“Elite universities bring in foreigners to undercut the wages of American residents,” Vice President JD Vance stated at a press conference, according to the news publication. He indicated that the universities being probed are: Arizona State University, Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California, Davis, the University of Pittsburgh and Yale University.
Vance maintained that American workers employed as researchers and the like earn about $20,000 more than those hired through the J-1 visa program. He said the universities in question are employing J-1 visas for federally funded grants at a rate of 61% – substantially higher than the national average of 38% – “so something weird is going on at these universities,” the Hill reported.
The probe – announced Oct. 8 – is one of a slew of investigations that the Trump administration has launched regarding the practices of institutions that it believes are undermining American interests and violating the nation’s laws by favoring foreigners or students from underrepresented ethnic groups. For instance, the administration has launched probes into medical schools and law schools it suspects of wrongly considering race in their admission practices in what it considers an illegal attempt to diversify the field of practitioners of law and medicine.
The probe also represents one of several administration efforts that target foreign students. For instance, the administration sought to end “duration of status” for international students and restrict the time that they can spend studying in the country to four years. The administration portrayed the effort as one meant to curtail “foreign student visa abuse” by “forever” students who perpetually enroll in new courses just to stay in the U.S. However, the move was blocked by a federal court in September. The Department of Homeland Security has since appealed the ruling.
Thus, the latest probe could be seen as an effort to secure a victory in an area of higher education where some of the administration’s other efforts to place restrictions on international students have hit a snag.
Jamaal Abdul-Alim is a longtime education writer who resides in Washington, D.C. He occasionally teaches journalism and has completed fellowships at the University of Michigan, Columbia University and New America.
