By Gloria Ogbonna
During a Thursday interview on Fox News Channel’s Hannity, President Donald Trump pushed back against calls to bar Chinese students from studying in the United States, arguing that such a move would not only strain diplomatic relations but also severely damage America’s higher education system.
Speaking with host Sean Hannity on Hannity, Trump emphasized that roughly 500,000 Chinese students currently attend American colleges and universities. He described them as “good students” and suggested that rejecting them outright would send a deeply offensive message to China.
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“As far as the students, it’s 500,000 students that come — good students,” Trump said. “I could tell them I don’t want any students. It’s a very insulting thing to say to a country.”
Trump argued that such a decision could trigger unintended consequences. He suggested that if the United States were to shut its doors, China might rapidly expand its own higher education infrastructure in response. “They would then immediately go out and start building universities all over China,” he warned.
Beyond diplomatic concerns, Trump framed the issue as a financial and structural matter for American institutions. He cautioned that removing such a large segment of the international student population could destabilize many colleges, particularly smaller or lesser-known schools that depend heavily on tuition revenue.
“If you want to see a university system die, take a half a million people out of it,” Trump said. “The top schools will do fine. But your lower schools — the ones that don’t do quite as well — those schools, they’ll be dying all over the place.”
Hannity raised concerns often voiced by critics who worry that some foreign students may have “nefarious intentions.” Trump acknowledged the national security dimension, noting that both countries keep a close watch on such matters.
“Sure, I know, and we worry about that,” Trump responded. “Honestly, they do things to us and we do things to them. It’s a very, very fine line, the whole thing with students.”
Still, Trump maintained that a blanket rejection of Chinese students would create more harm than benefit. He reiterated that American universities, particularly those outside the elite tier, rely significantly on international enrollment to remain financially stable.
“You’re going to see bankruptcies at the lower end of good colleges,” he said. “You’re going to have a lot of problems.”
While acknowledging that some Americans view continued acceptance of Chinese students as risky, Trump insisted that policymakers must weigh economic realities and diplomatic consequences carefully. According to him, university leaders themselves strongly oppose any broad restrictions, fearing the long-term impact on enrollment, funding, and institutional survival.
“I will tell you that school systems don’t want that to happen,” Trump concluded. “Because you won’t have much of a school system.”
Source: Breitbart
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