Barely one week after the Trump administration declared that foreign college students taking online-only classes would have to leave the U.S., it abruptly rescinded the rule.
“The decision was announced at the start of a hearing in a federal lawsuit in Boston brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” reports the Associated Press. A federal judge said immigration officials “agreed to pull the July 6 directive.”
The sudden, unexpected change of heart drew attention on Twitter:
It was a major victory for the two prestigious universities in Cambridge MA — as well as other colleges and states that had filed at least seven other lawsuits. More than 200 colleges and universities had filed court briefs supporting the Harvard-MIT suit.
Like so many things these days, the Covid-19 pandemic was at the heart of the matter.
The online-learning rule put many foreign students between the proverbial rock and a hard place, since many schools are likely to decide that it would be too soon, too risky, to reintroduce in-class teaching this fall.
“There are more than a million foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities, and many schools depend on revenue from foreign students, who often pay full tuition,” notes Reuters.
So why would the government seek to throw out all those tuition-paying students?
“University leaders believed the rule was part of President Donald Trump’s effort to pressure the nation’s schools and colleges to reopen this fall even as new virus cases rise,” the AP says.
