In some American universities, international students make up most doctoral students in departments such as computer science. According to data released by the school, for example, at the University of Chicago, foreign nationals accounted for 57% of new computer science doctoral students enrolled in the last year.
Since international students often pay full tuition fees, they provide funds that schools can use to expand their programs. As a result, foreign-born students generally don’t get educational opportunities from Americans, but instead create more slot machines in general. Researchers from nonpartisan think tanks estimate that every doctorate awarded to international students in the field of STEM is “related to the additional doctorate awarded to home students.”
Rebecca Willett, a professor at the University of Chicago, said limiting student visas and reducing the number of foreign nationals studying computer science “will have a profound impact on this field in the United States,” and his work focuses on the mathematical and statistical foundations of machine learning. Willett added that the move “risks the important pipeline of exhausting skilled professionals, weakening the important pipeline of the U.S. workforce and endangering the U.S. position as a global leader in computing technology.”
Mehran Sahami, chair of the computer science department at Stanford University, described the change in student visa policy as “backfire.” He declined to share how many foreign students there are in Stanford’s computer science program, including graduate and undergraduate students, but he admits it’s “a lot.”
“They added a lot to it and it’s been decades. It’s a way to bring the best and smartest people to the United States to learn, and after that they ended up contributing to the economy,” Sahami said. But now he’s worried that talent will “end up to other countries.”
The vast majority of doctoral students from China and India said they intend to stay in the U.S. after graduation, while a majority from some other countries, such as Switzerland and Canada, reported plans to leave.
Foreign-born STEM graduates who stay in the United States often continue to work at American universities, private technology companies or become founders of Silicon Valley. According to a 2023 analysis by the National Policy Foundation, immigrants have established or co-founded nearly two-thirds of AI companies in the United States.
Economist William Lazonick, who has extensively studied innovation and global competition, said that since the 1980s, foreign students studying stem disciplines were influx in the United States as fields such as microelectronics and biopharmaceuticals were undergoing a technological revolution.
During the same period, Lazonick said he observed that many American students chose to pursue careers in finance rather than hard science. “I mean, becoming a teacher from a public and private university in the United States, foreign students who are STEM careers are crucial to the existence of graduate programs in related science and engineering disciplines,” Lazonick told WIRED.
As the Trump administration works to limit the flow of international students and cut the flow of federal research funding, governments and universities around the world have launched a meticulous campaign to court international students and American scientists, eager to take advantage of the rare opportunity to snap up American talent.
“Hong Kong is trying to attract Harvard students. The UK is building scholarships for students,” said Shaun Carver, executive director of the International House, UC Berkeley Student Residence Center. “They think it’s the gain of the brain. For us, it’s a brain loss.”
