Nigeria as a soil physicist. He is currently the Distinguished Professor of Soil Science at Ohio State. He has also co-founded the CFAES Rattan Lai Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration. His work focuses on turning degraded soil into healthy soil in order to feed the world’s people.

Ardem Patapoutian is from Lebanon and studied at UCLA and Caltech. He is a molecular biologist and neuroscientist. In 2021 he  received the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine.

He is a naturalized U.S. citizen and a Professor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He earned his PhD in biology at Caltech.

These are only a few of the international students who have achieved success, here and abroad.

If one truly looked objectively at the positiveness that international students bring , why would one want to continually make it more difficult for them to come to America and attend one of our schools of higher education? It truly makes no sense.

Culturally, international students help us understand each other and promotes cross-cultural collaboration.

It appears that the current government policies are attempting to isolate us from the rest of the world. We should know by now, that we are not a nation unto ourselves. We need relationships with all.

It is my view that “The Global Economy” is real and we must participate. How better than to have relationships, through education, with other nations of the world. We need the International Student.

Hopefully, smarter heads will prevail in the future, and we will continue the cross pollination of ideas for the better good.

Jess Sweely

Madison, VA

August 29, 2026