President Donald Trump ratcheted up his pressure campaign against Harvard University on Wednesday, suggesting that the institution should limit the number of international students it enrolls.
“I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15%, not 31%,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference. “We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools; they can’t get in because we have foreign students there.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed the percentage of foreign students enrolled at Harvard is 31%, even though the university’s own data indicate that in the 2024-25 academic year, 6,793 international students were enrolled, representing 27.3% of its student body.
Trump’s comments came just one day after the U.S. State Department directed U.S. embassies to stop scheduling new student visa appointments, presumably so that the federal government could expand its scrutiny of the social media postings that applicants have made.
Trump said the Ivy League school should show his administration their current list of students from other countries so that it can be determined whether they are “troublemakers.”
On Monday, Trump criticized Harvard for accepting what he believes are too many international students. “We are still waiting for the Foreign Student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country,” Trump posted on his social media platform.
“Harvard has got to behave themselves. Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” Trump said Wednesday, according to Reuters.
“Harvard has to show us their lists,” the president added. “I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country. We don’t want to see shopping centers exploding. We don’t want to see the kind of riots that you had.”
It was unclear from Trump’s remarks whether the 15% limit on international students would be unique to Harvard or whether he would like to see such a cap applied to other universities as well.
In the 2023-24 academic year, 1,126,690 international college students were enrolled in the U.S, according to the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report. The total number includes students in a category called “optional practical training,” which covers international students who can extend their time in the country by working for up to a year before or after completing their degree requirements.
Last year’s number was an all-time high, but it represents only about 6% of all college students in the nation. Since the pandemic in 2020-21, when the number of international students declined by a record 15%, enrollments have increased by about 200,000 students over the past three years.
But now the administration appears to be charting a future intended to discourage international students from coming to study in the U.S.
Last week, Homeland Security Kristi Noem notified Harvard University that she was revoking its eligibility to enroll international students, dramatically escalating the Trump administration’s ongoing battles with the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university.
Noem’s order was quickly blocked by a federal judge who issued a temporary restraining order after Harvard sued, but it’s raised broader questions about the safety and security of the more than one million international student studying at American colleges and universities.
In a written message to the campus, Harvard University President Alan M. Garber warned that the administration’s action, “imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”
The Trump administration’s unprecedented action against Harvard is not the only reason why international college students have become alarmed about their future in the United States. Increasingly, they have become a target of an administration seemingly determined to frighten or intimidate them enough that they voluntarily leave the country or decide to not come here in the first place.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for the deportation of foreign university students who “abuse our hospitality.”
The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to deport hundreds of international students at scores of universities before lawsuits around the country forced the administration to back down at least temporarily.
And recently, Joseph Edlow, Trump’s nominee to head up the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, testified before a congressional committee that he favors ending the optional practical training programs, an avenue that most business leaders and educators believe is key to helping the nation recruit and retain international talent.
It’s a far cry from Trump’s rhetoric prior to last year’s presidential election when he suggested he would like to see a program that allowed foreign students who graduated from college in the U.S. to automatically get a green card rather than having to obtain a new visa or leave the country. “Let me just tell you that it’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools, and lesser schools that are phenomenal schools also,” said Trump last June.
Indeed, it is.