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When my two younger sons returned home from camp, we went to see The Odyssey. Christopher Nolan’s retelling of the canonical hero’s journey was a visually stunning (and often deafening) commentary on both hospitality and technology – but, notably, not on hospitality technology. We all agreed it was a commentary that would have been undermined if Nolan had gone with the more obvious title: Let’s Run Back to the Boats.
Even if it didn’t take a decade, getting both boys home from camp was an odyssey. Summer travel is always hard, beset by inexperienced fliers and thunderstorms. So this summer, O’Hare’s Terminal B became my home away from home as I endured two 5+ hour delays. One was weather, the other maintenance. And one was unnecessarily elongated – not by the gods, but by a passenger.
Zev and I were on our way back to Los Angeles when a long maintenance delay resulted in a switch to a new plane. When we finally boarded at 11 p.m. but the doors remained open, we learned we couldn’t push back because catering hadn’t shown up. Given the hour and the fact that no one much cared about United’s snacks and drinks, the mood was as bleak as the wine-dark sea, especially for a young woman who decided it was time to scroll her YouTube feed at full volume. Flight attendants tried to convince her to use headphones or turn the volume off, but she refused. After several crew consultations, the decision was made to ask her to leave the plane. But she refused. With two flight attendants hovering, she finally rose from her seat – not to leave the plane, but to rove up and down the aisle taunting crew and passengers that she would delay us further if she wasn’t allowed to remain on the plane.
Her logic wasn’t entirely sound, because her ranting was about how she was delayed 5 hours, and now she was going to force us all to eat from the pie of suffering (when we’d all been suffering along with her). I told Zev she was Iran and we were the Strait of Hormuz. Partway through the roaming and raving, Zev began recording. The following excerpt has been edited only to remove expletives.
Passenger: They asked me to turn my phone down, I turned it down. [Turning to a passenger recording video] I might go viral. I look good, don’t I? Hold on, let me get a little closer for you… I’m on ____ United, broke-ass flight. _____ asked me to turn my phone down, I turned it down. We were delayed how many times? Flight was supposed to be at 6, now it’s 11. Right. I’m gonna stay right here.
Passenger: Enjoy the ____ wait everybody, like I did 5 hours ago on my ____ birthday.
Ryan: Happy birthday!
I forgot I wished her happy birthday, but there it is on Zev’s recording. I suppose it would have been happier if she hadn’t been forcibly removed and arrested.
Getting back home is hard, but it’s even harder for international students. And these days there are fewer of them on educational odysseys. Not long ago cross-border education seemed limitless, with unprecedented demand and four English-speaking giants – the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia – vying for students and dollars. But the past few years haven’t been kind to students or educators as all four giants have suffered the international education equivalent of a fiery stake in the eye.
If there were a Homeric epic poem about the backlash against international education, it would be divided into four books. So sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of: (1) Tighter screening; (2) Increasing cost; (3) Making it less attractive; and (4) Student caps.
1. Tighter Screening (For Some)
In President Trump’s second term, the U.S. has shifted from routine student visa administration to national security-oriented vetting, adding
near-universal interview requirements and social media screening. Which means it’s easy to gum up the works and favor applicants from countries over others. The U.S. isn’t alone here. Australia now
prioritizes visa applications by country: lower-risk countries are fast-tracked while perceived higher-risk countries are at the back of the line, resulting in lower approval rates. Canada also
eliminated fast-track visa processing for applicants from India and 13 other countries. The UK, which delegates screening to universities, may now remove an institution’s ability to enroll international students if more than 5% of student visa applicants are rejected, or if admitted international students fail to show up or complete their programs at very high rates, resulting in
some universities halting admissions from some nations. And all four countries apply stricter scrutiny to Chinese students applying for graduate study in STEM fields.
2. Increasing Cost
While the U.S. has only hiked the cost of student visas by adding a new
$250 “visa integrity fee,” in just the past three years
Australia tripled its fees to $1,750, matching a
UK price that – including the immigration health surcharge – has quadrupled in a decade. Canada hasn’t increased visa fees, but doubled the cost of entry by
raising proof-of-funds requirement from $10K to over $20K. A new
survey shows nearly half of Canadian student visa applicants are denied, mostly because paperwork doesn’t prove sufficient funds. And starting in two years, the UK will charge universities a
new levy of £925 per international student per year which they’ll pass on to students in higher tuition.
3. Making It Less Attractive
We’ve also been making international study less attractive by clamping down on work opportunities and limiting students’ ability to bring dependents or allowing dependents to work. The UK
banned master’s students from bringing dependents. Canada tightened spousal work permits and now only allows graduates to work in a small number of priority fields. Australia dramatically
shortened the post-study work window. In the U.S., the Trump Administration appears hell-bent on killing Optional Practical Training (OPT, the ability for international graduates to work for a few years) with a
new rule that will require every student visa recipient to reapply after four years with no guarantee of extension from a
backlogged immigration system that currently takes over a year to process an application. It’s also cutting the post-graduation grace period to find work from 60 to 30 days. And now there’s talk of
a new $100K OPT fee – a Trumpian round number that matches the proposed (and
currently blocked) $100K H-1B fee – which would radically winnow employment opportunities for international students.
4. Student Caps
Australia tried and failed to introduce a cap. The
UK seriously considered a cap and instead opted for the aforementioned levy. But at the start of 2024
Canada introduced a new student visa cap of 360K for undergraduates, a 35% cut. In 2025, a comprehensive cap of 437K was set, a limit that dropped to 408K this year. As for the U.S., if we kill OPT, we won’t need to think about a cap.
