The United States has long been the world’s university. More than 1.6 million international students studied here last year, according to the 2024 SEVIS by the Numbers Report from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which tracks active F-1 visa holders. At the graduate level, many of them pay no tuition at all, receive annual stipends ranging from $25,000 to $65,000, and health benefits funded by U.S. universities and federal research grants.
We can continue to welcome the best minds from around the world, but we should fund Americans first.
As someone who has run Health and Human Services departments in multiple states, I have seen how difficult it is for middle- and lower-income American families to send their children to college. Parents juggle extra jobs to afford tuition. Students borrow tens of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, many foreign doctoral candidates enjoy full tuition waivers and monthly paychecks funded by American institutions. The imbalance is real.
According to the 2023 National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates, approximately 90 percent of 215,000 international Ph.D. students in the United States receive full tuition support, salaries and health benefits. By comparison, only 84 percent of American students receive the same treatment. This has been a consistent trend. Data from 2019 to 2023 shows that temporary visa holders consistently have a slightly higher rate than U.S. citizens.
Cornell University reports that 97 percent of its doctoral students are fully funded. The same pattern holds across major research universities. The result is that over a five year space more than a million non-U.S. students are effectively educated in highly sought after doctoral programs for free underwritten by American resources.
No other developed nation does this at such scale. In most countries, foreign students pay higher tuition than domestic students. Scholarships for non-citizens are rare and usually tied to explicit national interests. America stands alone in offering open-ended funding that includes tuition, health coverage, and salaries to foreign students who may or may not remain here after graduation.
Beyond financial considerations, prioritizing American doctoral students in funded positions would ensure that our undergraduates benefit from instructors who are fully fluent in English and deeply familiar with American cultural and educational norms. Many international Ph.D. students, face significant proficiency challenges that lead to communication barriers in the classroom, as evidenced by frequent complaints from U.S. undergraduates about difficulties understanding accents, explanations, and instructions.
We have created a system that rewards global recruitment without requiring any justification that the position serves a defined American need. Even with justification our own citizens deserve the first opportunity.
This situation doesn’t come without danger to national security. There have been multiple instances where Chinese students or nationals studying in U.S. universities have been accused, charged, or convicted of espionage-related activities on behalf of the Chinese government. For example, the FBI has charged five Chinese nationals who studied at the University of Michigan with espionage-related offenses involving a military site.
In another case, a Chinese student at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago was charged with helping to recruit spies for China’s intelligence services. Additionally, U.S. authorities have prosecuted cases involving Chinese nationals at universities for smuggling biological materials or pathogens, often linked to espionage concerns. While not all Chinese students are implicated, U.S. officials have expressed concerns that some are leveraged as “access agents” by Beijing.
Maintaining an America first position here is not isolationism. It is responsibility. When a Rhode Island nurse’s daughter or a Pennsylvania coal worker’s son can’t afford graduate school, while a student from Beijing or Berlin attends for free with a U.S. stipend and health benefits, something fundamental has gone wrong with our priorities.
America’s strength lies in opportunity. We can continue to welcome the best minds from around the world, but we should fund Americans first and admit fully funded international students only when there is a clear, measurable return for the United States. That is fair, strategic, and patriotic — and it is long overdue.
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Gary D. Alexander served as Rhode Island’s secretary of health and human services and Pennsylvania’s secretary of human services.
