At many leading study destinations in Western countries, the climate for international students is cooling. In the United Kingdom, most students are now barred from bringing family members. Canada has enforced a cap on study permits, restricted work eligibility after graduation and doubled the financial threshold for students to prove self-sufficiency. In the United States, border officials have been empowered to revoke student visas on national-security grounds, and proposed budget cuts would slash funding for exchange programmes by 90%.
As someone who was once a foreign student and who now researches how higher education can drive social and civic transformation, I worry that this shift in attitude will have consequences far beyond university campuses.
US academics: look after foreign students
International students are not simply add-ons to national research systems; they help to drive them. They expand the intellectual terrain of universities, challenge familiar assumptions and enrich the learning of their domestic peers. In a survey by the UK government, 76% of students said that having international classmates helped to broaden their outlook, and 85% said it meant they felt better prepared for a global workplace (see go.nature.com/4lxzdng).
When laboratories welcome the rest of the world, innovation multiplies. Economists have shown that a 10% increase in international graduate-student enrolment at US universities is associated with a 4.5% rise in patent applications and a 6.8% rise in university patent grants1 — gains not matched by domestic growth. A 2024 study that examined US start-up firms founded between 1999 and 2020 revealed that increasing the share of foreign master’s students in a cohort by ten percentage points yielded around 0.4 extra start-ups, nearly half of which were co-founded with classmates born in the United States2.
Moreover, host nations gain diplomatic links. In the 2024 Soft-Power Index — an annual analysis of the number of serving world leaders who went to university abroad — 70 current heads of state or government had been educated in the United States and 58 in the United Kingdom (see go.nature.com/4nsrzha).
US researchers must stand up to protect freedoms, not just funding
And countries that send their students abroad benefit, too. Graduates bring back not only skills and knowledge, but also fresh ways of thinking, organizing and acting, with consequences for policy, civic participation and public welfare. A 2024 study3 of 43 low- and middle-income countries found that, over 15 years, high student mobility correlated with decreases in poverty: a gradual but enduring effect.
Returning graduates educated in democratic countries are also likely to promote democratic changes at home. An analysis of US-hosted exchange programmes linked people’s experience of US civic life to measurable gains in civil liberties and human-rights practices in home nations4.
