Higher education funding should prioritize Americans

Columbia, as it turns out, also leads the way in another troubling college ranking.

According to the most recent data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, international students comprised an incredible 40% of Columbia’s student population. Columbia leads a pack of 27 large public and private non-profit universities where international students constitute more than 10% of the total student population. 

Why is this a problem? The question bears asking because the optimum number of international students is not zero. International students benefit U.S. colleges and universities in several ways, including raising academic standards, promoting cross-national ties, and facilitating cultural enrichment. The problem, however, is that the first purpose of American higher education, along with truth-seeking and the dissemination of knowledge, is to educate Americans. 

As with immigration, numbers matter when evaluating the costs and benefits of admitting international students. Some of the costs include:

• Displacing investment in the public with investment in foreign nationals and, by extension, foreign nations
• Increasing risks of intellectual property theft, including cutting-edge technology
• Increasing risks of antisemitic violence and harassment against American students 
• Divorcing a core, formative environment for America’s future leaders from the values and mores of the public 

Admitting too many international students is a national concern, and the federal government cannot abdicate policymaking in this area to university administrators. 

Left to their own devices, universities will continue to place their interests and ideological agendas ahead of the nation. They will tolerate espionage and influence operations by hostile foreign powers and extremists in exchange for lucrative grants and contracts. They will ignore their obligations to safeguard civil liberties and civil rights. Indeed, they will actively subvert both when it suits them. They will undermine the enforcement of the nation’s laws and promote antipathy toward its history and values. 

National security is also a risk. The Trump administration is moving to reassert sovereign control over institutions of American security and prosperity. This includes “re-shoring” manufacturing and securing the supply lines of America’s defense and vital economic (e.g., microchips) infrastructure. America’s colleges and universities, the “crown jewels of the American system,” are part of that infrastructure. 

The cosmopolitan “globalist” character these institutions assumed previously was always a problem, but it was arguably a tolerable one. No longer. Limiting mass enrollment of international students is a necessary component of re-territorializing these core American institutions. To put it bluntly, to Make America Great Again, we must make American universities American again. 

To this end, the Department of Education should develop a new designation through the rulemaking process that would apply to public and private non-profit four-year universities with full-time equivalent student populations of 30,000 or more. Those in which international students exceed 10% of the undergraduate or total FTE populations would be designated as “Foreign Serving Institutions.” The FSI designation — a new Education Department-wide definition — would then be used to encourage universities to prioritize educating Americans. 

FSI designation could be used in a variety of ways. The secretary of education could restrict FSI access to lucrative research grants and contracts, mirroring recent actions taken against Columbia. The secretary could also direct officials to prioritize non-FSIs when reviewing competitive grant applications. Grant funding for students administered through institutions, such as Pell Grants, could also be subject to FSI restrictions. The Department of Education and other departments (e.g., Health and Human Services) could utilize their discretion over supplemental grant funding to reduce indirect cost subsidies for grants awarded to FSIs.

Many Departments, including Defense and State, send officers to civilian education programs, including graduate programs — these, too, could be restricted to non-FSIs. Federal and state agencies could prioritize hiring graduates from non-FSI universities. The State Department could differentiate FSI and non-FSI universities in granting student visas. The IRS could restrict tax credits for educational expenses at FSI universities.

Many of these changes could be implemented through executive action by Cabinet secretaries or by the President without the new FSI designation. However, utilizing the rule-making process will help insulate actions from legal challenges and slow down roll-back procedures initiated by future administrations.

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Given the financial stakes, FSIs would likely move quickly to reduce enrollment of international students. Twenty-two universities meet the described criteria for FSI designation. Most of these (19/27) hosted antisemitic protests last year (see table one below). If FSIs capped international student enrollment at 10%, at which point the designation would be lifted, they could enroll an additional 117,332 American students. 

Putting America first includes putting Americans first in higher education. President Trump and Secretary McMahon are right to hold Columbia to account for its reckless disregard for the safety and civil rights of American students. They should be similarly bold in safeguarding the American people’s investments in their nation’s large universities. 

Table 1. “Foreign Serving Institutions” in 2023, and Antisemitic Arrests and Encampments in 2024

Dr. Christopher Schorr is the senior policy analyst for the Higher Education Reform Initiative at the America First Policy Institute.