The $100,000 H-1B visa fee and a new preference for older skilled workers could hurt both schools’ foreign staff hiring and their graduate student recruitment.
There’s been lots of discussion about which tech companies will be the biggest losers from President Donald Trump’s broad assault on H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, including a $100,000 fee for each new visa recipient. But the impact could be felt first by universities, says Jeremy Neufeld, the director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.
That’s because the fee won’t apply to companies until next March, when the annual lottery for the roughly 85,000 new commercial H-1B visas awarded each year, takes place. Meanwhile, universities and certain other research and not-for-profit organizations benefit from an exemption that allows them to apply for visas year round, outside the 85,000 cap or the lottery. “The universities are on the frontlines and this is just a pure tax on their pipeline,” declares Neufeld.
So far, at least, universities and other exempt groups have not been shielded from the $100,000 fee, though Trump’s proclamation announcing it did allow vague exceptions in the national interest. Previously, H-1B fees ran from $2,000 to $5,000, depending on the size of the employer, according to the American Immigration Council.
It’s not just the fee that could hit universities hard. Another part of the Trump Administration’s September H-1B attack is a proposal to shift the rules of the visa lottery to favor older (and hence, presumably higher-paid) workers. That makes it harder for foreign students who graduate from U.S. universities with PhDs and master’s degrees to stay here to work–which has always been part of the payoff of a U.S. education. Moreover, the H-1B proposal comes on top of rules changes the Administration proposed in August for F-1 student visas, which would put new time limits on these visas and make it harder for foreign graduates of U.S. colleges and universities to use the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. OPT has allowed foreign students to stay after graduation and get work experience for one year, or three years if they majored in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects.
Other Trump Administration policies are already reducing foreign student enrollment. Data from the U.S. International Trade Administration shows international student arrivals (except for from Canada and Mexico), were down 19% this past August from August of 2024, falling to 307,419. July arrivals were off 28% from the year before, to 76,519. (Forbes immigration senior contributor Stuart Anderson, in reporting those numbers, noted some of the decline could reflect already enrolled students deciding not to return home for the summer since “many universities advised students to consider remaining in America rather than risk being blocked on reentry.”)
The Trump Administration’s restrictive approach to international students is hitting universities with large graduate programs particularly hard, just as those schools are also reeling from the effects of Trump’s research funding cuts and freezes, as well as new limits on graduate student loans that kick in next year. A record 502,291 foreign students were enrolled in U.S. grad programs in 2023-2024, compared to 342,875 in undergraduate studies, according to data from Open Doors.)
The table below shows the 25 universities that received the highest number of H-1B visas in the first nine months of Fiscal 2025 (meaning from October 1 2024 through June 30, 2025), according to a database maintained by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration service. (The number includes both new visas, and those renewed after three years.) The table also shows the percentage of their graduate students who came from abroad in the fall of 2023, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available. At 13 of the 25 universities, at least a quarter of graduate students were international.
Stanford University, the top H-1B user, with 500 granted in the first three quarters of FY 2025, drew 36% of its grad students from abroad. At both Washington University in St. Louis and Columbia University in New York City, 46% of grad students were foreign.
Aside from the potential financial impact, the attack on H-1B is a culture shock to long-time academics. When he chaired Northwestern University’s Spanish and Portuguese department from 2010 to 2017, a candidate’s visa status never factored into hiring decisions, recalls Professor Jorge Coronado, an expert in modern Latin American and Andean literature. “We thought about [it] as you hire the best person for the job, the visa status is not relevant,” he says. Now, the fee is bound to deter international hiring in his department which consists of 30-40% foreign-born faculty, he says. “An $100,000 sticker on already strained budgets would be taken into consideration [in hiring.] I don’t see how it wouldn’t be.”
The change is “a very important threat to our ability to hire the best candidates,’’ warns a medical professor at an Ivy League institution, who first arrived in the U.S. on an H-1B and asked not to be named since his university hadn’t authorized him to speak.
