I feel US higher education, which brain drains the rest of the world, is easily one of the best strategic advantages it could have for the next 100 years.
Let’s throw that all away because learning is liberal.
The action by itself comes as a punishment which imply that this is indeed great resource but because Harvard was a naughty boy means that can't have it.
I want to note that when Brexit happened EU citizens had about 2 years period to move to UK and just like that get their full rights there and those with enough years of stay had the right to obtain British citizenship. Streamlined process through scanning your id using an app, little to no hassle.
IIRC half of the EU citizens left despite having all those rights and streamlined bureaucracy. My observation was that those desperate or those who ware having their perfect life stayed, those who had other options left UK because it wasn't worth the stress and you future being bargaining chips for politicians.
I bet you, if this continues for some more time USA will no longer receive the best and the brightest. Those have options and their parents will prefer the options where their golden kids don't risk being subject to life changing actions or even abuse.
Even if it stopped immediately, we'll still get a lot fewer of these people. The US is now a country where anonymous government thugs can snatch foreigners off the street and put them in jail for saying the wrong things. Even if we stop doing that today, what's to say we won't start it up again at any time? Who's going to risk that just to go to an American university? Our universities are good but not that good.
Oxbridge suffered a lot of collateral damage from Brexit because of EU funding cuts and massive loss of EU staff and EU students, who now have to pay foreign fees (4-5x regular home fees). An increase in fees also made it prohibitively expensive to hire EU PhD students.
The situation is slowly recovering, as the UK has now first-class access to EU funding programs and there is an open negotiation to bring back home fees for EU students. However, visas are becoming more restrictive and the exceptionally high fees associated with them might be again increasing, which is putting off potential new employees.
Besides, I am not sure Oxbridge has sufficient extra spots for overseas students diverted from the US due to its peculiar tutorial system. There are lots of top EU universities that could collectively benefit from this as they are much cheaper and larger: Heidelberg, TUM, KU, DTU, KI, KTH, etc.
There's certainly an allotment for the rich and connected(Erdoğan's son studied at Harvard and he is a meme for his brains in Turkey, having trouble to understand his father's commands on leaked police surveillance tape. Turks don't say ELI5, they say ELI Bilal - the Harvard boy) but hardy its the majority. Maybe for BS and on some lighter majors, definitely not on the real deal.
Just check papers for ground breaking research, you'll see the names are predominantly foreign. This recent AI breakthrough is heavily done by people from Europe, Israel, Canada and China. That's why the speakers at AI videos have funny accents.
People with options will start avoiding USA unless the have to.
Be that as it may, look at the names on any random research paper or journal article that originates from any randomly-chosen American university, and see what they tell you.
Nope! Harvard and some of the top ivies offer full, need-blind financial aid to all students, especially international. I attended and did not have to spend much at all, coming from a poor country. Many such cases and it is a lifeline for gifted students in developing countries
Yeah, getting the worlds top brainiancs and enticing them with a good education and having some of them build their lives here is one of our greatest imports.
"The worlds top brainiacs" were a huge part of what "Made America Great" in the first place. The MAGA "leadership" is doing the exact literal polar opposite of the stated mission of their slogan (and with far more than just education; wrecking the economy, alienating our allies, destroying freedom of speech, enabling and even encouraging pollution [and trying to even mandate it in California apparently] ... the list goes on).
If Canada wasn't having it's own immigration and post-secondary issues, this would be great. But no, we already shot ourselves in the foot with that...
What is taught matters a lot. Suppose a foreign adversary were able to infiltrate key US higher education institutions and subtly change the curriculum to be pro-communism and avoid STEM subjects.
Suppose a foreign adversary were able to infiltrate the key US institution that determines if higher education institutions have been infiltrated and subtly accuses them of being pro communist?
What if a foreign adversary infiltrates the institution that appoints the individuals who run the institution that determines whether a higher education institution has been infiltrated!?
What if a foreign adversary infiltrates the… !?!
The beauty of a system where many different and independent institutions compete for students and teachers independently, develop and share ideas and technologies, cross examine each other, and collectively build knowledge, is that they don’t have some single point in the system that can be infiltrated, and all have to compete in the arena of ideas.
The closest thing to a single point that can be infiltrated is the federal government, which can be used to put pressure on the whole system from a point of higher power.
Competition is a beautiful system so let those independent institutions compete without the government playing favorites by funding some and not others.
Let’s throw that all away because learning is liberal.