What an “absurd” new rule on student visas means for international PhDs

Last month, when the Department of Homeland Security announced a final rule increasing government oversight for international student visas, the tone was noticeably hostile.

In limiting student visas to four years—subject to extension, with additional screening, via US Citizenship and Immigration Services—rather than letting them run for the duration of the student’s program, the rule change would curb “rampant visa abuse,” the DHS press release said. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin added: “For decades, foreign students have been admitted into the U.S. indefinitely, allowing thousands to abuse our immigration system by perpetually enrolling in courses to avoid having to leave the U.S….The United States is reclaiming its ability to properly screen, vet, and monitor individuals within our borders. This final rule ensures that foreign students remain focused on their primary purpose: completing their studies and returning home.”

International candidates for American PhDs reacted to the news with consternation. Though the majority of international undergraduates do ultimately return home to their own countries, for PhD recipients it is the opposite. Around 80% of such graduates end up settling here in the United States, often taking on major roles in academia, research, and industry, intermarrying with Americans, and raising U.S. citizen children. “Completing their studies and returning home” is not their primary purpose or reality. And only rarely are they even trying to finish their PhDs in four years, meaning that the vast majority of international candidates will now have to apply for extensions with the US government.

To understand the implications, I put out a call to people who completed a PhD in the United States as international students to see what they thought of this new policy—and what became of them after their degrees. The 15 responses I got—and thank you to everyone who participated—were right in line with the stats. Those who came here for PhDs had generally become entwined in American life, personally and professionally, and gone on to significant jobs here and abroad. Nearly all expressed concern about a rule issued, one person wrote, as the country “has started to lose its stature as the mecca for innovation and excellence that attracted me to come to the US.” 

My respondents hailed from Argentina, Canada, Chile, Germany, India, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, and had completed degrees at a range of universities, from excellent state schools (UCLA, SUNY, University of Illinois) to the Ivy League (Harvard, Cornell) and beyond (Duke, Stanford, Johns Hopkins). They hold degrees in biology, computer science, economics, engineering, history, industrial and organizational psychology, languages and literature of multiple regions, and political science. Ten out of the 15 ended up staying in the United States; nine have either an American partner, American children, or both. And all of the people who responded ended up holding roles either as professors/teachers, researchers, and/or authors, or at high levels in business and industry.

As several respondents noted, the main question about the rule’s significance is how easy it turns out to be to get an extension via USCIS. If this ends up being essentially a pro forma process, the impact may not be as grave as Secretary Mullin’s aggressive press release makes it sound.

But if the process ends up complicating PhD candidates’ plans to stay for the full duration of their degrees, the impact could be serious. Among my respondents, a single person finished their degree in four years; the rest ranged from five to 10, with an average of 6.3 years. Not to be able to count on more than four years here would be, one person wrote, “a disaster for graduate education in the US.” Others made similar points:

More than one person said that had study beyond four years been uncertain, they would probably have chosen to do their graduate studies in the UK or another country.

As I started digging into how universities are responding to the new rule, however, it became clear that administrators are making fewer assumptions about what the impact will be. As things stood previously, some international students already had to seek extensions of stay to remain in their PhD programs. Under the previous Trump administration, for example, the State Department issued a rule limiting visas for certain Chinese STEM PhD candidates to one year. But now all international students will need to seek extensions of stay for anything beyond four years, regardless of their home countries’ relationship with the United States, and they will need to seek it through USCIS. USCIS has seen significant staffing cuts since Trump came to office and currently lists an eight-month processing time to change the status of student visas; now, hundreds of thousands of additional cases will be hitting each year, and whether they can easily process that many is an open question. Still, if they are able to do so, it’s conceivable that in practice PhD candidates would not see their stay limited in length.

The actual wording of the DHS rule, when it was finally issued on July 17, 2026, defended against the flood of critical comments from the academic and business community by saying that the government merely sought “increased contact” with international students, not to curtail their studies. “This rulemaking does not require completion of a program within four years. Rather, the four-year period is intended as a law enforcement and screening tool to assess whether a student is maintaining normal academic progress and eligibility for F-1 status,” the rule states. “This approach is designed to enhance screening and vetting, not to impose a rigid completion deadline.”

University administrators are hoping that’s the case, and trying not to catastrophize too badly. Schools have issued detailed guidance and FAQs for their students, with offers of immigration counseling from deans and international student offices. “We understand that these changes will feel unsettling to many, and please be assured that we are here to support Harvard’s international community as we work through this transition together,” Harvard administrators wrote to students. Columbia cautioned its international students to return to the country before the more stringent rule takes effect on September 15: “We recommend that all students return to NYC before the start of classes on September 8, 2026.” 

