Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sued the Trump administration to stop a new policy that would block international students from coming to or remaining in the United States if their courses are taught entirely online.
The policy — released with no notice on Monday, the same day Harvard announced it would hold all undergraduate classes online this fall — was viewed by many in higher education as a backdoor effort by the administration to force colleges to reopen to face-to-face instruction.
And it threw colleges and the lives of a million international students into tumult. Even institutions that plan to offer a mix of online and in-person courses are scrambling to ensure that there are enough face-to-face courses for international students to meet the requirements of the new policy.
As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.
Many students, especially those with health conditions, confront tough choices: travel to their home countries in the midst of a global pandemic or return to campus, even if they feared doing so was unsafe.
The lawsuit, which was filed this morning in U.S. district court in Boston, suggested that this was the new policy’s intended outcome: “The effect — and perhaps even the goal — is to create as much chaos for universities and international students as possible.”
At Indiana University at Bloomington, Hannah Buxbaum, the vice president for international affairs, and her staff members face a logistical nightmare. Under the policy’s provisions, colleges planning to operate in a hybrid mode, as Indiana is, must update their plans with the Department of Homeland Security by the beginning of August and issue new student-visa documents known as I-20s to every student, certifying that the student is not taking an entirely online courseload. At the Bloomington campus, that’s more than 5,000 students.
“Reissuing I-20s for every single student, that is not trivial,” Buxbaum said. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck exercise.”
Krista McCallum Beatty, director of international-student services at Michigan State University, said her office was working with academic units and programs to make sure there would be enough courses available in-person to accommodate the university’s international students, about 70 percent of whom remain in the United States. Although Michigan State also had plans to be in hybrid mode, the university will need to ensure that every student can take a face-to-face course that fits with their academic program and schedule. It could be especially challenging for senior-level students, who have relatively few classes that they need for graduation and where there are smaller number of course offerings, McCallum Beatty said.
She said her office had been “slammed” with calls from anxious students. Her message, she said: “We’ll figure it out.”
With classes set to begin in little more than a month at some institutions, many colleges have already set their course schedules.
Olivia C. Loo, director of international students at Pasadena City College, said faculty members across campus had offered to help accommodate the college’s 700 international students under the new requirements, including developing new hybrid courses or adapting their classes to include an in-person element for international students. “It is beautiful to see, but I also worry about them,” Loo said. “My colleagues are also risking their health and could potentially be exposed to Covid to help our students stay in compliance.”
And Kevin Kinser, head of education-policy studies at Pennsylvania State University, said he was cautioning colleagues not to advise students about how they would be accommodated in their studies until the university got clearer guidance on the policy. On Twitter, many professors have been volunteering to offer independent study to hundreds, even thousands, of students, but it’s not certain that such a course would qualify as in-person instruction. “We can’t make promises to international students if we don’t know if we can keep them,” Kinser said.
Still, not all colleges viewed the policy as disruptive to their fall plans. Kent Hopkins, vice president for enrollment services at Arizona State University, said Monday’s announcement had caused “confusion” among students, but the university remained confident that it could go forward with its plans to offer a mix of remote and in-person instruction.
It’s unclear what impact the lawsuit will have on colleges’ planning. Harvard and MIT have asked the federal court to issue a temporary order blocking the administration from enforcing the new policy, to declare it unlawful, and to return to the spring guidance.
The lawsuit said that the administration failed to properly consider “numerous weighty interests” in drafting the policy and did not follow proper regulatory procedures. The policy was released as a “broadcast message” by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which said it planned to put out a rule enacting it in the “near future.” As of Wednesday morning, no rule has been published.
When the coronavirus’s spread forced the sudden closure of campuses this spring, the Department of Homeland Security suspended a student-visa requirement that limited international students to taking just one online course per semester to allow international students to study remotely. Although that guideline applied only to the spring and summer terms, many college officials had hoped the flexibility on remote learning would be extended to fall, given the uncertainty.
