Trump’s Grad School Slump

Decades of rapid growth made master’s programs a pillar of the modern university business model. A trifecta of political threats could bring it crashing down — just when schools need it most.

Graduate schools have been a financial cornerstone of the US higher education system for decades. Now, at universities across the country, major cracks are showing in that foundation.

The common denominator is President Donald Trump, whose campaign to reshape academia has sent the $100 billion grad school market into a tailspin. The administration has cracked down on student visa applicants, a move with outsize impact on grad programs, which are far more dependent on international students than undergraduate schools. Trump’s signature tax law placed strict limits on previously uncapped grad loans, making it harder for domestic applicants to pay for degrees. And historic upheaval in federal research grants, like the funding freezes at Harvard University and Columbia University last year, are destabilizing key programs and deterring anxious students.

This spring, the number of master’s students fell by more than 30,000 from last year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Chevelle Newsome, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, said this fall’s enrollment numbers will be a bellwether for the pace of the sector’s decline. But however steep the drop, she says schools are in a “crisis response” mode that “will take decades to recover from.”