One graduate school dean at a prestigious university told me the school is actively trying to help its international students, both current and prospective, without assuming the worst-case scenario. “Extensions themselves aren’t new. The fact that really [all international PhD candidates are] going to need an extension, that’s new. And the major thing is that we’re not doing it, that it's going through the government. That creates huge risk... because we don't know yet what in practice that will be like. And we may not know for a while.” In their messaging to students, administrators are trying to help navigate pitfalls—for example, emphasizing that students need to be more careful about not overstaying their official “admit until date.” But initially, the dean told me, “Everyone thought, oh my gosh, we need to review our PhD programs and how to complete them in four years. And the guidance that I'm getting is not that at all.”

Already, however, the new rule is a PR problem—and it is possible the Trump administration’s intent in issuing it is in part simply to deter foreign students from coming here in the first place, much as the shock and awe of ICE sweeps is meant as much to discourage immigrants as to actually apprehend them. The same dean told me that universities are still aiming to assemble the best graduate class they can, including international students: “We certainly don’t want to be saying, Oh, let’s not admit that student because they're high risk to us.” Trump policies have already done significant damage to graduate education in the United States; PhD admissions for this fall are down by 15% overall, according to the Association of American Universities Data Exchange, at least partly due to federal funding cuts by the Trump administration. The last thing universities need is for international students, including master’s students who typically pay their own way, to be deterred from coming. “We’re trying to think, how do we make sure that our international applications don’t totally crater?” the dean said.

In the text of the rule itself, DHS shrugged off concerns raised during a public comment period about the impact to foreign student enrollment. “DHS acknowledges that enrollment of foreign students in U.S. educational institutions may decline because of this rule but is unable to quantify the extent of this decline because there is no precedent…However, DHS does not intend for the rule to result in a significant decline in foreign student enrollment.” DHS also dismissed concerns about the financial blow to US universities: “DHS has ultimately concluded the benefits to the rule outweigh any potential decreases to enrollment and subsequent economic impacts.” I reached out to DHS for comment on these and other issues, but the department responded only by resending me the original press release about “abuse” of the student visa system.

What is the nature of that supposed abuse? DHS has offered few actual examples. According to their own claims in a footnote to the rule, “DHS has identified over 2,100 aliens who first entered as F-1 students between 2000 and 2010 and remain in active F-1 status as of Apr. 6, 2025.” If the central problem is this one Secretary Mullin cites of “perpetually enrolling in courses to avoid having to leave the U.S.,” it seems this affects only a vanishingly small fraction of the more than quarter-million new international students who start their studies in the country every year. It’s understandable if the government wants to have more “moments of contact” with this international population rather than leaving their vetting to universities, but there is very little evidence of a security problem among those individuals, and the press release doesn’t even mention this as a concern. To quote a critique recently published by the libertarian Cato Institute, “DHS can’t explain why any of this is necessary. Read DHS’s own characterization of the comments, and it becomes obvious there is no reason for these rules, no statutory mandate to create them, and no engagement with the practical harm the agency is creating.” 

On a professional level, too, the harm done by the Trump administration’s combined attacks on immigrants, higher education, and research is beginning to show. This week, the American Institute of Physics reported that that non-citizens who earned physics PhDs are leaving the country at the highest rate in 30 years—around 12% compared to just 5% in 2023. A bipartisan bill known as the Keep STEM Talent Act, making it easier for international recipients of advanced science and technology degrees to stay in the United States, was introduced in Congress last year, but has yet to pass the House or Senate. Funding cuts, censorship, and ideological curbs have caused many professors to start to look for jobs in Europe, Asia, Canada, or elsewhere, as the Christian Science Monitor reported last year.

Still, the grass is sometimes greener on the other side of the border. “The United States will always remain the brain trust of the world, despite what’s going on now,” a professor of medicine who runs a large American research lab on health outcomes told me. He has worked abroad frequently, including in Europe, and points out that the research funding available there is a fraction of what exists in our country. “The US outlay for science and technology is unrivaled in the world…Pretty much everything [in the field] that’s been invented has been invented in the United States.” In STEM and beyond, the American higher education system that has attracted so many brilliant participants may take more than the rest of Trump’s term to dismantle. The question is how forbidding things will get, both for international students and for the universities—and the communities—that have so long depended on these remarkable contributors to American success.

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