How Trump’s Clash with Elite Universities is Impacting International Students

Introduction

The Trump administration’s campaign against elite universities in the US has taken up a large part of media headlines. It has also raised great concerns among international high school students and their families who are considering pursuing their undergraduate education in the US. In this article, Elite Admission Consulting will help these students and families better understand the timeline, reasons, history, and impact of the current turmoil and eventually assist them in making an informed decision – something we, as a team, always strive to do.

1. Timeline

March 7, 2025

The Trump administration announced that it had cancelled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University, because the university failed to protect Jewish students during protests in 2024 over the war in Gaza.

March 21, 2025

Columbia University bowed to the Trump administration and agreed to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department. The decision was made about a week after the Trump administration demanded significant changes to student discipline and admissions before it would discuss lifting the cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts.

March 27, 2025

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announces that the US has revoked visas of “more than 300” international students as a part of a crackdown against those who have participated in pro-Palestine protests.

April 11, 2025

The Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard University, requesting that the university address conservative complaints within academia, including a lack of diverse political viewpoints among faculty members and a perceived disdain for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The letter was released on April 14, 2025 and is more recently reported to have been sent to Harvard unintentionally.

April 14, 2025

Harvard University’s lawyers released a letter saying the demands from the Trump administration were unlawful and that Harvard would not comply. Harvard’s president said that the university “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

April 17, 2025

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary of the Trump administration, threatened to block Harvard University from enrolling international students unless the school hands over detailed records about the student body, specifically “relevant information” on each student visa holder who had been involved in “known illegal” or “dangerous” activity.

So far, alongside Harvard University and Columbia University, Brown University, Cornell University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton University have also been targeted by the Trump administration.

April 20, 2025

As of April 20, 2025, at least 1,600 international students had had their visas revoked, according to the publication Inside Higher Education. Many of these students had their visas revoked due to participation in pro-Palestine protests, while others had their visas revoked due to recent or past legal infractions, including traffic violations. In some cases, the reasons for the visas being revoked were unclear.

April 21, 2025

Harvard University sued the Trump Administration, accusing the government of unleashing a broad attack as “leverage to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard.”

April 25, 2025

The Trump administration reversed course on revoked student visas, reverting thousands of student visas that had been terminated in previous weeks. This came after dozens of lawsuits and a number of judges finding that the actions were illegal.

May 22, 2025

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the government would be revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. She accused Harvard of fostering antisemitism and anti-American beliefs. This announcement came after Harvard had refused to comply with the government’s demands to hand over detailed records about the student body. About 27% of Harvard’s student body is international, and the government’s announcement left their ability to legally stay in the US in flux.

June 20, 2025

A federal judge ruled that revoking Harvard’s ability to enrol international students was unconstitutional, and reinstated Harvard’s ability to enrol international students.

September 3, 2025

A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s freezing of funding for Harvard was unconstitutional, delivering Harvard another legal victory.

September 19, 2025

President Trump signed a proclamation instating a 100,000USD (~154,000AUD) fee for H-1B visa applications (up from 2,000-5,000USD) with the goal of incentivising American companies to hire more domestic workers.

November 8, 2025

The Washington Post reported that the overall number of international students in the US was down only 1% compared to the previous year, showing that the Trump administration’s actions had made a minimal impact on international student enrolments. At Harvard, 15% of the incoming freshman class was international, compared to 16% the previous year.

2. Reasons

The Trump administration has frequently claimed that the targeted universities tolerate antisemitism, highlighted by the protest movement in 2024 against the war in Gaza. However, the hostility has deeper roots than the protests. Conservatives have long seen elite universities as enemies for their affirmative action in admissions, views of liberal professors, high tuition cost, and the ubiquity of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs.

As a matter of fact, the recent pressure on these universities was not new for the Trump administration. Back in 2020, the administration accused Yale of discriminating against white and Asian-American applicants and opposed Harvard’s affirmative action policy. It threatened to force international students to leave the country if their coursework was entirely online due to the pandemic, a decision having much more impact on Harvard and other elite universities. It also had a civil rights investigation of Princeton. At that time, Donald Trump had already called for a review of the tax-exempt status of these universities.

The rationale behind the actions in 2020 and 2025 was similar, attacking these universities as liberal bastions for the conservatives. Like his other policies, the 2025 version was more radical. Meanwhile, the administration chose to intensify the fight against the elite universities when its other policies received backlash, such as the turbulence on the stock market and rising disapproval rate. They might have believed that picking on the Ivy League universities was a safe choice that could please the conservatives, at least in the short run.

3. History and Background

Two key civil-rights statutes—Title VI and Title IX—govern universities. Title VI bars discrimination “on the ground of race, color, or national origin” by entities that receive federal financial assistance. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal funds.

