Trump administration caps student visa stays at 4 years under final rule

Dive Brief:

The Trump administration will cap international students’ stay in the U.S. at four years, regardless of the length of their academic program, under a rule finalized Thursday.
Two types of visas popular among foreign students and academics — F and J visas — will require holders to apply to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for an extension if they need more time to complete their studies.
The change is set to take effect mid-September. Under the rule, eligible international students already studying in the U.S. can stay for the remainder of their program or for up to four more years. However, they could lose that option if they leave the U.S. during that period.

Dive Insight:

The rule, set to be published Friday in the Federal Register by DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will significantly alter if and how foreign students can study in the U.S. 

International student visas, known as F visas, have traditionally allowed holders to stay in the country for as long as it takes to finish their programs. The new rule will also affect J visas, which international students, college instructors and researchers are eligible for if they are participating in short-term exchange visitor programs.

Under the new rule from DHS and ICE, graduate students on a F visa will also be prohibited from “changing educational objectives” or transferring to another college unless granted a federal exemption due to “extenuating circumstances.” Undergraduates will face similar restrictions during their first academic year.

Student advocates and education experts castigated the final rule Thursday.

Fanta Aw, CEO and executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, called the visa cap “a solution in search of a problem” and an “unnecessary government intrusion into academic decision-making.”

“Requiring students and scholars to seek approval to extend their academic program, change majors, or pursue the next level of study places life-changing educational decisions in the hands of an already overburdened immigration system — not educators, and not institutions,” she said in a Thursday statement.

Zuzana Wootson, deputy director of federal policy at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, lambasted the rule as “unnecessary and duplicative” and said it would impose “unnecessary burdens on international students and scholars, campuses, employers and federal agencies alike.”

Both Wootson and Aw noted that holders of F and J visas are already one of the most closely monitored nonimmigrant groups in the country.

Undergraduate and master’s degrees are typically designed to be completed in four years or less. But it’s not uncommon for students to take more time to finish these programs. And Ph.D. degrees tend to take at least five years to complete, depending on the subject matter and program structure.

The University of Michigan — one of the U.S. colleges with the most international students — said the Trump administration’s initial proposal did not align with average degree completion times.

It would also “interfere with decisions best made by the University,” UM said in a public comment submitted last October. The institution already has procedures in place to determine if a student is making appropriate academic progress and to address insufficient advancement, it said.

Despite DHS and ICE receiving almost 22,000 public comments on the rule, the details shared this week differ little from their initial proposal.

The Trump administration categorized the process for international students to apply for visa extensions as “periodic assessments” that will allow DHS to “better detect and mitigate the risks” of abuse it says the current visa system propagates. It alleged that the open-ended nature of F and J visas permits rampant fraud and said it had found “many examples of students and exchange visitors staying for decades.”

According to DHS, over 2,100 international students who first entered the U.S. between 2000 and 2010 still held an active F visa as of April 2025.

That’s a small fraction of F visa holders — more than 1.6 million entered the U.S in 2024 alone, according to DHS data.