As MIT and Harvard Sue, Colleges Scramble to Respond to New Federal Policy on International Students – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sued the Trump administration to stop a new policy that would block international students from coming to or remaining in the United States if their courses are taught entirely online.
The policy — released with no notice on Monday, the same day Harvard announced it would hold all undergraduate classes online this fall — was viewed by many in higher education as a backdoor effort by the administration to force colleges to reopen to face-to-face instruction.
And it threw colleges and the lives of a million international students into tumult. Even institutions that plan to offer a mix of online and in-person courses are scrambling to ensure that there are enough face-to-face courses for international students to meet the requirements of the new policy.
Many students, especially those with health conditions, confront tough choices: travel to their home countries in the midst of a global pandemic or return to campus, even if they feared doing so was unsafe.
The lawsuit, which was filed this morning in U.S. district court in Boston, suggested that this was the new policy’s intended outcome: “The effect — and perhaps even the goal — is to create as much chaos for universities and international students as possible.”