Learning Curveball

Is the higher education system in the United States crash-landing on the American dream—and will it take Indian higher education aspirants down with it?

There certainly are signs. Badar Khan Suri’s student visa was revoked by the Donald Trump administration not long ago, citing his social media posts and his wife’s ties to Gaza—she is a Palestinian American. Officials accused him of supporting Hamas, designated by the United States as a terrorist organisation.

The Indian postdoctoral researcher at Georgetown University was held for two months in a Texas immigration detention center, caught in a legal limbo that derailed his life and research. A Texas court has now issued a temporary stay on his deportation, offering a brief reprieve.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Khan Suri declared as he walked out of detention, his voice steady despite the ordeal that, for now, has only paused rather than ended.

This year, Trump has upended the lives of international students enrolled in Ivy League universities, issuing deportation threats over relatively minor infractions—ranging from traffic violations to participation in campus protests labelled “anti-Semitic.”

Some were forced to flee the country like fugitives in the dead of night to avoid arrest. Others, unable to leave, are now entangled in costly legal battles, compelled to explain to an indifferent bureaucracy why a peaceful demonstration or marriage to a Palestinian citizen must not be ground for deportation.

“Members of the Class of 2025 from down the street, across the country, and around the world. Around the world, just as it should be,” Harvard University President Alan Garber declared. The simple three-word repetition underscored the resolve of a university standing against a mammoth administration with no sign of shrinking back.

Universities are not only spaces of learning but also of unlearning. Young minds are shaped within classrooms and far beyond them. Ideas are debated, opinions are reshaped, and sometimes they take the form of dissent and protest.

To be fair, the stifling of free expression is not confined to American universities. In India, too, censorship often permeates higher education — from rewriting syllabi to raids by right-wing groups targeting students at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia, to the arrest of an Ashoka University professor for expressing his views. The crackdown knows no borders.

India’s student population is immense, with total higher education enrolment reaching 4.33 crore in the financial year 2022, up from 3.42 crore in 2015, according to the Economic Survey for 2023–24. This makes the country a lucrative destination for foreign universities to establish offshore campuses. Such campuses are a potential alternative for Indian students who cannot afford to study abroad. 

However, gaining admission to a reputed college in India remains extremely challenging. Students must first clear demanding board exams and then face cutthroat competition in entrance tests like the Combined University Entrance Test (CUET) and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), where thousands vie for a single seat.

For many students hoping to study abroad, even successfully navigating the intricate maze of counsellors, statements of purpose and student visas do not guarantee admission to a foreign university. And when it does, a change in the host country’s education policy—often citing global security concerns or a surge in international applications—can take it all away in an instant. 

A gnawing fear looms that it could all be undone—that one might be forced to leave before even getting the chance to graduate.

Education is a right, but that right seems to be slipping farther and farther away amid the tangle of shifting policies and administrative hurdles.

In Outlook Magazine’s 21 July 2025, issue, ‘Degrees of Separation’, we explore the aspects of education that go beyond grades.

In ‘The Othering of Learning', Pankaj Butalia explains the essence of university culture, campus life and its interaction with politics. He writes, “People associate the university with freedom—with a liberation of the mind and the spirit—with learning, with ideas, and with knowledge. We also acknowledge that the mind needs space to grow, that it needs to fight boundaries, and that it needs to be fearless in this endeavour.”  

In ‘Thought Police’, Apeksha Priyadarshini writes about the arrest of Ashoka Professor, Ali Khan Mahmudabad.

“While there can be many avenues to contend his point of view, a more fundamental question lies hidden in this line of thinking—what distinguishes education from literacy? What is the purpose of “critical thinking”—taught enthusiastically in classrooms, condemned and punished when applied to the larger society?”

Pragya Singh in 'Fear and Loathing in the Ivy League' chronicles stories of 10 Indian students, professors and parents studying in the United States and the United Kingdom.

“Ranjini Srinivasan is one such student. Branded “pro-Hamas” in the media, she was forced to leave the United States months before completing her PhD at Columbia. Officially, she “self-deported.” In reality, authorities swooped in and gave her no choice but to leave. Columbia quietly removed her from its rolls. India, too, remained mostly silent as students like her were forced out.

Indian students, vocational students and exchange visitors applying to the United States must now make their social media profiles “public” to establish their identity and “admissibility” under United States law, according to the United States Embassy. Moreover, the “effective immediately” policy also does not “guarantee” that Indian students without an existing appointment will get a visa interview slot “this summer.”

In ‘The Great American Campus Dilemma?’ Satish Padmanabhan engaged with Saikat Majumdar, Ashoka University professor and former faculty at Stanford University.

“Plurality and diversity, in the intellectual, social, and political sense, have been synonymous to innovative, interdisciplinary education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The attack on DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion] is an attack on the core principles of this education. And, obviously, such attacks are particularly harmful for international students; even more so for those who are not white,” Majumdar said when asked what the biggest challenges to college education are today.

Avantika Mehta writes in ‘Exit Option’ about students planning to go abroad to study from tier-two and tier-three Indian cities. 

“A decade ago, there were only a handful of small offices in Meerut that handled test preparation or niche counselling. Now, dozens of firms offer end-to-end services, with the larger pan-India firms opening branch offices in small towns and tier-two and tier-three cities.”

The issue also has Outlook-ICARE Rankings 2025 of India’s Best Colleges.

While Indian international students now form the world’s second-largest group abroad, after China, the focus on getting into a “good college,” navigating administrative hurdles and landing prestigious jobs appears to be taking priority over genuine learning.