The conflict between the US government and the elite universities was nothing new. Even during the Obama administration, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights published a list of colleges and universities that it was investigating for allegedly inadequate responses to sexual assault. Harvard was on the list. The Obama administration tried to establish that Harvard and other universities on the list violated Title IX.

Right now, Title VI has become a newly favored tool for exercising control over freedom of speech and expression in schools, by pairing it with allegations of antisemitism. Within days after Donald Trump took office in January, the administration launched Title VI investigations into several schools. The administration is also using Title IX’s sex-discrimination ban as a way to press schools to change policies affecting transgender students, for example, by revoking $175m in funding from the University of Pennsylvania for allowing Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, to participate on the women’s swimming team.

4. Actual Impact on Elite Admission students

Funding

Overall, we expect most universities will eventually capitulate to the majority of the Trump administration’s demands. While Harvard, with its $50 billion endowment (the largest in the world), has chosen to fight the demands, most universities do not have the financial resources to withstand a significant loss in federal funding. Thus, many will likely negotiate with the Trump administration and come to an agreement, as Columbia has done.

If some schools, like Harvard, do choose to fight, the law has taken the side of the universities. A federal judge’s ruling in favour of Harvard (finding that revoking its federal grants was unconstitutional) strongly limits the Trump administration’s ability to attempt to withhold funding as a bargaining chip.

Worst case scenario, any potential loss of funding will most directly impact graduate students, as the funding is for graduate research programs. Undergraduate students are not directly impacted by this funding, although there could be flow-on effects to the amount of financial aid available. However, between deals made between universities and Trump as well as legal protections that universities have, we do not expect universities to lose significant funding.

Student visas

While the visa revocations are scary for international students, the Trump administration reversing course shows that mass visa revocations are not possible in the long term, both legally and politically. Even before the reversal, the revocations only impacted 0.15% of international students, particularly those who participated in pro-Palestine protests or had legal infractions. Students who abide by the law and do not participate in pro-Palestine protests are unlikely to ever have issues with their visa.

However, students who want to study in the US should be prepared for an increasingly stringent vetting process, particularly to determine that they have not participated in contentious protests, and those who do attend university in the US should be prepared to not participate in any such protests. The US government has also set up a task force to look into international students’ and visa applicants’ social media profiles to find those who have been involved in protests, so students should be careful about the photos they put on social media.

Harvard University has issued guidance to its international students in order to avoid any issues. The advice involves carrying copies of their visa documents and a photo of their passport.

During President Trump’s first term, the number of international students studying in the US remained stable at around 1.1 million, and the number of visas issued also remained stable. Ultimately, that will likely be the case over the next four years.

Working visas

The Trump administration’s increased fees for H-1B visas impacts the ability for foreigners to get working visas in the US, although it is expected to have a more minor impact on Australians.

H-1B visas are used for employers to sponsor skilled workers. While the significantly increased H-1B visa fee could result in fewer employers willing to sponsor foreign workers through the H-1B pathway, there is another visa – E-3 – which is available only to Australians. Thus while some nationalities may have increased difficulties getting sponsored work visas in the US, Australians are likely to be significantly less impacted.

It is also worth noting that H-1B visas are not used as student visas. International students who wish to study in the US typically get an F-1 visa, thus the changes to the H-1B visas do not directly impact international students. Students on F-1 visas can typically get OPT visas after graduation as well, which grants them the ability to stay in the US and work for up to 12 months (or 24 months if working in a STEM field).

On campus

We have talked to Elite Admission graduates who currently study at multiple Ivy League campuses. Right now, no one has found anything different in their daily life and study. However, they have received reminders to restrain themselves from joining protest activities.

Chances of admission

While there are families that have been actively considering the options of studying in the US now need more time to make their call, we don’t think the current turmoil will have a huge impact on admission.

Admissions decisions are made by the universities themselves – the federal government has no input – and universities have long desired having a diverse group of international students.

5. Conclusion

It is a tumultuous time in US politics, and elite universities are getting caught in the middle (not for the first time). In particular, the government is using them as a battleground for stomping out antisemitism. Ultimately, though, universities are key to growing the US economy, and international students are an economically important group, and the Trump administration will not take measures so drastic as to jeopardize this. In the case that more drastic measures are taken, the interests of more stakeholders (for example, technology and pharmaceutical companies who rely on the talents and research by elite universities) are likely to resist.

We have seen this play out over the course of 2025, where major moves by the Trump administration (freezing funding, revoking visas, revoking universities’ ability to enrol international students) have either been legally blocked or have been walked back by the Trump administration. While these actions have made headlines, ultimately at the end of 2025 the situation is not strongly different from where it was at the beginning of the year, as evidenced by the minimal impact on the number of foreign students studying in the US.

For those considering studying in the US, the main area to be cognizant of is not participating in any pro-Palestine protests. For those who do so and abide by the law, they are unlikely to see major impacts in terms of admissions, visa applications, or life on campus.