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The closing door: Why Korea’s brightest students are turning away from U.S. universities

Published: 12 Jun. 2025, 00:05

Hans Schattle

The author is a professor of Political Science at Yonsei University.

I teach some of the best and brightest students in the world at Yonsei University here in Seoul, and they've made one thing very clear to me this spring: With all the escalating attacks by the Donald Trump administration on U.S. universities and international students, they're now looking for other options for study abroad programs and graduate school prospects.

At a recent dinner for our political science majors that took place the day after President Trump imposed a ban on enrolling international students at Harvard University, I was struck by how many students told me they're now hesitant to study in the United States.

Graduates gather as they attend a commencement ceremony at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 29. U.S. President Donald Trump's late-night proclamation on June 4 blocking new international students at Harvard has sparked fear and anger among existing students left in limbo amid the escalating showdown between the president and their university. [AFP/YONHAP]

It isn't just Trump's Harvard enrollment ban or Secretary of State Marco Rubio's announcements that the State Department will suspend, for the time being, all new applications for student visas and will also "aggressively" revoke the visas of many Chinese university students.

Students are worried that they simply won't be safe or welcome in the United States, or that they won't be able to graduate if conditions keep going downhill, or — worst of all — that they too could run into legal hassles or be arrested, detained and sent home.

Many of my students at Yonsei have dreamed for a long time — and still dream — of studying in the United States. One of the students at the dinner was wearing a Yale sweatshirt even as she told me she's now trying to figure out where else she might go for law school. Now they see that the risk factors of studying in the United States have changed abruptly, and they worry that the overall atmosphere on campuses will change for the worse, too.

Instead of asking me these days which universities in the United States might best fit their interests, many of our students are asking me which country or which continent might best suit them, and they often aren't even sure where to look first. Before, our conversations would center on the Ivy League, the Big Ten and the University of California campuses. Now they're shifting to the University of British Columbia, the London School of Economics, Edinburgh, Melbourne and Maastricht.

So when people at U.S. universities say it will be harder for schools in the United States to attract the best and brightest talent around the world, it definitely rings true on this side of the Pacific. At the dinner, I could see the "soft power" of the United States and the competitive advantages of U.S. universities withering away before my eyes.

People hold up signs during the Harvard Students for Freedom rally in support of international students at Harvard University in Cambrige, Massachusetts, on May 27. [AP/YONHAP]

As a U.S. faculty member based here in Seoul for the past 17 years, I could focus mainly on the opportunities Trump's attacks on higher education now open for universities such as Yonsei that have long served students from all over the world and are poised to attract students who will no longer study in the United States. Already, I'm hearing that many Chinese students applying to top Korean universities this spring are even more accomplished and competitive than before. It's certainly a win for my university if we can increase the total head count as well as the caliber of our international students.

However, I don't see the crisis that Trump has induced in higher education in the United States as leading toward a net benefit for anyone. The fate of Yonsei, which was founded exactly 140 years ago by U.S. missionaries, has always been intertwined with the fates of universities around the world. The same is true everywhere in higher education. Our programs at Yonsei send dozens of alumni each year to U.S. graduate schools, and several of my former students are now professors at universities in the United States and Europe.

Indeed, one of the professors at the student dinner, a graduate of our political science program, joined our faculty just this spring after earning his doctorate in the United States. As he made a toast at the dinner — the same kind of dinner he organized as one of our student leaders a decade ago — I'm sure some of our students at the gathering were wondering if they will have the same kind of chance to continue their education down the road. I certainly hope so.