Trump's H-1B Rule Could Devastate Higher Ed

American colleges and universities are talent magnets and international workers are vital for fulfilling the mission.

Update: Some we may know a bit more about the plan now than when I initially wrote this and the worst disaster for higher education might be averted. It is not clear how the $100,000 fee rule will be implemented by there are now some signs that it could apply only to new visas, maybe to anyone outside of the US who re-enters, and maybe only to those who are awarded an H-1B via the lottery. It also seems like the government is reserving the right to waive the fee for some employers. Everything remains muddled and chaotic, and it is possible that this could be the sort of disaster I describe below, or something that is less directly impactful to higher ed. Either way, it is causing a lot of confusion and panic.

President Trump on Friday announced a $100,000 yearly application fee for H-1B visas. The H-1B is a skilled worker visa and the media has been quick, and correct, to point out major technology firms use it extensively to hire their workers. Higher education is getting less coverage in the immediate aftermath of the President’s announcement, but if the rule stands, the sector could be devastated.

Devastated is a strong word, and I mean it. Let me explain why. Companies are allowed to hire a set number of employees on new H-1B visas each year, starting with an 85,000 national cap. These visas are awarded via a lottery system and there is always far more demand than supply. Colleges and universities, along with other specially designated institutions like NGOs and government agencies, are exempt from the H-1B cap. This exemption means that universities are able to hire international faculty and staff with far fewer restrictions than companies and that higher ed is seen, correctly, as a more viable pathway into the US labor market by skilled workers. The result: US higher ed is chock-full of H-1B workers. It’s not not an exaggeration to say that US higher education will struggle to operate without international talent.

The dynamics of this are pretty simple and have to do with supply, demand, and regulation.

The supply of highly-skilled workers, especially in some science and engineering fields, is highly international. A large share of people pursuing advanced science and engineering education are from abroad. The National Science Foundation’s Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates shows that nearly 40% of all science and engineering graduate students and mover 57% of all postdocs are internationals. Healthcare trainees are impacted too. Around 1 in 7 medical residents are internationals, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The science and engineering workforce is similarly international. Data from the US National Science Board shows that greater than 4 in 10 PhD-level science and engineering workers in the US are foreign born. The share is even higher in computer science and math, and engineering fields, where greater than 55% of all PhD-level workers are foreign born.

Colleges and universities have a lot of demand for these kinds of workers to teach, conduct research, and administer complex educational and scientific offices. Foreign-born workers who are permanent residents (i.e. Green Cards) or who are naturalized US Citizens won’t need an H-1B visa, but many early career workers who are just starting out in the scientific workforce will. If you want to hire an assistant professor to teach and/or conduct research in an engineering program, a majority of the qualified labor pool is foreign born, and a very large share of the qualified applicants will require an H-1B to work. Faculty, researchers, including some but not all postdocs, and staff are often initially hired into US higher education using H1-B visas. Many, if not most, of these people eventually become permanent residents or US citizens, but for a period of years are reliant on the H-1B system to live and work in the US. Simply put, without access to H1-B workers, US colleges and universities will not be able to fill vital roles on campus, especially in science and engineering fields.

My PhD research (done more than 15 years ago under the supervision of a faculty member who held an H-1B visa) examined the role of international postdocs in science and engineering labs at universities in the US and the UK. One of the things that I found was that US academic research benefited enormously by being able to hire international scientists and engineers with few restrictions. Because companies face a strict H1-B cap, and landing a visa to work in corporate America is far from guaranteed, universities were able to lure some of the most talented people in the world to university research labs , at modest salaries, with the promise of an H-1B and eventually a Green Card. This regulatory context was one factor that contributed to American universities standing as global leaders. My work is not alone in showing the importance of foreign born academics, which has long been established in the literature. One study, for example, found that foreign born researchers are more likely to author “hot papers” and to be highly cited authors. Another found that foreign-born academics are more productive and yet paid less than their US-born counterparts.

The Consequences

Trump’s order is likely to be challenged and I have no idea if will go into effect. If the $100,000 a year fee for H-1B visas does go into effect, however, the consequences will be devastating for US higher education. Many campuses will not be able to afford the $100,000 fee and will be forced to lay-off innumerable teaching, research, and administrative staff.

Some colleges and universities will struggle to offer degree programs in engineering, computer sciences, and other fields. The consequences for students enrolled or hoping to enroll in these programs is obvious. I can easily imagine regional public universities unable to offer some STEM majors, at least in the short run, if this law goes into effect, precisely harming the US workers that Trump says that he cares about.

Teaching hospitals, that do the vital work of both delivering care and training medical workers, will also feel the pinch. A reasonable chuck of medical residents work on H-1B visas as do nurses and other healthcare specialists. The capacity to deliver care in communities, especially rural communities that rely on university healthcare systems, could be compromised.

Research programs would slow, and some would grind to a halt. This would have harm individual research labs and universities but also slow the pace of discovery globally. We will have less, and less good, science. Technological innovation and drug discover could slow. I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic. These are some pretty obvious possibilities.

Colleges and universities may have trouble administering vital campus functions. IT and data analytics capabilities, which are essentially to manage campuses, could be hit particularly hard. And beyond these fictional slowdowns the social fabric of campus will be tattered. Colleagues and friends who make direct contributions to campuses and communities would have to leave, disrupting lives and slowing local economies. Think about the houses that they would need to sell on short notice, for example. And we are talking about human beings and real families. Think about the impact on their children’s education, social, and emotional wellbeing.

You might ask, why not just train and hire more US people for these jobs. Sure, in the abstract, that’s not a bad idea. But the fact is there are not enough US people who are interested in these jobs or who have the required educational background. The NSF and other programs that were designed to broaden participation in STEM programs were in part motivated by the concern of getting more US born people into STEM fields. And yet the Trump administration has cut the very programs designed to advance domestic STEM education with zeal - cancelling grants and suspending future programs. The H-1B fee is about hurting people and organizations, not about benefiting the American worker.

Ok, enough.