Overview

• The White House circulated a memo to nine universities—MIT, Penn, Arizona, Brown, Dartmouth, USC, Texas, Virginia and Vanderbilt—proposing a 15% ceiling on international undergraduates with a 5% per‑country limit in exchange for preferential access to federal funds.
• The proposal is not a universal rule and ties voluntary institutional compliance to benefits and potential penalties, including Justice Department oversight, funding clawbacks and temporary loss of federal advantages for violations.
• The 10‑point compact also directs test requirements for all applicants, bans consideration of race or sex in admissions and hiring, requires tuition freezes and public disclosure of admissions and graduate earnings data, and calls for reforms to units seen as hostile to conservative views.
• Higher‑education groups including AAC&U and ACE criticized the plan as coercive political overreach and, in a separate push, urged DHS to withdraw a proposed fixed‑time student‑visa rule they say would deter researchers and students.
• New federal figures show international student arrivals fell about 19% in August year over year, with Indian arrivals down roughly 44–45%, a drop linked in coverage to tighter vetting, a pause in interviews and targeted visa revocations.