‘Time is of the essence': Pause on international student visa interviews sends schools on another Trump-induced scramble

CNN

3 days ago

At Mount Holyoke College, a liberal arts school some 90 miles west of Boston, administrators have few answers so far for their perspective international students who are no longer certain they will be allowed to study in the US.
The Trump administration's order directing US missions to pause new visa interviews for international students has thrust schools into a scramble to assess the impact on institutions and their students.
'This is supposed to be a celebratory time where they're looking forward to coming to the United States, going here for their education, and suddenly, all of that's, you know, been thrown up in the air,' said Kavita Khory, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke and director of the school's center for global initiatives.
The women's college admitted 140 international students for the upcoming academic year, but only about 50 of those students have received their visas, Khory said. The majority are in limbo for appointments.
'And even if they have secured appointments, it's not clear that they'll get their visas,' Khory said.
Mount Holyoke's situation is true for many colleges and universities. But with few answers, and amid heightened concerns about being critical of the Trump administration's actions, few schools are willing to discuss it. CNN reached out to 50 schools and heard from fewer than 10 about how they are handling this period of uncertainty.
The half-dozen university officials who spoke with CNN, representing schools across the country, said it is too soon to assess the financial implications of the State Department directive on their schools. The lack of official answers surrounding the length of the pause has left students seeking guidance that schools are not able to provide.
Stett Holbrook, a spokesperson for the University of California president's office, said the school system is 'very concerned' about the State Department's directive. About 9% of the system's 2024 undergraduate enrollees were international students.
The timing isn't only problematic for students who are in the middle of their application or visa processes, but also for schools that are in the middle of their annual budget planning for next year. If they can't guarantee the revenue stream that international students will bring, that creates a ripple effect, from how many faculty members they have to how many janitors they keep on.
'Our international students and scholars are vital members of our university community and contribute greatly to our research, teaching, patient care and public service mission,' Holbrook said in a statement. 'It is critical that interviews resume as quickly as possible to ensure that applicants are able to go through the process and receive their visas on time so they can pursue their education.'
Another aspect of the uncertainty is the potential for specific countries to be targeted differently.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said the US would 'aggressively' revoke visas for Chinese students. About 1 in 4 international students in the US are Chinese.
'We have followed every rule,' Zilin Ma, a recently graduated Harvard University PhD student from China, said on CNN's 'The Situation Room' on Wednesday. 'We have got our visa, we have passed all of the checks, and we have paid a ton of taxes in federal, state, and sometimes even Social Security that we may never benefit from.'
'We are contributing to the US scientific research, education and economy, and we shouldn't be the one facing uncertainty at this point,' Ma, whose work includes AI research, added.
Other officials spoke to CNN on the condition that their name or institution not be published to give a frank assessment of the situation or avoid their school being singled out.
'I think the impact is dependent on how long the pause is,' one official who works in global initiatives at a research university on the East Coast said. 'If it's a few days, universities can withstand that, but this is a time of year when students make these appointments, have been accepted to these institutions and have accepted these institutions' offers.'
The directive not only affects new students, but also current students who need to renew their visas, the official noted.
'Time is of the essence for these students,' the official said. 'The uncertainty piece of it is what's making it challenging.'
An official at a different leading research university agreed and said: 'The damaging part of some of these policy announcements is how they're being rolled out.' The administration, they said, does 'not provide clarity for actual informed decision-making.'
Asked on Friday how long the pause is expected to last, the State Department referred CNN to an earlier press briefing by its spokesperson, Tammy Bruce. During that briefing, Bruce declined to give specifics on a timeline, but said more guidance would be released in the coming days.
'The Trump administration is focused on protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through the visa process specifically,' said Bruce, who added that every visa adjudication is a 'national security decision.'
The second university official said that beyond a potential financial hit, which won't be as burdensome at their school because of its size, they fear the policy will impact recruitment and the school's reputation internationally.
'There is sort of a chilling effect,' the official said.
The move comes as President Donald Trump has pressured institutions of higher learning into falling in line with the administration's policies and vision for how their schools should be run.
The bulk of the administration's recent actions against colleges have focused on elite universities like Harvard, where the administration first moved last month to prevent the school from enrolling international students.
Harvard sued to stop the order targeting its international students from taking effect, and a judge temporarily paused the prohibition. That order does not impact the latest State Department directive to US missions to pause visa interviews for students.
But the new directive could have wider implications: More than 1.1 million international students lived in the United States during the 2023-2024 school year, according to the nonprofit NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
The group's analysis found that those students contributed nearly $44 billion to the US economy during the 2023-2024 academic year.
'International students already represent the most tracked and vetted category of nonimmigrants in the United States,' the nonprofit's executive director and CEO, Fanta Aw, said in a statement. 'It is a poor use of taxpayer dollars to devote resources to screening students who are already subject to extensive background checks, while business visitors and tourists are not tracked at all.'
Trump has suggested that if schools like Harvard accept fewer international students, more domestic students would take their place. But Khory, from Mount Holyoke, said it's not that simple.
'It's not the zero-sum game the way the Trump administration has been presenting it, 'If you have fewer international students, you will bring in more domestic students.' That's not how this sort of works,' she said, adding that's particularly true in the near future, when students can't be immediately recruited to replace those who are lost.
A former university official described three buckets of anxiety being felt by universities: the revenue impact, the talent impact and the human impact.
Small, private universities without large endowments are in the most precarious positions, this former official said, as public schools often have the ability to go to their state to fill revenue shortfalls.
On the talent impact, graduate schools will take more of a hit than undergraduate colleges. At the graduate level, foreign students are a critical part of the machinery. They are the teaching assistants, the researchers, the grant writers — and the next generation of professors.
'If those students can't or won't come, some graduate programs could collapse,' the former official said.
And regarding the human impact: Students are members of campus communities. Graduate programs can take years — five, six or seven, in some instances — to complete.
'Everyone is anxious for friends and colleagues,' the former official said.
There is also the long-term worry about brain drain and competition.
'These universities are not just in competition for talent with other US universities,' the former official said. 'There is a short-sightedness to this that university administrators are really feeling as well: 'Will we be able to be the place for global talent to come if they can't or don't feel comfortable for the US?''
Karen Edwards, dean of international student affairs and exchange visitors at Grinnell College in Iowa, lamented that the political climate in the US may deter prospective international students.
That shift, she said, runs contrary to the mission of her 30-year career.
'It really breaks my heart,' Edwards said, 'to think that we wouldn't see the incredible value in enhancing the presence of global learning and international education, international students in our classroom — as opposed to, you know, fighting against it.'