Key points
- Trump may use global enrollment as leverage to demand changes on campuses elsewhere
- Trump blocks Harvard from enrolling international students
- Growth in international students has slowed in recent years: A professor
ISLAMABAD: The Trump administration’s surprising bid to end Harvard’s international enrollment put the higher education world on edge this week, looming as a larger threat against academic autonomy, according to The New York Times.
Well beyond the halls of Harvard this week, college leaders were shocked that one swift move by the federal government could eliminate their ability to serve students from abroad, a growing population that has infused their campuses with cachet and wealth, according to the newspaper.
“This is a grave moment,” Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a message to her campus. Over 5,000 miles away, Wendy Hensel, the president of the University of Hawaii, said that it was “reverberating across higher education,” The New York Times reported.
“Liberal bias”
President Trump has already unnerved universities this year by launching investigations, freezing grants, demanding changes in campus practices, and attempting to deport international students. He has justified his punitive approach as a means to combat what he considers “antisemitism”. But he and his allies also have long resented a perceived liberal bias and racial diversity efforts at prestigious colleges, according to The New York Times.
The Trump administration said Thursday that it revoked Harvard’s international student certification because the university had failed to meet its demands, including a request for records of student protest activity dating back five years.
To many academics, that was a clear signal that Trump was prepared to use any federal mechanism as leverage if he did not get what he wants, The New York Times reported.
“While Harvard is the victim of the moment, it’s a warning and unprecedented attempt of a hostile federal government to erode the autonomy of all major universities in the US,” said John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
“1 million international students”
The reaction highlights the increasing role international students have played in American higher education, particularly at some of the most prestigious universities. Across the nation, enrollment from abroad has doubled in the last 25 years, with more than 1 million international students now studying in the United States, according to The New York Times.
The number of international students enrolled at US colleges and universities has doubled since 2000. Universities see many benefits from having a global student body that enriches the intellectual, social and cultural life on campus. Drawing the world’s top talent also helps develop outstanding academic programs and opportunities for groundbreaking research.
But as selective universities have grown more international, some conservatives say American students are losing out, according to The New York Times.
“Unsafe campus environment”
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who terminated Harvard’s access to the federal Student and Exchange Visitor Program, said on Thursday that the move was a response to an “unsafe campus environment” for students. She alleged that many protesters who have engaged in harassment and physical assault were foreign students.
Niall Hegarty, a professor of management at St. John’s University in New York who has researched international student enrollment trends, said the growth in international students has slowed in recent years compared with the early 2000s.