The Harvard-MIT lawsuit said that the two institutions moved forward with planning for fall under the assumption that the spring guidance would remain in place. That guidance said that the flexibility in taking online courses would continue “for the duration of the emergency.” Across much of the country, coronavirus cases are continuing to spike.
At a U.S. House hearing on Tuesday, Chancellor Timothy White of the California State University system, which expects to be mostly online this fall, called the new policy “tone deaf to the reality of the biology of the disease.”
Many saw the policy change as part of President Trump’s broader effort to push schools and businesses to reopen, despite the continued outbreak. “The Trump administration is setting this up as a battle to pressure colleges to be in-person,” said Robert Kelchen, an associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University. He noted that some states, like his own, have not yet permitted schools and colleges to reopen. “It sets up battles with the states, with colleges, with faculty and staff.”
Indeed, on CNN, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of homeland security, said a goal of the policy was to “encourage schools to reopen.” During a White House event on the reopening of public schools on Tuesday, President Trump called Harvard’s plans not to fully reopen this fall “the easy way out.”
Many within higher education also view the new policy as the latest action by an administration unfriendly to international students. In its first week, the administration abruptly barred travelers from a half-dozen largely Muslim countries, stranding students and faculty members abroad. Since then, it has put in place visa restrictions against Chinese students and revoked the visas of certain international students trying to return to campus.
The number of new international students coming to the United States has fallen for the past three years, reversing more than a decade of steep increases.
The policy put students like Maha AlHomoud, a student from Saudi Arabia at the University of Washington at Seattle, in a tough spot. AlHomoud was diagnosed with blood cancer as a freshman and went through a full year of chemotherapy. Because of her weakened immune system, she had planned to take courses online this fall, her senior year. Under the new guidelines, she must either take at least one in-person class, putting her health at risk, or try to return to Saudi Arabia, which has closed its borders to international travelers.
Now, it seems I am forced once again to choose between my health and my education, and it’s not right.
“It feels painful,” AlHomoud said. She had remained in the United States during her cancer treatment so that she could continue her studies, she said. “Now, it seems I am forced once again to choose between my health and my education, and it’s not right.”
Much of the focus of the policy has been on its impact on students currently in the United States; a survey by the Institute of International Education this spring found that as many as nine out of 10 current international students remained in the country after campuses closed, although the share varied across institutions. But the new measure has repercussions for students outside of the country, too — students who attend colleges that are offering in-person or hybrid instruction will not be permitted to take courses remotely and maintain their student-visa status.
This distinction matters because students who are not in active status lose their ability to take part in internships and experiential learning for fall and summer 2021. Visa rules require they maintain status for a full academic year to take part in such activities.
Buxbaum, of Indiana, said government officials seem to be disregarding the potential disruption to international students’ studies the policy could cause. On CNN, Cuccinelli said that students enrolled at a college offering only online instruction “should go home, and then they can return when the school opens. That’s what student visas are for.”
These are our students, and the new guidance seems to treat them with indifference. It feels punitive for the international-student population.
Buxbaum said this position seemed to ignore the enormous hurdles students face in traveling.
With few international flights and entry bans on travelers from many parts of the world, including China and Europe, it is difficult for students currently abroad to return. Many American consulates remain closed, and normal visa processing has not resumed, making it almost impossible for new international students to come to the United States.
“These are our students,” she said, “and the new guidance seems to treat them with indifference. It feels punitive for the international-student population.”
Utkarsh Mehta’s parents asked him to return to India from Washington State University this spring. Even if he could get back to the United States, the journalism major worries he could be “deported” this fall if public-health concerns forced Washington State to switch from a hybrid to an all-online format later in the semester. The new policy states that if a college moves to online-only instruction, international students would have to leave in the middle of the term.
“Being an international student in the U.S., I really thought was a privilege, something I could be proud of,” Mehta said. “I don’t think of it as a privilege anymore.”
