Visa crackdowns push universities into program cuts

falling international – A falling number of international students—after U.S. visa curbs, deportation threats, and travel bans—has forced universities to post large budget losses, eliminate 71 academic programs at the University of North Texas, and cut jobs, freeze hiring, delay proj

Harrison Keller remembers walking into his second year as president of the University of North Texas last fall and finding the numbers already pointing in the wrong direction. Enrollment was down. Then the reason arrived—abruptly, and with force.

After Trump administration moves to deny and revoke visas, deport international students and impose travel bans, 2,800 students from abroad that the university expected to show up stayed away.

For a campus budgeting in the real world of tuition revenue, the missing students weren’t a symbolic loss. Keller said full-tuition-paying international students—especially graduate students—bring $20,000 to $25,000 each to the university’s bottom line. When so many of them didn’t arrive. the loss pushed the University of North Texas $45 million into the red. forcing the elimination of 71 academic programs.

Keller warned the damage wouldn’t stop there. He said continuing declines in international enrollment would hit the next academic year with another $47 million in lost revenue, though he also expects the loss to be closer to $25 million thanks to ongoing spending cuts.

“I picked a hell of a time to become a college president,” he said.

The crisis is no longer confined to one university. New federal figures show international enrollment continues to fall: student arrivals were down 5 percent in March. almost 8 percent in April and 1 percent in May compared with the same months last year. The decline comes on top of a drop of nearly 22 percent in the number of international students who arrived last summer versus the summer before.

“It leaves a really big hole in the budget. which has to get filled one way or another. either by increasing tuition or cutting services. ” said Dick Startz. a professor of economics at the University of California. Santa Barbara. Startz noted that at his university. international students pay more than three times what California students do. and subsidize financial aid for their American classmates.

Many U.S. families may not realize what international students contribute financially, said Domenico Ferraro, an associate professor of economics at Arizona State University who has studied the issue.

“Unfortunately, I think that many people don’t have a clear perception of what international students contribute” financially, Ferraro said.

Nationwide, the math that once supported budgets now looks like a warning. Research conducted at Princeton University found that international students make up 6 percent of enrollment but account for 12 percent of revenue at colleges and universities—and at institutions particularly dependent on them. more than 30 percent. The study’s figures date to 2016. before international student numbers rose even more. meaning the revenue impact is likely higher now.

The Princeton study also found that international student money has helped keep tuition and fees lower for domestic students while enabling higher spending on services. It concluded that international students aren’t crowding out American students—an assertion critics have long disputed. And as fewer U.S. high school graduates choose to go to college, leaving seats empty, that conclusion has become even more true.

“We have a great opportunity, which we’re engaged in blowing,” Startz said.

Moody’s, the bond-rating agency, has been blunt about the consequences. It warns that the ongoing drop in international students is causing “significant financial stress” and creating a credit risk for universities and colleges—especially the 15 percent of institutions with the largest international enrollments.

“It definitely hurts. There’s no question,” said Ruth Johnston, vice president of the consulting arm of the National Association of College and University Business Officers. “You’re not bringing revenue in, and there are so few revenue sources for higher education in the first place.”

Since January of 2024. more than 300 instances of universities and colleges eliminating programs. closing departments and laying off faculty and staff have been documented by the tracking database CollegeCuts. The database describes a growing number of schools citing international enrollment declines among the triggers. with many institutions pairing staffing and program cuts with tuition increases.

Northwestern University said a projected international enrollment drop was among the reasons it eliminated 425 positions, froze hiring and put off building projects.

The University of Southern California cut nearly 1,000 jobs, including some for academic advisers, after listing expected declines in the number of international students—applications from whom fell 23 percent at USC—among its financial problems.

DePaul University laid off 114 employees after its number of students from abroad fell 30 percent overall, and international graduate student enrollment by two-thirds.

Boston University cited falling international graduate student enrollment as a cause of budget cuts and buyouts.

At Syracuse University, declining international enrollment in general was given as part of the explanation for a rare budget deficit. Deficits and layoffs also affected New York’s New School, the University of Texas at Arlington, Niagara College and the Stevens Institute of Technology.

