Proposed work authorization fee could disrupt international student career pipeline, Penn experts warn

The Trump administration is considering imposing a six-figure fee on international graduates seeking work authorization in the United States — a move that Penn experts say could price out recent graduates and erode a pipeline American universities and employers have long relied on.

The plan would attach a $100,000 charge to Optional Practical Training, which currently allows international students to remain and work in the country for one to three years post-graduation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The proposal has not yet been formally introduced, and key details remain unclear, including who would bear the cost: the students, their universities, or their prospective employers.

For many international students, OPT is the bridge between earning a degree and building a career in the U.S. Management professor Britta Glennon, whose research focuses on immigration and the economy, described it as the crucial link in a multi-step pipeline. Students usually enter the country on an F-1 visa, then rely on OPT for temporary work authorization after graduation, with the eventual goal of securing employer sponsorship for an H‑1B visa.

With H-1B visas capped at 85,000 annually and allocated by lottery, the OPT window — one year for non-STEM graduates and three years for STEM graduates — gives students “extra time to win the lottery.” 

“This is the typical path for skilled immigrants in the U.S.,” Glennon explained.

A fee of this size would function as a deterrent, Glennon said, because it is “certainly more than most startups can afford” and enough to give established companies pause. She added that the policy could immediately affect students who have already secured job offers, where an employer facing the new cost might rethink “whether they actually want to pay $100,000 for that individual.”

Penn Carey Law professor Fernando Chang-Muy similarly warned that the fee “would price out nearly every recent international graduate, effectively ending OPT for all but the wealthiest students.” 

The possibility that employers might pull back from hiring recent international graduates is a concern Penn itself has raised. International Student and Scholar Services Director Rudie Altamirano wrote in a statement that “even proposed changes can generate significant uncertainty about career planning, employment timing, financial obligations, and whether employers will remain willing to hire international graduates.”

Glennon said that the long-term risk of implementing the proposal is that talented students stop choosing the U.S. as a permanent home.

“If you don’t think that pipeline is going to work, and there aren’t any other really feasible ways to do it, then you may not bother with coming at all — instead, go somewhere else where you think your chances are better at being able to transition from school into the economy with a job,” Glennon said.

Chang-Muy added that if the proposal became formalized, it “would gut the return on investment that draws international students to U.S. universities in the first place.” He wrote that those students would be lost to other countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, or Australia.

Chang-Muy — who characterized the fee as “absurd” — additionally acknowledged the stakes for employers, noting that companies use OPT as “a critical recruiting pipeline for skilled graduates trained in American systems and processes.”

“Are there enough U.S. citizens to work in IT and software development? In healthcare, are there enough U.S. citizen nurses, therapists, and specialized surgeons?” he wrote. “If not international students can help to fill in needed HR gaps.”

Another Carey Law professor, Nicole Simon, wrote that the proposal was “yet another attack on students, a group the administration has mercilessly targeted.” 

She questioned whether the fee could survive a legal challenge, pointing to the Trump administration’s attempt to impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, which courts have blocked. 

Chang-Muy echoed a similar sentiment — adding that federal district and appeals courts have already ruled the executive branch overstepped its authority — and predicted that the proposal “may also be found unlawful.”

Beneath the specific proposal, Glennon said, lies a longstanding blind spot regarding how the U.S. treats the relationship between higher education and immigration. The last significant overhaul of the system took place in 1990, when the H-1B visa was established. According to Glennon, lawmakers at the time did not foresee that its main application would become recruiting graduates from U.S. universities.

“Universities find talent around the world, and then firms recruit from universities, but that wasn’t built into any of the immigration policy,” she said. The result, she added, is that “there hasn’t been enough recognition of how intertwined they are.”

Altamirano wrote that there has not been a broader OPT rule published for public review, but that “the cumulative effect of changing requirements can create uncertainty” even “before a rule takes effect.” 

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