Students from India and China Rethink Studying in the U.S.
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You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. The United States is an appealing place for people from around the world to study and conduct scientific research. But recent moves by the Trump administration have indicated they intend to make it harder for foreign students to study in the U.S.,

They've announced that applicants for student visas will soon be getting more scrutiny. And the administration has said it will revoke student visas from Chinese students with connections to China's ruling Communist Party or who are studying in fields deemed critical.

We'll hear about the moves against Chinese students in a few minutes, but first to India. Indian nationals make up the largest share of foreign students in the U.S., and many Indian students are now reconsidering whether they want to study in America. NPR's Omkar Kandikar reports from Mumbai.

20-year-old engineering student Kaustubh always wanted to study aeronautics. Five years ago, he toured Stanford University while visiting relatives. It blew his mind. When I saw what kind of life, what kind of freedom the students over there enjoy, I cannot express the...

We are only using Kaustubh's first name because of concerns over being targeted and prevented from coming to the US. He says he has done everything to qualify for a master's program at Stanford. He scored high grades. He designed model airplanes. He also interned at India's best-known airline manufacturer.

But, he says, the Trump administration's hardline immigration policy It's kind of shattering my dream of starting in the Stanford. many of his peers share that feeling. When President Trump secured a second term, many in India celebrated and prayed for his success. Trump and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi have called each other friends.

But less than a month into Trump's presidency, his administration began deporting hundreds of Indians who it said had entered the country illegally. And last month, the U.S. suspended new student visa appointments and began scrutinizing their social media accounts.

Sudhanshu Kaushik is the executive director of the North American Association of Indian Students. He says many Indians think it is part of the ongoing culture war in America. I think that they want to push as much as possible to make it as homogenous as they can. And he says it doesn't make much economic sense. Indians contribute more than $8 billion to the U.S. economy and form the backbone of leading tech companies.

Anand Shankar is a co-founder of Learners Cortex, which helps Indian students apply to foreign universities. He says some of his students told him they are willing to wait until 2028. Others have given up plans to study in the US for now. Like Nihar Gokhale, a journalist from Delhi.

Earlier this year, he says a university in Massachusetts withdrew its offer to him for a PhD program, saying the government had cut back on their research funding. Wokley says United States has long relied on the ingenuity of foreign students. Graduate students and PhD students are the best brains that you can get. And he says cracking down on them won't help Trump's goal to make America great again. Omkar Khandekar, NPR News, Mumbai.

Chinese students are facing the same visa scrutiny, the loss of federal funding, and also additional restrictions targeted at them specifically. The Trump administration says it will aggressively cancel visas of certain Chinese students, those with ties to China's Communist Party or who are studying in critical fields. NPR's Emily Feng tells us how students and the U.S. scientific community are reacting.

David Ho is a celebrated virologist whose many accolades include the Presidential Citizens Medal and Time Magazine's Man of the Year for his work on HIV-AIDS. Now he's studying COVID. Two major pandemics that plagued humanity in the last 45 years or so. And his research, Ho says, is groundbreaking because he can hire the most talented students from all over the world, including from China. Maybe the average American student

doesn't realize that much of the scientific workforce is comprised of foreign scientists and Chinese scientists. Dr. Ho himself is not from China. He was born in Taiwan. But Dr. Ho sees no problem hiring Chinese postdoctoral researchers. And the very, very best generally stay in America and contribute to America. So that party affiliation to me has an

played a role at all. The Trump administration argues some Chinese students are a threat to national security, and they accuse China's Communist Party of stealing American research.

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China until earlier this year, points out the U.S. already screens Chinese students very closely. If a Chinese citizen has connection to the military or the intelligence services, certainly we don't want those people in our country. A connection to the Communist Party, Burns argues, is not a very accurate measure of a student's intentions.

And to essentially say to those people, largest country in the world, along with India, you are hereby excluded from the United States if you have any connection whatsoever with the Communist Party. I think that's short-sighted. The exact impact of the new policy will depend on how broadly the administration applies its criteria to pull back visas. But those working in science and technology fields say the announcement has already had a chilling effect.

Yeah, fear is rampant. This is Ken Ono, a science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, advisor at the University of Virginia. The damage I'm most worried about will be those students who just choose to leave because they no longer feel welcome. Joseph Tucker is a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He also co-directs a scholarly exchange program with China. And he says his research could not happen without students from China.

Not because university labs like his prefer foreign students. They simply choose people who are the best in their field. If you were a CEO of a company, who would you hire? You'd hire the best people that are available.

A lot of Tucker's research is related to public health issues specific to North Carolina. American citizens, he argues, benefit when researchers from around the world work side by side in the U.S. It's a public resource and all of our findings are published in open access journals. So anyone can see the research findings. They're presented to the public.

Dr. Ho, the virologist, says there is now a brain drain away from the U.S. Starting in the first Trump administration, he's already seen a precipitous drop in Chinese students asking to work in his laboratory.

Instead, he's receiving a new kind of inquiry. Whether I would be willing to take a position in China or in European institutions, they know what's happening in America at this time. For nearly five decades, the U.S. educational system was venerated within China. Though going forward, Dr. Ho warns, perhaps no longer. Emily Fang, NPR News. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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