Shocking stories told at a US universities conference in San Diego described Donald Trump’s assaults on research grants, academics and students. Foreign students face deportation for infractions as minor as parking or speeding tickets. A reported 500 student visas have been suddenly revoked – with some students sent to deportation centres, and others told to “self-deport”. With a million foreign students warned by their universities not to travel abroad for fear of never getting back in, that’s a strong deterrent to others deciding whether to study in the US.Jo Johnson, former minster for universities, King’s College London visiting professor and…

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s diehard support for Donald Trump’s election lies has landed him in multiple legal entanglements, including a case in Denver, where the pillow salesman is currently being sued for defamation by a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems. Eric Coomer, who previously worked for the election vendor, has accused Lindell of having defamed him with his paranoid rantings about the 2020 presidential election having been rigged against Trump. In a situation that is already adequately stupid, there is always room for things to get stupider, as this week it was reported that Lindell’s lawyer was in hot…

Over 1,800 students from almost 300 institutions are known to have had their visas revoked to date – although the true number may be much higher. The revocations have been linked to expressing pro-Palestinian views, although the reasons for some remain unclear. Some students have seen their visas taken away for legal infractions as small as minor traffic offences. As of April 23, 1,818 known international students from over 270 US institutions have lost their F-1 or J-1 student status, as part of what critics are calling the Trump administration’s “Ideological Deportation Policy”.   The data, updated daily by Inside…

If elected, the Coalition said it will look to review the Temporary Graduate Visa (subclass 485), arguing that current post-study work settings are being exploited as a pathway to employment and permanent residency. The announcement came in early April, when Opposition leader Peter Dutton unveiled a suite of policy intentions for the international education sector. Among them: a proposed cap of 240,000 new international student arrivals per year, and a new AUD $5,000 visa fee for applicants targeting Australia’s top universities. Speaking to The PIE News, Phil Honeywood, chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA), commented: “Everything…

Students from overseas have very different effects on different bits of our higher education system. The system is now characterised by complex financial flows between tuition fees for domestic students, tuition fees for overseas students (higher), and the different types of research funding.Anyone attempting reform of the system will have to tread carefully: it resembles one of those complicated-looking bombs in movies where the hero has to decide which colour wire to snip.For a long time there has been a discussion about “taking students out” of net migration figures. This might seem odd to an outsider: after all, students who…

Several Indian media outlets this week began circulating claims that some Australian educational institutions are currently banning or restricting student applications from Indian states like Punjab, Haryana, and Gujarat. These reports, however, misrepresent the present situation and appear to rely on outdated information, in some cases citing our 2023 coverage without the full context. A previous report by The Australia Today from late 2023, which highlighted temporary concerns within Australian universities regarding applications from certain Indian states, has resurfaced, but this time in a misleading context. No ban, confirms Australian High Commission In response to the renewed media speculation, the…

The United Kingdom’s most recent international education strategy was released in 2019. It set a target of attracting 600,000 overseas students by 2030 – a threshold that was reached in 2020 – and of seeing the sector reach £35 billion in economic value by 2030. A new international education strategy is expected from government later this year.Ahead of its release comes a new report from the International Higher Education Commission, an independent group of sector experts formed with the goal of establishing “a new ‘International Education Strategy 2.0’ in partnership with the Higher Education community.” The Commission’s latest contribution to…

Please can the grownups in the room explain to everyone that foreign students are not immigrants – they are customers (Trump is pushing students towards Britain – ministers, don’t let your immigration obsession stand in the way, 11 April). We don’t call tourists immigrants, so why should we call students that? They come, give us their money for the excellent service we provide, then go home – mostly, taking with them a lifelong positive attitude to the UK, our “soft power”.The only reason they were kept in the “immigrants” bracket was so that previous governments could cut their number easily,…

GLOBAL Interest by prospective international students in the ‘Big Four’ study destinations – the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia – declined by 14% in the year ending January 2025. This decline follows a 22% decline the previous year, says a study released by ApplyBoard that measures ‘interest’ by the average monthly keyword search for ‘study destination’ on its website.Interest in studying in Canada has declined the most, from an average of 28,600 inquiries per month in 2022 to 20,500 in 2024 to 13,600 inquiries in the latest report: a 52.4% decrease over three years, states the study, “Major English…