Anshul Kundaje, an associate professor of genetics and computer science at Stanford University, who worked in the U.S. on an H-1B as a postdoc, called the new fee “utterly stupid” and “idiotic,’’ in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “I currently have exceptional project directors and staff scientists in my lab who are on H-1Bs and are major contributors to the research output of the U.S.,” he wrote in a Sept. 20 post on the platform.
In response to a critic, Kundaje added: “I have no problem with more quality control & cutting out the abuse of the H1B visas, which is a real problem. This is not the way to do it. The folks I’m referring to are elite scientists. We need more not less to keep the US at the top. Makes no sense to lump them with scammers.”
Created in 1990, the H-1B visa program was designed to encourage the immigration of highly skilled workers, such as engineers, scientists and educators. Original visas are usually good for three years and can be renewed for another three. Some H-1B holders eventually become permanent residents, citizens, entrepreneurs and even U.S. billionaires.
Computer occupations dominate the program—in 2024 they accounted for 75,428, or 53.4%, of all new H-1B visas. Those in education occupations (that includes folks working in high schools as well as universities) received 13,725 new H-1Bs, or 9.7% of those issued, while medicine and health occupations got 8,492, or 6% of new H-1B visas.
In his September 19th proclamation on H-1B, Trump asserted that the program “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor,’’ and that “large-scale replacement of American workers through systemic abuse of the program has undermined both our economic and national security.”
The announcement of the $100,000 fee, made on a Friday, set off an immediate panic, with some employers telling H-1B workers not to leave the country. The Trump Administration later clarified that only new H-1Bs (not renewals or H-1B holders traveling back to the U.S.) would be subject to the $100,000 fee. Medical societies and the American Hospital Association have been pressing for an exemption for foreign M.D.s, who are crucial to alleviating the shortage of U.S. educated doctors, particularly in red states. The White House has said an exemption for M.D.s is possible, but has made no firm commitment. Meanwhile, it hasn’t provided any indication that university jobs might be exempt.
On Friday, a lawsuit seeking to block the new $100,000 fee was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by a long list of plaintiffs, including the American Association of University Professors; unions representing graduate students and medical residents; a church; a pastor; Global Nurse Force (a recruiting company); and a postdoc from India working on genetic and epigenetic causes of blindness, whose university halted efforts to sponsor her for an H-1B, because of the fee. The suit notes that the $100,000 fee appears to apply to workers who are already lawfully in the U.S. under a different status, such as a student visa, and are seeking to transition to an H-1B. (Graduate students are typically on F-1 visas. Foreign medical school graduates typically come to train as interns and residents on J-1 visas meant for educational or cultural exchange, and then transition to H-1Bs if they stay to practice here.)
Even if the $100,000 fee is ultimately struck down by the courts, or universities and not-for-profits are exempted, the H-1B attack could sour the atmosphere for recruiting foreign faculty. “Are they going to want to come to the United States at all, even if they can, even if the universities are willing to hire them, if there’s going to be travel restrictions or who knows what the Trump administration is going to do next?” asks Neufeld.
A further complication is that if the proposed changes to student visas go through, some grad students might be unable to pursue postdoc positions in the U.S. through OPT, limiting an established pathway that allows foreign born STEM graduates to work in the U.S. for three years, make contacts, and then move into H-1B positions sponsored by universities or private employers.
As the U.S. seeks to restrict the entry of foreign skilled workers, other countries such as China, Germany and the United Kingdom have been ramping up efforts to position themselves as better alternatives. Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada is considering “a clear offering” for tech sector workers who would have otherwise qualified for H-1B visas.
“I don’t know how successful they will be, but other countries see this as a big opportunity, because we’re just dropping dollar bills on the sidewalk for them,” Neufeld warns.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2025/10/07/these-25-universities-will-take-a-big-hit-from-trumps-h-1b-visa-attack/
