Top US universities raced to become global campuses. Under Trump, it's becoming a liability

Harvard’s undergraduate foreign population increased by about 100 students from 2013 to 2023, while graduate numbers increased by nearly 2,000. Part of that growth can be explained by increasing global competition at the graduate level, said William Kirby, a historian at Harvard who has written about the evolution of higher education.

”If you don’t recruit the very best students internationally in your most important graduate programs, particularly in science and engineering, then you will not be competitive,” Kirby said.

The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said. He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings.

”That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, ‘If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,”’ he said.

Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%.

”We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can’t get in because we have foreign students there,” Trump said at a news conference.