The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Monday clarified that the proposed $100,000 H-1B visa fee will not apply to F-1 students, L-1 company transferees, or professionals changing status within the United States. For thousands of Indian students and tech workers, the clarification brought relief after a week of alarmist headlines predicting the end of affordable American education and employment.
Yet, anyone who had read the earlier announcement carefully would have known this already. The fine print was clear from the start the surcharge targeted employers misusing the H-1B programme, not students or high-skill professionals. The panic was, as is increasingly common, a product of half-read policy and over-interpreted headlines.
What Washington D.C. is doing is essentially fixing a system that was being gamed. The intent is to restore the H-1B programme to attracting the world’s best talent, which is what it was originally designed for.
And as Buffett might say, those who keep their heads while others panic are likely to find value where the market sees risk.
Why this advantageous for students
The H-1B visa, designed to help U.S. employers recruit exceptional foreign professionals, had long drifted from its purpose. Large outsourcing firms and agent networks flooded the lottery with duplicate applications, often for the same worker, depressing wages and distorting fair competition. Despite hundreds of thousands of filings annually, the visa quota of 85,000 often went unfilled because many submissions were ineligible or fraudulent.
The new employer fee is intended to correct that distortion. It discourages low-cost labour pipelines, recovers unpaid taxes, and restores the integrity of a programme that had become synonymous with loopholes. The USCIS clarification reinforces that legitimate students, those already in the U.S. on F-1, OPT, or L-1 visas are exempt.
For them, the rule may even prove advantageous. By recruiting graduates already trained in the U.S., companies avoid the surcharge altogether. The reform makes U.S.-educated Indian graduates more attractive hires a reversal of the alarmist narrative that dominated Indian media last week.
A related change to the H-1B lottery itself deepens this emphasis on quality. Under the new system, an applicant’s chance of selection increases with the salary offered. Higher-paying roles, typically in technology, engineering, and management, go to graduates of stronger universities and higher-return programmes. In effect, the policy builds a virtuous cycle ensuring that better-qualified professionals from better institutions move into better jobs.
Most top-tier U.S. universities, which is roughly the upper half of the system, already bar the use of education agents, meaning their students enter through transparent admissions and credible training. The message is consistent: those who invest in genuine education and skill-building remain welcome; those who treat study as a shortcut to migration do not.
The outcome benefits everyone involved. Companies that now compete for quality talent, universities that strengthen standards, and students whose higher skills command fairer pay.
A mirror to India’s own
Behind this episode lies a more uncomfortable truth: India’s Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education is around 27 per cent, and the quality gap across institutions is vast. While the IITs and IIMs produce global talent, a large share of colleges offer degrees without employability. It is no coincidence that master’s holders often apply for clerical jobs or that overqualified youth accept low-skill work.
Without a rapid expansion in quality higher education, India’s demographic dividend risks turning into a liability. The steady rise in students going abroad is actually a need for quality higher education and a desire to reach the highest potential. In 2023–24, Indians overseas remitted $135 billion, the highest in the world, which is a reminder that global education is also an economic engine for India.
The citadel of higher education
Despite periodic anxiety about visas and costs, the United States remains the most dynamic higher-education ecosystem. It spends $450 billion annually on universities, more than twice the combined spending of the U.K., France, Germany, and Canada. It offers clear post-study work opportunities, particularly for STEM graduates, who can stay for up to three years under Optional Practical Training (OPT).
Other destinations are becoming more restrictive. The U.K. has shortened post-study work visas, Germany and Japan have limited citizenship pathways, and France and Ireland are constrained by scale. Meanwhile, a Georgetown University study estimates that the U.S. will need six million additional professionals with post-secondary degrees by 2030. The fundamentals have not changed: America cannot sustain its innovation economy without global talent and Indian graduates remain central to that supply.
Data behind the debate
It is true that new international student enrolments in the U.S. have fallen by about 20 percent globally and 40 percent from India, but this decline is concentrated in lower-tier, agent-driven institutions. Or simply put, institutions that offer little besides a foreign institution tag.
At the top end, the story is different. The University of Southern California reports record Indian admissions; Washington University in St Louis has seen a fourfold increase; and the University of San Diego has received clearance from the Department of Homeland Security to begin recruiting from India for the first time for its Master’s programs.
Even the proposed five percent cap on undergraduates from any one country, part of a draft compact for a small set of federally funded universities, is unlikely to affect India. Indian undergraduates make up less than two per cent of enrolments at these institutions. The intent, once again, is to encourage diversity.
If markets reward those who stay calm in a downturn, global education may do the same. This is the contrarian moment that wise investors often recognise for their true potential: applications are down, scholarships are expanding, and universities once dominated by Chinese enrolments are actively courting India.
The broader lesson
The U.S. correction also holds a mirror to India. After decades of widening access, America is re-asserting standards and making quality the condition for entry. India’s higher-education system has yet to reach that point. With enrolment targets rising, teaching and research uneven, the next phase must focus less on quantity and more on capability.
For Indian students, the message from Washington is unambiguous. Those enrolled in serious, high-return programmes, especially in technology, management, and applied sciences will thrive in America. Those seeking shortcuts through weak or unaccredited colleges with an intention to simply migrate will find doors closing. By insisting that skill and integrity matter more than numbers, the U.S. is doing what every education system eventually must do. The wiser response, as Buffett would argue, is to read the data, not the emotion.
(Aman Singh is the Co-founder of GradRight and a higher education specialist with over twenty-five years of experience in building leading Indian universities and global education initiatives.)
