The Department of Homeland Security restored the legal status of thousands of international students who had their visas revoked, according to reports Friday.

College experts largely applauded the move, which was prompted by court challenges and lawsuits filed by affected students and their lawyers, as a win for students and higher education overall, but the gains could be short lived.

The Trump Administration’s sudden change in policy, however, is causing some international college applicants to rethink their plans for next year and whether they want to study in the U.S. at all, college experts now say.

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“Overall, this is a very positive development,” according to Robert Franek, editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review. It provides needed clarity for international students who have until Thursday, May 1, which is National College Decision Day — the deadline most schools set to choose which institution they will attend in the fall, he said.

For colleges and universities, “international enrollment is an incredible value in the classroom,” Franek said. To that end, college administrators remain highly focused on “having students with different experiences and a number of different voices represented,” he said.

But international student enrollment is also an important source of revenue for U.S. colleges and universities, which is why schools need a contingent of foreign students, who typically pay full tuition, Franek added. This financial reliance makes them a critical component of the higher education system, experts say.

However, because of the U.S. government’s recent changes to the student visa policy, which deactivated and then reactivated the immigration status of thousands of students, “there are a number of international students admitted to great colleges and really skeptical about whether they will come,” Franek said of plans for the fall of 2025.

There are more than 1.1 million international undergraduate and graduate students in the U.S., mostly from India and China, making up slightly less than 6% of the total U.S. higher education population, according to the latest Open Doors data, released by the U.S. Department of State and the Institute of International Education.

In the 2023-24 academic year, the U.S. hosted a record number of students from abroad, marking a 7% increase from the previous year. India surpassed China as the top sending country, with India sending more than 330,000 students. 

Altogether, international student enrollment contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023-24, according to a separate report by NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

“Foreign students present a unique challenge for the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy efforts,” said Christopher Rim, president and CEO of college consulting firm Command Education.

“On the one hand, international students account for a large portion of foreign residents in the U.S., and some of the most politically outspoken,” Rims said. “However, they are among the most economically advantageous, as well.”

But according to Rim, who also works with clients all over the world, the U.S. is still the main choice among college-bound students applying to top-ranked institutions, and that is unlikely to change overnight.

“I was in Hong Kong last week speaking to a packed audience of hundreds of students and parents about Ivy League and top-tier U.S. college admissions for expat and international families,” Rim said Monday.

“Despite global shifts, distinct and affluent families remain deeply eager to send their children to the United States for higher education,” he explained. “They continue to recognize the U.S. as home to the world’s leading universities.”

The Trump administration has dismissed the federal government’s lawsuit against National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts, abandoning a $2.25 million proposed settlement that could have gone to harmed borrowers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit in 2017 against the Trusts, which it described as a group of 15 “securitization trusts organized under Delaware law that acquire, pool, and securitize student loans, which they then service.”

The CFPB accused the Trusts of bringing improper debt collection lawsuits against private student loan borrowers, suing consumers for debts the Trusts couldn’t prove were owed and attempting to collect on debts after when they were legally allowed to do so.

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The $2.25 million settlement between the government and Trusts was expected to go to impacted borrowers.

But the CFPB under President Donald Trump filed the voluntary dismissal last Friday.

The Trump administration has also moved to gut the CFPB, most recently attempting to terminate as many as 1,500 of the bureau’s 1,700 employees. A judge has stopped those cuts.

In February, the CFPB also dismissed its lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency. The Bureau sued the student loan servicer in 2024, accusing it of illegally collecting on student debts that borrowers had discharged in bankruptcy and sending false information to credit reporting companies.

The CFPB and White House did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency or counsel for the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts.

Investors have continued to pull money from so-called ESG funds in early 2025 amid an “intensifying” backlash fueled by President Trump’s “anti-climate agenda” and his administration’s policies targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, according to a new Morningstar report.

Also known as socially responsible, sustainable, impact or values-based investing, “environmental, social and governance” funds let people invest according to certain values like climate change or corporate diversity.

Investors withdrew $6.1 billion from ESG funds in the first three months of 2025, after yanking out $4.3 billion in Q4 2024, according to Morningstar.

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The exodus in Q1 marked the 10^th consecutive quarter of outflows.

“The continued loss of appetite among US investors for sustainable funds can be partly attributed to an anti-ESG backlash, which has intensified since the return of President Trump to the White House,” according to the report.

As of the end of Q1, U.S. investors held $330 billion in ESG funds, about 10% of the global total.

Even before Trump took office, persistently high interest rates weighed on performance in segments of the ESG market, like clean energy and other “green” stocks, according to Morningstar. Higher borrowing costs burden the renewables sector because the projects can be capital-intensive.

But Trump added additional pressure.

Within days of his inauguration, Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris agreement, blocked subsidies for electric vehicles, pushed for more fossil-fuel production and started a “huge pushback” against DEI policies, Diana Iovanel, a senior markets economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research note in March.

In late March, the Republican-led Securities and Exchange Commission stopped defending a climate-change disclosure rule in court. There’s also uncertainty about the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act, a historic climate change mitigation law signed by President Joe Biden.

Even before Trump’s second term began, at least 18 Republican-led states had adopted “anti-ESG legislation,” prompting some large asset managers to “pare back” their ESG efforts, Iovanel wrote.

Trump also signed an executive order to eliminate all DEI-related mandates and programs within the federal government, prompting major corporations like Walmart (WMT), Lowe’s (LOW) and Meta (META) to begin “scaling back their DEI commitments,” Morningstar wrote.

About 84% of individual investors in the U.S. are interested in sustainable investing, according to a 2024 Morgan Stanley survey. Roughly two thirds, 65%, of respondents said their interest had increased in the prior two years.

While critics deride it as “woke” capitalism, advocates say there’s a strong investment thesis for ESG.

Specifically, they argue that ESG investing positions investors for higher long-term returns because companies that adopt such practices are poised to be more resilient, and therefore more successful, than peers.