In Already Facing Trump Administration Cuts, U.S. Colleges Risk Losses From Another Revenue Source: Foreign Students, Steve said, “A lot of universities are already under financial strain from a variety of reasons [including] the recent efforts by the Trump administration against certain elite institutions to claw back federal aid to those institutions. So a drop in international students will hurt those institutions even more.” He noted that “it seems like a lot of students are more skittish about coming to the United States.” He also observed that many universities focus their own financial aid primarily on domestic students, and “because of that, international students bring in more dollars per student than the tuition that domestic students pay.”
