STORY UPDATE, Sept. 15, 2026 5:02 p.m. eastern:

A federal judge in Boston has stalled the Trump administration’s plan to impose a four-year limit on student visas, putting the proposed restriction on hold just a day before it was set to take effect.

Federal officials are looking to limit how long international students can remain in the United States before they have to obtain a new visa or leave the country.

The cap was scheduled to take effect Tuesday. But in a ruling on Monday granting the preliminary injunction, US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor described the proposal as “exceptionally weak” and said the current student visa system has contributed to “groundbreaking research in science, medicine, and technology.”

As reported on GBH News.

Inside a basement laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 27-year-old Bastien Aymon sits at his bench.

“This is my spot,” he says, tapping the table covered with paperwork, test tubes and a vacuum chamber.

The fourth-year PhD candidate in mechanical engineering is from Sion, Switzerland. His research here could lead to materials that better integrate with the human body, like pacemakers. One application: stretchy, breathable bandages that absorb moisture and stick to skin tissue.

“Some of the materials we fabricate are very humidity sensitive,” he says, firing up the vacuum chamber.

Aymon started his PhD in 2023. Since the Trump administration’s proposed new four-year visa cap isn’t retroactive, he won’t be affected immediately. But some of his friends who started later may be forced to re-apply for their visas or leave the US before they finish their degrees.

“It adds a lot of uncertainty and stress in our daily lives for sure,” he says. “And that takes time away from research, which is not ideal.”

The Trump administration is changing how long international students can stay in the US before they must reapply for a visa or leave the country. The new four-year cap takes effect on Sept. 15.

Higher education leaders say it could make it much harder for students to change majors or schools or simply finish their research. Supporters say it’s a minor inconvenience that adds important accountability to the student visa system.

But colleges say the new rule is already affecting their campuses and could discourage talented students from even applying.

And they are starting to see some numbers that back that up.

International applications to US colleges fell 10% in the most recent admissions cycle. Nine of the ten countries that send the most international applicants saw declines. Applications from India, for example, were down 15%. From Nigeria? More than 20 percent.

That’s a big deal for colleges, especially graduate programs that have come to rely heavily on international students.
The change comes as visa backlogs, research funding cuts and freezes, and other policy shifts drive away international talent— and the money they bring in.

The Association of International Educators estimates foreign enrollment will fall nearly 10% this fall, costing local economies more than $3.4 billion and nearly 40,000 jobs.

“If you have less students coming to study, then it also has an impact on revenues that are coming in and way beyond tuition dollars,” said Fanta Aw, CEO of the Association of International Educators, which has joined a lawsuit against the federal government to block the rule.

In court filings, a coalition of higher-ed groups says nearly a quarter-million international students are pursuing doctoral degrees, most of them in STEM fields.

Aw says the government is interfering with decisions traditionally left to colleges.

“It’s literally saying to the schools, ‘We know better, and we’re going to tell you what we think is a normal length of study’ — something that is unprecedented because you have government folks who really know nothing about what happens on a day-to-day basis,” Aw says.

But backers of the new rule say the requirement is simply a bureaucratic hurdle.

“Look, I spend every weekend a couple hours jumping through hoops and doing [expletive] paperwork,” said Simon Hankinson, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “I don’t like it, but I do it because I want to live in a modern world.”

Hankinson says the old system gave students too much flexibility.

“Duration of status was a giant loophole that many students exploited,” he said. “There’s just almost nothing to stop them just going and getting degree after degree or doing a PhD and taking decades to do it.”

At MIT, administrators are describing a “numbing” period of relentless federal cuts to research funding. The university has seen roughly a 20% drop in federal funding and cut graduate admissions by roughly the same amount this fall. The new endowment tax is costing MIT around $240 million a year, adding to the financial strain.

Now, they’re worried about the new visa cap as well.

“This is untenable for PhD students,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth told GBH’s Boston Public Radio in July. “Sometimes it takes a year or two to really have all the tools in your toolkit to do something substantial.”

Kornbluth says American universities, once global leaders in research, could lose their edge, warning the US could become more dependent on countries such as China for medical breakthroughs.

“Most PhD students take five-and-a-half years, six years,” she explained. “If I were an international student and I were worried about my PhD work being cut off, I would be hesitant to come to this country.”

Sitting at his bench, wearing a black lab coat, Aymon says visa and funding uncertainty is already changing how students think about their futures.

If international researchers plan to bring their talents to the US, Aymon says they must consider whether the environment here will be stable enough to find a spot and build a career.

He led a recent survey of MIT graduate students that found both international and domestic students are now more willing to leave the US after they graduate.

“Some people are just stressed about the current immigration environment,” he said. “Science funding is an issue for a majority of people.”

An earlier version of this story was published at GBH News.