Trump administration rescinds rule on foreign students

Washington, July 15: The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a rule that would have required international students to leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online because of the pandemic.

The decision was announced at the start of a hearing in a federal lawsuit in Boston brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reports AP.

US announced new rules for international students for the upcoming fall semester (September to December) that requires them to take an in-person class to remain in the country. Many American universities have scaled back or eliminated in-person classes due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

Johns Hopkins University (JHU) filed a lawsuit in federal court on Friday, pushing back against the Trump administration order that would abruptly rescind accommodations for online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic for the nearly 5,000 international students at the university and thousands more across the country.

The US has the largest international student population in the world, with more than 1 million of the nation's higher education students, roughly 5.5 per cent of all college students in the US, coming from abroad, according to the nonprofit Institute of International Education.