Briefing
America’s universities need the world. Some states don’t agree.
Some Republican-led states are prohibiting financial aid, including scholarships, to foreigners. Will short-term gains lead to long-term losses?
By Jamaal Abdul-Alim
"Some of the nation’s most successful entrepreneurs were once immigrants who “came to the country with two pieces of luggage”
"25 percent of US start-ups worth more than $1 billion have a founder who first arrived as an international student."
In brief:
- New US laws restrict international students’ access to scholarships, visas and essential financial aid.
- Republican-led states follow federal trends by cutting funding to prioritise local workforce needs.
- Experts warn disinvestment stifles innovation, hurts economies and erodes global academic prestige.
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When the Trump administration took over for a second term in 2025, it wasted no time in implementing a series of restrictions that made it more difficult for people from abroad to study or work in the United States.
Among other things, the administration revoked thousands of student visas, imposed a travel ban on people coming from a total of 19 countries, and started charging employers $100,000 for the H1-B visas that non-immigrant workers need to be hired to fill specialty positions.
Now, lawmakers in several Republican-controlled state legislatures are following suit.
In Oklahoma, state Senator Micheal Bergstrom introduced a bill that would prohibit state colleges and universities from using state funds to provide scholarships, grants, tuition aid or discounted tuition to foreign national students beginning with the 2026-2027 academic year.
In Ohio, several Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that would cap the number of scholarships, grants, or other financial assistance for international student-athletes to no more than 25 percent of the total scholarships in any given academic year for an athletic program. Idaho is pursuing a similar measure.
Scholars who specialise in international higher education say the legislative efforts to curtail or eliminate scholarships and other forms of aid at the state level are shortsighted and wrongheaded, will lessen the vibrancy and global appeal of US institutions of higher learning, and hurt state economies as well as the national economy.
Krishna Bista, a Professor of Higher Education at Morgan State University in Maryland, and Founding Editor of the Journal of International Students, warns efforts to restrict scholarships for international students will put the US at a “real disadvantage.”
“Yes, the government is saving some money or some of our leaders are thinking that way,” Bista says. “But in the long run, it is impacting our economy, it’s impacting our technology.”
He notes that some of the nation’s most successful entrepreneurs were once immigrants who “came to the country with two pieces of luggage”.
“And now look at the positive impact,” he says of individuals such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who came to the United States at age six with his family as they fled institutional antisemitism in the former USSR. Brin’s father is a retired mathematics professor at the University of Maryland. His late mother was a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The couple once donated $27.2 million to the Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland to endow the Brin Mathematics Research Center and pilot a Brin Maryland Mathematics Camp for talented high school students in the state.
David L. Di Maria, Vice Provost for Global Engagement at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, or UMBC, makes similar points. He notes that while international students only comprise 6.1 percent of the total US higher education population, 25 percent of US start-ups worth more than $1 billion have a founder who first arrived as an international student.
But the cost of excluding international students goes beyond economics and business. Rather, he says, it could affect the high esteem in which US institutions of higher learning are held. Universities, he says, “cannot offer a world-class education or solve the world’s most pressing problems when they do not engage with the world”.
“Most US students will never study abroad and may never travel abroad during their lifetime,” Di Maria said. “Bringing international students to campus ensures that more US students have the opportunity to encounter peers from different countries, experience alternative perspectives and develop relationships that result in global professional networks and friendships.”
Di Maria cites research on academic rankings and economic impact that suggests public institutions of higher education in restrictive states will “become less competitive nationally and internationally”.
“Talented students who would otherwise have chosen those institutions will simply study elsewhere,” Di Maria says. “If one state chooses to disinvest from recruiting the best and brightest from around the world, then that ultimately makes it easier for leaders in other states to compete for talent.”
Idaho Senator Doug Okuniewicz, the sponsor of the Idaho bill, told Inside Higher Ed that his objective is to ensure that more scholarship opportunities go to US residents in general – and Idahoans in particular – in order to fulfil the state’s workforce needs.
“It seems it would be better if we had US residents, and if at all possible, Idahoans, have more of these scholarship opportunities so we can train and create more teachers and police officers and people who can work in the medical field,” Okuniewicz told Inside Higher Ed.
Di Maria, of UMBC, says it’s important to look at specific data that shows the positive economic impact that international students have on the economy in the states that are seeking to restrict scholarship from going to such students. In Idaho, for example, there are 3,601 international students enrolled in college. Collectively, they support 586 jobs and contribute $85.5 million to the economy, according to a database maintained by NAFSA.
Robert Kelchen, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, says he is “not surprised that a growing number of Republican-led states are trying to restrict scholarships for international students”.
“This follows decisions to eliminate in-state tuition benefits for DACA students and also matches efforts from the Trump administration to restrict immigration,” Kelchen says. DACA is an acronym for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and refers to students who arrived in the United States as children without lawful status.
Kelchen says while the proposed measures could potentially grant more financial aid to in-state students, it would also take away from allocating financial aid based on merit alone.
“I expect this trend to continue, especially as Republican primary voters are focused heavily on immigration,” Kelchen says.