Compiled by SUSAN JONES

The number of student visas issued from June to August 2025 declined by more than 100,000 or 35.6% from the previous summer, to 186,160, according to new data from the State Department. The sharpest drop was in F-1 visas, which are for international students studying at a college or university.

The drop came after the Trump administration temporarily froze all student visa interviews in spring 2025.

Pitt managed to minimize the decline, while other schools struggled. The Post-Gazette reported that new international students fell by just 4% at Pitt in fall 2025 — to 679 compared to 709 in fall 2024. 

Carnegie Mellon University saw a 28% decline in foreign, first-time undergraduate students — to 261 from 362 in fall 2024.

Nationwide, the report found that Chinese and Indian student numbers were hit the hardest. Just over 40,000 Chinese students visas were issued in summer 2025, compared to over 61,000 the previous summer — a 34% drop. Roughly 22,100 Indian student visas were issued last summer, down 62% from the 58,700 issued the previous year.

MARCH 12

Ohio State University moved quickly to find a new president after Ted Carter resigned March 8 after admitting he had been involved in an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman who wanted to use public resources for the benefit of a personal business, The Columbus Dispatch first reported. The Board of Trustees on March 12 unanimously approved Ravi Bellamkonda, who served as executive vice president and provost since early 2025, as the new permanent president, forgoing a national search. Carter, 66, had served as president for two years.

MARCH 10

Old Dominion University’s Faculty Senate voted no confidence in the institution’s president, provost and vice president, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported, in the latest show of disdain for administrators’ plan to convert online courses to an eight-week model. The university’s Board of Visitors quickly rebuffed the vote, pledging in a statement to “continue moving forward.”

MARCH 6

The University of Kansas and its faculty union, United Academics of the University of Kansas, reached a tentative first collective bargaining agreement. It includes a median raise of 13% for several hundred employees on the lower end of the pay scale. The contract, which covers 1,500 employees, including both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty, has “ironclad” protections for academic freedom and establishes a formalized role for faculty in shared governance.

MARCH 5

Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun signed legislation directing public colleges to end academic programs deemed to produce “low earning” graduates unless they get approval to keep operating them. The legislation’s definition for a low earning program, is from the major national spending and tax bill passed by Republicans this past summer. Under that law, an undergraduate degree is considered to have low earnings outcomes if, four years after graduating, students’ median earnings do not outpace the median wages of certain workers who hold only a high school degree.

MARCH 3

The New School, a private university in New York City, is set to reduce its workforce 7% by spring’s end through voluntary buyouts as it tries to adjust to declining enrollment and budget pressures, Higher Ed Dive reported. The New School recently opened buyouts to some of its union employees. But even with those measures, President Joel Towers warned more workforce cuts were likely this spring, starting with vacant positions where possible. The school faces a structural deficit of more than $30 million for the third straight year.

Florida House lawmakers passed a measure that would limit out-of-state and international students from making up more than 5% of enrollment at the state’s top public research universities. Under the bill, state residents would have to make up 95% of first-time, full-time fall enrollment at public universities designated as “preeminent state research” institutions based on a three-year average. Four State University System of Florida institutions — the University of Florida, Florida State University, University of South Florida and Florida International University — have the designation, which comes with increased state funding. However, the bill would bar these universities from receiving the extra funding if they violated its proposed enrollment caps. 

MARCH 2

The Florida Board of Governors approved an eight-month pause on H-1B visas, becoming the second state after Texas to ban public colleges and universities from hiring new faculty, researchers and medical residents through that visa program.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon told K-12 Dive that the elimination of the U.S. Education Department remains her goal.

FEB. 27

The Department of Education issued an interpretive rule aimed at lowering barriers for new accrediting agencies seeking federal recognition, a move the Trump administration says will inject competition into what officials described as a stagnant and failed quality-assurance system for colleges and universities, the EDU Ledger reported. The rule clarifies aspects of the department’s accreditor recognition process and commits the department to determining whether a new applicant meets basic eligibility requirements within 60 calendar days and to completing a full review of written petitions within six to 12 months.

The Department of Defense cut ties for professional military education at 13 higher education institutions and nine other organizations, including Carnegie Mellon, Brown, Columbia and Princeton universitiess. The announcement follows the Pentagon’s decision to sever academic ties with Harvard last month. Without offering any evidence, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the institutions are “woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination” and the department would no longer treat them “as valid centers of so-called intellectual curiosity.”

Two weeks after introducing a policy that allowed administrators to secretly record faculty members during class, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chancellor Lee Roberts told faculty he would nix the rule, Inside Higher Ed reported. “The whole idea was to create clarity and reassurance,” Roberts said during a Faculty Senate meeting. “That policy clearly has not achieved that aim.”

FEB. 25

Congress has restored funding for international-education and foreign-language programs that had been slashed by the Trump administration and moved to block the executive branch from making unilateral cuts to spending, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Guardrails included in a State Department appropriations bill passed earlier this month require administration officials to update Congress on the disbursement of allocated funds and to notify lawmakers of “any substantive modifications” to existing programs

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

 

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