The Trump administration's move to block Harvard University from enrolling international students, along with a series of other measures related to institutions of higher learning, will lead to a chaotic situation in the U.S. education system, said a US scholar.
Matthew Wilson, an associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, made the statements during an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN).
He said the measures from the Trump administration will alter federal funding for colleges, placing significant pressure on the schools.
"They've reshaped it in a couple of important ways. First of all they have significantly cut the amount of money that goes to universities through federal grant funding. Now some of that has come through eliminating radically downsizing things like the U.S. Agency for International Development. But perhaps even more significantly, they have reduced the amount of overhead that they will pay on federal grants. And universities often rely on that overhead that comes from federal grants to fund a range of activities and programs on university campuses," he said.
Wilson underscored that visa restrictions on international students will impact universities both academically and financially.
"I think that the restrictions on international students could be very, very consequential in a couple of ways. So in some fields, international students are absolutely essential to the work that is done on university campuses, particularly in many STEM fields, many high tech engineering fields, as many as half or more of the graduate students in some of these fields come from overseas. The other impact is a financial one because typically international students are full-pay students. So eliminating international students from the equation has definite deleterious budgetary implications for a lot of these institutions," he said.
Speaking of the plan issued by the White House in April on reforming accreditation to strengthen higher education, Wilson said the radical move could throw the whole system into disorder.
"With regard to accreditation, the trump administration has sought to introduce what appear to be ideological or political criteria into the accreditation mix, demanding the end of DEI programs is one thing, but also looking at things like ideological balance in the faculty, etc. This would be a major, major upheaval in the way that institutions are accredited," he said.
US restrictions on universities, students to harm education system: scholar
