The Biden administration just made a worthy pledge: “The United States is committed to sustaining critical investments in the fundamentals of thriving societies,” the White House stated a few days ago in its U.S. Strategy on Global Development, which received no news coverage.
The report highlights the importance of education. Yet at the same time, the administration is undermining innovative efforts to boost education in dozens of countries. Homeland Security and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) made a little-noticed tweak in “guidance” for student visas that could have major implications for students from other countries.
I hope the powerful community of Washington-based ambassadors and consuls—working with members of Congress from both parties— can help us rectify this problem right away.
Here’s what happened, in plain language:
In late August, as colleges were mapping out study abroad projects for this academic year, USCIS updated its policy about student visas, known as F-1 visas. Now, suddenly, students who leave the United States to study elsewhere have a strict five-month limit to return to their US campus; that limit was not specified before. Those who exceed that limit will lose their student visa.
So what? Most study abroad programs last about five months, right?
Most, but not all. I’m the president of San Francisco-based Minerva University. Our students spend the first year in the US. Then they move on to what we call “global rotations” to Asia, Europe and South America, finally returning to San Francisco during their fourth year to graduate. For the past 12 years, we have been shaping future entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders and, by the way, diplomats from around the world.
For three consecutive years, we’ve been awarded the honor “World’s Most Innovative University” from a group called World’s Universities with Real Impact. And we’ve heard from more than a dozen other college leaders in the US and overseas who are interested in adapting our model.
And yet, sadly, next week we will start flying 150 students from Berlin to the United States—interrupting their Europe rotation because we need to protect their student visas. Under the new policy guidance, they’ll have to stay in the US for a full academic year before going overseas to study again.
This seemingly inconsequential adjustment could undermine our model. But it’s not just about one university’s mission. This change will squeeze the talent pool of international leaders into the United States from around the world and halt important global education partnerships—just as other universities are trying our model.
I’m not blaming anyone in Washington. I’ve seen this happen in academia and government: Sometimes the people who interpret policies don’t understand the implications of their own guidance.
Please, diplomatic friends from around the world—help our students and others by working with the US government to adjust this capricious, onerous policy in three ways:
- First, offer a grace period for students studying abroad to transition back without losing their F-1 visas.
- Second, amend the five-month absence limit to allow for more time to study abroad durations.
- Third, create long-term policies that recognize the contributions of international students to our daily life and economy.
The new White House global development report notes that the US wants other countries to thrive. By welcoming their scholars to go back and forth, studying here and abroad for months at a time, we certainly can help other countries—while helping the United States.
Mike Magee is president of San Francisco-based Minerva University, a nonprofit institution where students from more than 100 countries study on four continents in four years.
