Hello and welcome back to The Markup, Inside Higher Ed’s weekly roundup of all things higher ed policy. I’m your host, Jessica, IHE’s federal policy reporter who can’t believe the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte is already back in season. Someone explain, where did summer go?
On a much different note, the Trump administration recommended that the American Bar Association’s accreditation council be denied federal recognition. The news broke last Friday, and a week later, it still remains unclear exactly what the consequences of such a denial would be. (The recommendation can’t be finalized until after an advisory board meets in late September.)
Meanwhile, two federal agencies appear to be adopting their own versions of a controversial proposed policy from the Office of Management and Budget that would, among other things, politicize the grant-making process. The Department of Education and the National Science Foundation published those new but similar plans earlier this week. In all three cases, the policies would cement the right of political officials to override peer-reviews and deny or terminate grants that don’t align with the president's priorities.
This Week’s Big Story
Data from the State Department shows that 23 percent fewer student visas were issued in 2025 compared to the previous year.
An Inside Higher Ed analysis by Johanna Alonso shows that countries impacted by President Trump’s travel ban, including Iran, Myanmar and Venezuela, were among those with the fewest student visas issued in 2025—each seeing declines of more than 70 percent year-over-year.
But China and India, the two largest source countries of international students to the U.S., were also hit hard with a 28 percent drop and 57 percent drop, respectively.
Visa issuances were relatively stable for the first few months of 2025 compared to the year prior, but when the White House paused all student visa interviews to implement new social media screenings in May, the rate began to plummet.
But other factors such as the change to duration of status rules and generally unpredictable nature of visas in the U.S. are likely also contributing to the decline, experts said. Regardless, advocates warn that drops in the number of international students studying in America will be detrimental to both individual campuses and the national economy. NAFSA, an association of international education professionals, predicts that a drop in international students in the 2026–27 academic year will result in $3.4 billion in losses to the U.S. economy.
