Linda McMahon, education secretary, seeks to ease concerns over Trump’s call for Chinese students

Education Secretary Linda McMahon sought Sunday to ease concerns about President Trump’s call for dramatically increasing the number of Chinese students admitted to U.S. colleges, stressing that they would be vetted and would not take seats from Americans.

Mr. Trump met with pushback from his base last month after declaring that the administration would allow 600,000 Chinese to study on student visas at U.S. colleges, more than doubling the estimated 280,000 now occupying seats in university classrooms.

Ms. McMahon addressed two of the biggest worries: that the “students” are essentially Chinese spies tasked with sending information on U.S. science and technology back to Beijing, and that they bump American students from slots at top universities.

“That is the number that he certainly said that he believed, but what he does say is, we cannot have unvetted students coming into the country,” Ms. McMahon said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I think his biggest concern is, A, yes, we want those slots to go to U.S. citizens first to make sure that those numbers are correct, but more than anything else, let’s make sure those students are vetted,” she said. “We want to bring in the best and the brightest, and educate them and help them then to be here as perhaps part of our economy. I think that is his biggest concern.”

WATCH: @EDSecMcMahon discusses President Trump’s ongoing legal battle with Harvard, and the Administration’s clash with five northern Virginia school districts over transgender bathrooms. pic.twitter.com/HaaLcZX4n3

— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) September 7, 2025

Mr. Trump’s comments came four months after the State Department announced plans to “aggressively revoke” the student visas of Chinese nationals over concerns about espionage.

The president said he was concerned about lower-ranked universities, telling the Daily Caller last week that he feared that rejecting Chinese students would “hurt the system,” in addition to being “very insulting to say we don’t want their students.”

He also cited the financial benefit of admitting Chinese students, who contributed an estimated $14 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023.

Foreign students from countries like China and India are highly prized by U.S. universities because they typically pay full tuition. In addition, they often represent the best and brightest of their countries while bringing international diversity and “cachet.”