With all four giants telling students to study in their own damn countries, international education’s demise has been as predictable as that of Odysseus's crew after slaughtering the sun god’s cattle. In just the last two years, international enrollment in Canada fell from 1M to 725K, wreaking havoc on the budgets of dozens of universities. Australia dropped nearly 10% last year, with demand for vocational and language schools cratering while universities held their own (but not for much longer as Chinese students are now steering clear). The UK is down 10% in two years, a decline that appears to be accelerating. And while international enrollment in the U.S. only fell 1% last year, new enrollment was down 17%. This fall, 63% of U.S. colleges and universities project a decline, with 22% expecting it to be “substantial” for undergrads, and 36% saying the same for graduate students. Even vaunted institutes of technology aren’t immune.
Last week Secretary of Education Linda McMahon sent a hectoring letter to university leaders asking a bunch of leading questions and concluding with this America-first nugget: “American taxpayers invest hundreds of billions of dollars into higher education every year. American universities must put Americans, and American interests, first. That means prioritizing American students and faculty… and putting American societal success ahead of global commitments.” As Secretary McMahon’s colleagues in the State Department oversee a relationship with the Institute of International Education (IIE), which operates the Fulbright program and publishes an annual report titled Open Doors, it wouldn’t surprise me if IIE receives a hectoring letter to rename the report Closed Doors.
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Have universities merely been sideswiped in the broader backlash to globalization, or does higher ed have an Achilles heel?
It’s true that higher ed is more challenged than other “export” industries because students need a temporary home, which puts pressure on housing in countries with shortages and challenges building new homes (i.e., all four). Housing was the explicit reason for Canada’s student cap and a major factor in Australia’s effort. Seeking to have their cake and eat it too, governments are now pushing universities to deliver programs to international students remotely. Of course, it’s not much of a hero’s journey if it’s online.
But higher ed’s problem is bigger than housing. There was also the sense that universities were getting fat on international students. While globalization mowed down American, Canadian, British, and Australian manufacturing like Odysseus cut through the suitors crammed into his hall, colleges used Chinese and Indian tuition revenue to build new halls. As blue-collar jobs and communities were upended, “elite” academics and universities were thriving even more conspicuously than other globalization-winners like professional services, travel and tourism, even entertainment.
It’s possible that one day the four former giants of international education will have new leaders who recognize that building walls doesn’t lead to greater shared prosperity. Also possible: figuring out how to redistribute gains from trade via effective workforce development. But colleges and universities can’t wait that long. For international enrollment to reverse the current dismal trend, higher ed needs to be more like the trickster Odysseus.
First, universities need to convince policymakers that their workers aren’t elite; that they’re about classes more than class. Which shouldn’t be too hard because nearly 70% of faculty are adjunct and 25% of adjuncts earn below the federal poverty line. Higher ed can also showcase the multitude of younger academics trying to piece together enough courses to make ends meet. The guile here will be figuring out how to disguise highly paid administrators as beggars.
Second, they need to focus attention on their STEM programs, particularly STEM graduate programs. Everyone must be made to understand the watertight connection between attracting top international students and innovation, company formation, and job creation. America has a uniquely compelling story to tell here. As foreign nationals comprise 80% of full-time grad students in computer science, 75% in computer engineering, and 62% in math, it’s not surprising that 25% of new U.S. companies valued at over $1 billion have a founder who arrived as an international student. Without STEM international students, we wouldn’t have Sun Microsystems, Stripe, Instagram, Databricks, or Open AI. We probably also wouldn’t have much of a semiconductor industry, or great CEOs at Google and Microsoft. (And we wouldn’t have the Situational Awareness AI fund, which might be for the best.) It’s a strategy that works less well for research-lite institutions without STEM graduate programs. But by making the case that we’re attracting the world’s best STEM brains to build companies that create thousands of jobs, R1 universities can be used as a Trojan horse to sneak in all institutions.
When even Harvard is concerned about the declining inflow of talent, the time for tricks is running out. Particularly because the Trump Administration’s rule change limiting visas to four years creates intolerable uncertainty for aspiring Ph.Ds. Doctorates take more than four years. So with no guarantee of extension, why would any prospective founder choose a U.S. university when there’s a decent chance their degree program will be interrupted if not ended. As USC’s Stephen Aguilar pointed out last week in Inside Higher Ed, when a visa extension is denied, “a fifth-year Ph.D. student doesn’t abandon her research… she takes it to Toronto, London, or Shenzhen.”
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For international education to return home and retake the crown, colleges and universities need the guile to shift the politics from “elite universities import foreign students” to “we’re training the engineers who’ll create millions of jobs.” This tale isn’t as epic as the $50 billion export hero’s journey, but it’s one that might be passed down to an electorate that’s beyond caring about the dire financial impact on colleges and universities of lower international enrollment.
A decade ago, companies that organized international “pathway” programs for universities were growing quickly and trading at robust multiples. Now many of them are out of business and former market leader Study Group was bought out of bankruptcy for a nominal sum. That translates into hundreds of thousands of students who’ll never benefit from international education.
As with Odysseus, pathways are way more complicated than they ought to be. So the next time you’re dealing with a lengthy flight delay and an irate fellow passenger, spare a thought for the international student who’ll never get to board at all.