Interesting & Political

Tommy Tuberville’s war on foreign kids

Guest Contributor August 14, 2025 No Comments

How Tommy Tuberville’s war on ‘foreign national’ students will hurt American kids, too 

The higher ed neglect is coming from inside the house.

Trump NIH Director
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., wants international students to go home. His numbers are all but made-up, and he doesn’t understand how those students help American colleges. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)AP

 

By Kyle Whitmire

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville has had it with international students from countries that don’t love America.

“You come here. You get a degree. You’re gone,” Tuberville said while pitching his Student Visa Integrity Act on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show. “Or better than that — if you’re an Iranian national or a Chinese national, you don’t come at all. We’re not educating you. Go somewhere else.”

He’s ready to open a new front in the war on higher ed — colleges and universities, he says, are filling their classrooms with foreign students instead of red-blooded American kids.

“We’re going to put our kids first, America first,” Tuberville told Bannon. “Our kids are getting left out.”

It’s not hard to see the buttons Tuberville is trying to push here, but before we get to why he’s simply wrong, let’s look at the place where he struggles most — a less-than-firm grip on the facts. Alabama’s senator can’t help but exaggerate.

 

For instance, when he appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show, Tuberville put the number of international students at between 1.1 and 1.2 million.

This is close to reality. How do I know this? Because Bartiromo flashed the 1.1 million number on the screen with a citation of her source.

However, when Tuberville appeared on another Fox News show and on Bannon’s show, he said it was 1.5 million.

Likewise, Tuberville imagines those stuffy, elitist Northeast schools throwing their doors open.

“Of all enrollment in the Northeast, 40% to 70% is foreign nationals,” he said on Fox’s Mornings with Maria.

But that’s not what he told Bannon.

“On the East Coast and in all of these Ivy League schools, 60% to 70% of their students are foreign nationals,” he said. “I mean, all of them.”

So which is it? Turns out, neither.

Earlier this year, the AP checked the numbers and found international students made up 27% of Ivy League enrollment, which is not 40%, 60% or 70%.

Columbia University came closest, with 38% international students.

Here, at least, we can see a trace of where Tuberville might be getting his information. Earlier this year, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller shared a tweet showing 58% international enrollment at Northeastern University. A fact-check by the Dispatch found that number was closer to 39%.

Now these numbers are high — much higher than the national average of 4% at four-year colleges — and it’s fair to question them, but for Tuberville, reality is not good enough.

Tuberville’s bill to crack down on international admissions isn’t good with numbers either. At one point, it sets an aggressive deadline for the GAO and the Department of Homeland Security to report its actions to Congress — December 31, 2022.

At some point, we should consider that bright, educated, specialized professionals were once the sort of immigrant folks like Tuberville said they wanted to invite into America. But that argument seems to have sunset with the George W. Bush presidency.

But for right now, let’s focus on where Tuberville almost gets it right — colleges and universities are recruiting more international students for a reason — money.

Paying for college is not all that different than buying a car — the sticker price is for suckers. There’s the tuition figure the college advertises, and then there’s what most kids actually pay. The difference is what’s called the student discount rate.

For instance, Vanderbilt University recently made headlines when it raised its tuition to almost $68,000. However, the average student there paid about $26,000 after financial aid.

Again, this is common among American colleges and universities — but only if you’re from around here.

Many colleges and universities have turned to international students as a money-making opportunity, as Tuberville likes to tout on TV. But it’s worth understanding why.

In short, because state governments aren’t doing their part anymore.

In 1980, if you were an in-state student at the University of Alabama or Auburn University, the state of Alabama likely covered about 75% of the cost of your education. The student and their family covered the rest.

But the cost of higher ed has grown, and state contributions have not, and today that share of the burden has roughly flipped.

This shift in the burden has played out all over America, and colleges and universities have had to get inventive to soften the blow.

One of those innovations: more international students, who pay more money, sometimes the full sticker price, which then allows those schools to charge less to their in-state students.

You know, the American kids, Tuberville says he wants to help.

Last year, international students brought more than $368 million into Alabama and almost $44 billion nationally.

If Tommy Tuberville or Donald Trump shuts those foreign students out, those schools will have to find that money somewhere else.

Maybe they could turn to the state government, like in Alabama, where Tommy Tuberville may soon be governor — an office that will put him on both Auburn and Alabama’s boards of trustees. Maybe he can help reset the state’s contribution to what it was in the early 1980s.

Leave a Reply