For years, a little-known program called Optional Practical Training has let foreign students stay and work in the United States after graduation. On Wednesday, the Trump administration put a price on it.
The Department of Homeland Security proposed a rule that would make colleges pay $70,000 for each international student they recommend for OPT, plus $30,000 for each later round, such as the popular STEM extension. Together, that can reach $100,000 per student, according to Higher Ed Dive. The proposal was set for publication in the Federal Register on Thursday, October 8.
What OPT is and how the new fee would work
OPT lets foreign students on F-1 visas work in jobs tied to their field of study. Most get up to one year. Graduates with qualifying science, technology, engineering or math degrees can get two more years on top of that.
Right now, a student needs a recommendation from a school official before applying. That step has never cost the school anything. The student pays a separate application form fee of roughly $470 to $520, according to the law firm Fragomen, as cited by Higher Ed Dive.
Under the proposal, a school would have to pay the fee before its official could enter the recommendation into the government’s student tracking system. If the money isn’t paid, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services cannot approve the work permit, according to an analysis by the immigration law firm Wolfsdorf Rosenthal.
DHS said schools could soften the hit by passing the cost along to international students, to all students, or to employers. A school could ask for a refund if a student never gets work authorization, but refunds would be decided case by case with no appeal.
Why DHS says the program needs a backdoor gatekeeper
DHS says OPT has become a back door into the American labor market. “Optional Practical Training was never meant to be a back door into the American workforce,” a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek. The department also said American workers should not have to compete against a program it described as a “pipeline for cheap foreign labor,” according to ABC11.
The department pointed to fraud cases. Newsweek reported that DHS cited a 2020 case in which a businesswoman allegedly supplied fake employment papers to at least 2,693 foreign nationals, most of them Chinese OPT participants. It also cited a 2020 ICE operation that led to the arrest of 15 students accused of using OPT to stay in the country under false pretenses. Investigators also flagged about 10,000 OPT participants working for “highly suspect employers,” Newsweek reported.
DHS said the fee would make colleges more careful. In the department’s words, as quoted by Higher Ed Dive, “The financial costs would deter schools from recommending students with questionable qualifications for OPT.” DHS also suggested OPT has been used to get around the limits of the H-1B visa program, and warned that without changes it “may shut down the program entirely.”
The size of the program
OPT is not small. About 294,000 students took part in 2024-25, more than double the roughly 120,000 a decade earlier, Higher Ed Dive reported. DHS’s own figures, as summarized by Wolfsdorf Rosenthal, counted about 194,000 OPT and 95,000 STEM OPT participants active in 2024. The department projects the fees could bring in $8.4 billion to $16.5 billion a year.
That growth matters because every OPT worker is competing for an entry-level job that a recent American graduate could also fill. Those are the jobs young Americans use to get a foot in the door.
What critics say
Colleges and their lobbying groups are unhappy. Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, an association representing international educators, said, “Driving away the talents, perspectives, and aspirations of international students will only hurt American innovation.” A former DHS official, Doug Rand, told Newsweek the fee amounts to an unlawful tax.
Legal challenges are likely. A court struck down the administration’s earlier $100,000 fee on H-1B petitions in June, Higher Ed Dive noted.
What happens next
This is a proposal, not a final rule. The public gets a comment period, and DHS must review comments before finalizing it. Wolfsdorf Rosenthal reported a 30-day general comment window, with one report putting the deadline at November 7. If finalized, the fee would apply to recommendations made 60 days after the final rule is published.
The bottom line
A student visa is supposed to be a visa to study. Somewhere along the way, OPT turned it into a multi-year work permit that hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates use every year, often in the same entry-level jobs American graduates are chasing. Asking the colleges that profit from foreign tuition to put real money behind each recommendation is a reasonable way to make them think twice.
Critics say the fee will scare off talent. But the country is not short of talented young Americans. Many of them are carrying student debt and looking for that first job. A government that puts American workers first should not run a program that quietly undercuts them.
If the program is as valuable as colleges claim, they can show it by paying for it. If it is not, the fee will reveal that too.