The external affairs ministry is aware of the jeopardy students are being placed in as the US government cracks down on the student body and takes aim at universities, effecting funding cuts
The trauma Indian students are suffering in the US with nearly three lakh students facing the threat of having to leave the country once their studies get over has the potential to affect the Indian outlook on Donald Trump’s America. Lakhs of young people are now reshaping their dream of education in the US thanks to cancellations of existing visas and rejection of new applications and looking at more stable destinations in the UK, Europe and Australia.
The Indian dream of studying in America and staying on to get jobs and hoping to emulate dozens of CEOs of Indian origin heading major global US companies and joining the growing lists of dollar millionaires is dying. Students lawfully in the US being harassed, either for being seen as Palestinian sympathisers on social media or taken to task by border control for minor infractions like traffic offences.
The external affairs ministry is aware of the jeopardy students are being placed in as the US government cracks down on the student body and takes aim at universities, effecting funding cuts. More than one million foreign students attended American universities last year, accounting for 5.9 per cent of total US higher education population, and the largest share — 3,32,000 — came from India rather than China or South Korea. About half the international students now facing revocation of visa issues are Indian.
With the likelihood of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program route for staying on to find a job being shut and the Trump administration being bent upon taking on the universities as political revenge against the ‘woke’ liberals and the left, it does appear that America is being rapidly replaced as a destination for young Indians to work and live abroad while earning in dollar terms and enjoying the amenities of the first world.
America was always the desired destination of STEM students, and their society freely drew on international talent to fill high technology research and teaching jobs, even as the full tuition fees paid by them made American universities viable. Furthermore, the very image of the US will change in the young if there is no end to the current troubles that Indian students are facing. For, even in the Bush years of widespread global unpopularity because of the wars that were initiated abroad and fought by the US, the country had remained a draw for Indians.
The series of anti-immigrant moves made by the Trump administration following pledges made in poll time leading to mass deportations, which heap indignities on those being sent away including some to unbelievably harsh conditions in El Salvadorian jails, may have altered the image of the US in the eyes of the young worldwide. The demand for international admissions to American universities was down by nearly 12 per cent in the last year from March 2024 (among India students it is 28 per cent).
However, as exemplified in the US President’s vengeful attitude and actions against Ivy League universities like Harvard, Princeton and Columbia, the administration does not seem to care, neither about the image hit nor the fact that international students pumped nearly $44 billion into the American economy and generated 3.78 lakh jobs last year, according to an association of international educators. Students may even find other countries to pursue their education in, but will America care if it ends up the loser?
