New International Student Visa Rules Squeeze Academic Freedom

Following their now established playbook, the Trump administration is using administrative rules to transform higher education and erode academic freedom. You might be familiar, for example, with the recently proposed changes to the Office of Management and Budgets’ “Uniform Guidance” that would elevate political priorities over peer-review in awarding federal research grants. The proposed rule drew nearly half a million public comments, almost all of them in opposition. Last year, the administration proposed a big change to student visas, and now that rule, which has become final, is set to restrict the freedom of students, programs, and institutions.

On July 17, the administration posted to the Federal Register a finalized update for the Department of Homeland Security’s “Duration of Stay” rules for temporary visa holders. The changes, which go into effect in September of this year, will time-limit student (F-1) visas to a maximum of four years. Any student whose program time exceeds that period will be required to petition for an “Extension of Stay” with US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Before now, student visas were valid until a student completed their program.

The higher education community has raised the alarm. A precedent of arbitrarily suspending international student visas and targeting those whose speech the administration doesn’t like offers context for the motivation behind the rule. The uncertainty and burdens created by this rule will further dampen international student demand. The rule will mean that some students are unable, or unwilling, to pursue an education in the United States. That will deprive campuses of the educational and social enrichment derived from the presence of international students, and, to be crude about it, the tuition revenue they bring.

Reporting is right to identify graduate education, and especially doctoral programs, as particularly vulnerable to the rule. Most PhD programs last longer than four years, and the risk of a visa non-renewal will be too high for many students and degree programs to tolerate. Visa-related interruptions to doctoral students’ research are, of course, devastating for individual students but can also set back entire research programs. And this is where the new rule presents a major threat to academic freedom.

The rights to choose who to teach, what to teach, how to teach, and what to research are core elements of institutional autonomy and academic freedom. The immigration rule imposes unreasonable burdens on these rights. PhD students are often selected based on their interests, backgrounds, skills, and potential. They are also indispensable contributors to many academic labs and programs of research. Since academic research is a global enterprise, in many fields, maintaining cutting-edge research involves international exchange. By imposing material restrictions on the ability of institutions, departments, and individual faculty to select the most appropriate doctoral students, the government is also restricting, indirectly, what research can be done and how.

The new Duration of Stay rule also indirectly imposes unacceptable state-generated considerations for academic programs. Programs of all kinds that wish to attract international students will feel some pressure to ensure that they can be completed in the four-year visa window. Accelerating the time to degree, of course, is not a bad thing and in many cases can be desirable. But academic concerns are important, and, in any event, the content and design of academic programs should not be coerced by government immigration rules. As with many other actions taken by the Trump administration, this rule is a squeeze on the independence of American higher education.

Faculty, administrators, and academic associations have already expressed concern about the new rule and will continue to do so. Litigation must probe its legality in search of relief. But longer-term advocacy that builds political understanding about how immigration policy can support or choke institutional independence and academic freedom is necessary. Faculty and academic departments should start to compile concrete examples of how this rule infringes on their ability to select and train students, operate academic programs, and advance research. This information will be useful for associations and labor groups when pressing persuadable elected officials about the need to roll back this harmful rule. As with many of the administration’s directives, the Duration of Stay rule is harmful, but it is also clarifying for the academic community about what it must do to preserve its integrity.