Other institutions cited international enrollment drops alongside deficits. budget cuts and layoffs. including the University of Michigan School of Public Health. the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Eastern Illinois University. The College of Wooster and Kent State University. The president of the California College of the Arts blamed Trump administration pressure on international students for worsening an enrollment decline and a budget deficit so severe that the college will close.

The financial pressure has moved quickly into pricing. Many of these universities raised tuition: Syracuse by nearly 4 percent for the upcoming academic year. to a total cost of attendance of about $96. 000 for students living on campus; Northwestern by 3.5 percent to a total cost of about $96. 000; USC by about 3 percent to $103. 162; and The New School by 3.5 percent to a total cost of about $93. 000.

For all the numbers piling up. the question that hangs over campuses is how much of the tuition increases is directly tied to the loss of international students. None of the universities responded to repeated requests for comment. including about how much of the tuition increases could be attributed to the drop in the number of international students.

What the timeline shows is a familiar constraint turning into a crisis: international-student revenue is shrinking while universities still have fixed costs they can’t simply pause. The resulting pressure arrives through the same choices again and again—staff reductions, delayed projects, eliminated programs, and tuition hikes.

Johnston said universities are trying to avoid tuition hikes at a time when surveys show two-thirds of Americans think a four-year degree is no longer worth the cost.

“We know there’s a concern about that,” Johnston said, pointing to the mismatch between price and perceived value.

Ferraro described the squeeze more plainly: when tuition revenue can’t rise, spending cuts are often the last available tool.

“If you can’t increase the revenues from tuition, there is not much left other than cutting spending,” Ferraro said.

The vulnerability isn’t only external. It is partly built into how higher education finance has shifted over the past decade.

As domestic enrollment has fallen—down by about 2 million students since 2010—colleges and universities increasingly recruited from abroad. The number of international students in the United States rose by more than 60 percent during that period. reaching nearly 1.2 million. according to the Institute of International Education.

Ferraro said the strategy wasn’t just about filling seats. For every 10 percent cut in state appropriations for public research universities, those universities recruited 16 percent more international students, research by scholars at the University of Michigan and elsewhere found.

Universities used the additional tuition to sustain domestic services while American families pushed back on the cost of higher education and demanded more financial aid. As colleges gave deeper discounts to domestic undergraduates. the proportion being charged the full listed price fell to 16 percent. while more than 80 percent of international classmates paid the full tuition. Ferraro pointed to how several institutions also charged international students higher tuition than out-of-state domestic students or added fees ranging from $874 to $5. 218 a year. according to the American Council on Education.

Even before the Trump-era crackdowns, threats were already accumulating: competition from other countries and a falling U.S. share of the international student market.

Canada is the most dramatic example. The number of international students is down by 73 percent since the government set a limit on them in 2024 in response to anti-immigration sentiment and complaints that international students in some cities were driving up housing costs.

Before then. more than a fifth of students at Canadian two- and four-year colleges and universities came from other countries. a proportion that had grown as government funding for higher education fell. International undergraduates in Canada pay almost six times as much as their Canadian classmates in tuition, according to Statistics Canada.

“Institutions were making net surpluses off these international students and using it to sustain services for domestic students,” said Alex Usher, president of the Canadian consulting firm Higher Education Strategy Associates, or HESA.

HESA estimated that three-quarters of tuition revenue in Ontario—Canada’s most populous province—came from international students. Now. with international student numbers plummeting. Ontario universities will have lost $1.5 billion in income by the end of this year in U.S. dollars, according to the Council of Ontario Universities. HESA said it will result in significant cuts to programs and services. with a survey finding that 60 percent of universities and colleges in Canada were planning budget cuts. At least one institution. the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology. blamed declining international student numbers for forcing it to close.

In Canada, tuition fees haven’t gone up, Usher said. But he warned that domestic students “aren’t necessarily paying more, they’re getting less.”

The same financial mechanics are now colliding with U.S. campuses, Ferraro said.

“If you don’t compensate for this with international students,” he said, “the future of higher education is going to be a bunch of empty buildings.”

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