Could Trump’s crackdown on foreign students exacerbate declining college enrollment?
Since President Donald Trump took office, the day-to-day lives of international students like Harvard sophomore Abdullah Shahid Sial have changed.
When Shahid Sial, from Pakistan, walks around the Cambridge campus, he carries his passport and other identification documents in case his student visa is abruptly revoked or his Student and Exchange Visitor Information status is terminated.
He knows which lawyer might represent him if he is picked up by ICE and has even drafted a pre-written message to his friend to send to his parents in case he is detained and can't speak to them.
" The fact that you only have one of me right now and not many international students in front of you, willing to speak, is a big testament to how frightened people are to speak up in this environment. It's a level which I haven't seen before, ever. I don't think I've seen this in any university in Pakistan," said Shahid Sial, the co-president of Harvard's undergraduate student body.
The fear for many international students comes after Harvard, along with hundreds of other institutions across the country, has been dealing with an onslaught of student visa revocations and their Student and Exchange Visitor Information statuses have been terminated.
On top of that, the Department of Homeland Security also ordered Harvard to submit detailed records of "illegal and violent activities" by foreign student visa holders before the end of the month, or it would lose a key certification allowing international students to attend Harvard.
About 27% of Harvard's undergraduate and graduate students are international, according to 2024 to 2025 data .
The federal government's actions toward Harvard and international students could have significant effects on higher education enrollment and the viability of colleges.
Many schools have already been contending with declines in enrollment, leading to many institutions across Massachusetts closing. With shifts in birth rates, the issue is only expected to worsen.
"That's a challenge that we face independent of immigration policy at the national level," said Luc Schuster, executive director of the research center Boston Indicators. "And then there is a real risk that that problem is exacerbated by declining numbers of international students coming if it becomes much harder to get a student visa to come here from abroad."
International students have been an integral part of slowing down what could have been a faster decline in enrollment, Schuster said.
Why have there been declines in college enrollment?
A key fear in higher education is the "demographic cliff," where there will be fewer traditionally college-aged students in the United States.
The total number of high school graduates is estimated to peak in 2026 in Massachusetts before steadily declining through 2041, decreasing by over 77,000 students in the state and about 500,000 or 13% nationwide, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
This is partly due to fewer people having children beginning around the Great Recession of 2008.
This is a big deal for a state like Massachusetts, where education is one of its largest industries .
While the peak is still on the horizon, enrollment declines have already begun — more than two dozen Massachusetts colleges have closed or merged. Most recently, Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy announced in June that it would close by the end of the academic year, citing financial issues.
Another school, Bard College at Simon's Rock , said in February that it would close its Great Barrington campus due to declining enrollment.
International students' impact on Massachusetts
At the same time that enrollment is declining for many institutions, more colleges and universities have been looking to recruit international students in part because they are often full-pay, said Lynn Pasquerella, the former president of Mount Holyoke College who now serves as president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
" When we look at alternative sources of revenue apart from the traditional domestic students, campus leaders are looking at recruiting international students who often are full-pay students. Many institutions don't provide financial aid or full financial aid for international students," Pasquerella said.
Massachusetts has more than 82,000 international students, the fourth largest number after Texas, New York and California, according to Open Doors data from 2023 to 2024.
That's 18.3% of Massachusetts' 449,000 college students, or nearly 1 in 5.
International students contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2023-2024 academic year, according to the NAFSA or the Association of International Educators .
Abdullah Shahid Sial, a Harvard University sophomore from Lahore, Pakistan, pictured in front of the Statue of John Harvard at the Cambridge campus.(Will Katcher/MassLive)
Despite the impact on the U.S. economy, international students right now are "being used as poker chips" to push Harvard to comply with what the federal government wants, Shahid Sial said.
Friends of Shahid Sial from Pakistan who were planning to come to the U.S. for college are second-guessing or backing out and current students are questioning whether they should transfer.
"I heard the word 'transfer' so many times over the past few days, people are considering many places in the U.K., many places in Canada," Shahid Sial said.
"Harvard is Harvard because, again, it has the ability to get the best people from around the world. If that is threatened, then Harvard is not Harvard anymore," he said.
Clark University's president, David Fithian, told MassLive Tuesday morning that fears about student visa revocations and statuses being terminated could have an effect on enrollment.
" We're already hearing from students who are uncertain about coming to the United States to start their education, an educational program at Clark. And for students already here, they're obviously deeply concerned about their ability to stay, their ability to travel home and return and their ability to continue to study the subjects that they came to study and the right we all enjoy to speak freely about world matters," Fithian said.
International students comprise about 35% of Clark's student body, including undergraduates and graduates, he said.
The potential impact of fewer international students in Massachusetts could be drastic and an act of "self-sabotage," according to Schuster, from Boston Indicators.
"... Part of what's made our local economy so strong is the number of international students who come here for undergraduate or graduate studies, and then end up staying here, laying down roots, starting businesses, working in the information technology sector," he said.
"So it's both a direct concern for the institutions themselves but also for the broader regional economy over the next generation or so," he said.
Harvard's international population could be in jeopardy
There has been an "all-out government attack on Harvard," where anything that touches the federal government and the university is being looked at, said Sarah Spreitzer, from the American Council on Education.
A surprising part of that has been the threat that the federal government will walk back Harvard's certification to allow international students at the institution.
The Student and Exchange Visitor Program, also known as SEVP, allows higher education institutions to issue forms to prospective international students after admitting them. The forms are used to apply for a visa to enter the United States.
The certification requirements include that the school is operational and instructing students, has the necessary facilities and adequate finances to operate, provides instruction to a degree or objective and meets state requirements to operate, according to the Department of Homeland Security website .
"If Harvard, for some reason, sees their certification revoked, that's basically limiting the students that they can admit, which starts to walk the line with academic freedom," Spreitzer said.
Colleges are recertified every two years, but it isn't frequently taken away. When it has, it is due to some sort of fraud, according to Spreitzer.
For instance, Herguan University in California in 2016 was stripped of the certification after its CEO pleaded guilty to providing fraudulent documents to the Department of Homeland Security, according to East Bay Times .
The threat to Harvard's certification lays bare the concerns that hundreds of higher education leaders have about government overreach and political interference in higher education.
" My fears are that this continued governmental overreach will upend the strength of American higher education," said Pasquerella.
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