International Students Get an Education in Fear

International students contributed more than $50 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023, according to Department of Commerce research cited by the Institute of International Education. Research at UC Davis, meanwhile, has found that international graduate students create a far higher proportion of business startups in this country than do U.S.-born grad students.

In short, the Trump administration’s ham-handed attempts to drive foreign students out of the country amount to a lose-lose-lose. California universities will fail to attract top international students and scholars. Their budgets, which are boosted significantly by “nonresident” tuition payments, will suffer from the steep drop in foreign student tuition. And those students will go on not only to get their education but make their careers elsewhere, depriving the U.S. of their productivity and economic contributions.

“Our workforce needs workers with graduate degrees,” said Suzanne Ortega, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Council of Graduate Schools. “We should be doing more to support international students who want to get graduate degrees, not enact policies that will make it impossible.”