DHS proposes charging universities $70,000 for each foreign student entering OPT

Both reports describe a rule that bills the school ^[1]. Payment is due before the school can recommend a student ^[3], so the decision about each graduate now sits with a college budget office.

The cost per year of work depends on the major. Most graduates get one year of work after graduation, and certain STEM majors get two more ^[4]. For the first group, $70,000 buys twelve months ^[2]. The reports do not say how the STEM extension will be billed. If it counts as one $30,000 renewal, a STEM graduate who uses all three years costs the school $100,000 ^[17], or about $33,000 per year of work ^[19]. That total matches the $100,000 H-1B fee that Doug Rand, a former senior adviser at US Citizenship and Immigration Services under Biden, says the courts struck down ^[18][8].

The first possible outcome runs through the courts. Rand predicted the OPT fee would go the same way as the H-1B charge ^[8]. A federal court in September also blocked the administration's four-year limit on student stays, which was finalized this summer ^[15]. Rand wrote in an email that the US should "not use an exorbitant fee as a pretext to send them packing" ^[10]. If the rule survives, schools can pay and try to recover the money from later groups of foreign students. Or they can stop recommending students, and those graduates lose OPT once the school says no ^[3].

Colleges recruit overseas students as a source of tuition revenue ^[7], and OPT is part of the pitch. "We know that OPT is one of the reasons that international students choose to study in the United States because they're able to have that post-graduation work experience," said Sarah Spreitzer, a vice president at the American Council on Education ^[13].

In my view, the last two outcomes lead to the same result. A school that pays will want to recover $70,000 per graduate from future foreign students ^[2]. A school that refuses has to tell applicants that OPT is off the table. Either way the cost falls on enrollment, or rather on the next applicant deciding which country to study in. The case against this view is Rand's: a court strikes the fee down before any school pays, and the damage is limited to the comment period and the lawsuits. Two things would show I have this wrong: several colleges publicly agreeing to absorb the fee without raising foreign tuition, or the count of new international students holding steady next fall.