Shrinking Campus: The Geopolitics of U.S. Higher Education
Virtual Briefing Series
Monday, September 22nd, 2025 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM ET
U.S. higher education is more than just a domestic institution— it is a pillar of the country’s foreign policy and global engagement. By attracting students, scholars, and researchers from around the world, American universities have helped shape generations of leaders, built lasting international networks, and boosted the U.S. economy and labor market. Yet, recent immigration and visa policies under the Trump administration have caused a 15 percent drop in international enrollment and the U.S. is projected to lose $7 billion in revenue and 60,000 jobs as a result. This shift has also exposed questions about underlying national security concerns among critics of the international approach of U.S. higher education. How should U.S. universities balance national security concerns with attracting top talent? What are the implications for U.S. influence if students take their ambitions elsewhere? What other approaches can universities take in order to retain the U.S. edge in a rapidly evolving global education landscape?
Join us on Monday, September 22nd, from 12:00 to 1:00 PM ET for a discussion with Dr. Madeline Zavodny, First Coast Systems Professor of Economics at the University of North Florida and Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics, and Professor John Aubrey Douglass, Senior Research Fellow of Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley. This conversation will provide insights into higher education’s role at the intersection of U.S. global influence, its economy, and security.
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SPEAKERS:
Dr. Madeline Zavodny
Madeline Zavodny is the Donna L. Gibbs and First Coast Systems Professor of Economics at UNF. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), a Fellow at the Global Labor Organization, and an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Her research focuses on economic issues related to immigration, including Beside the Golden Door: U.S. Immigration Reform in a New Era of Globalization (AEI Press, 2010) and The Economics of Immigration (Routledge, 2015; 2nd ed. 2021) and over 40 articles published in academic journals. She is the managing editor of the Journal of Population Economics. Before joining UNF she was a professor of economics at Agnes Scott College and Occidental College and an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. She holds a PhD in Economics from MIT and a BA in Economics from Claremont McKenna College.
John Aubrey Douglass
John Aubrey Douglass is Senior Research Fellow – Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), and is a faculty member in the Goldman School of Public Policy, at the University of California – Berkeley. His research focuses on the forces and politics of globalization, the future of Democracy, the role of universities in economic development and socioeconomic mobility, the student experience and institutional self-improvement, and the history of higher education. He has written extensively on the rise of neo-nationalism and the impact on universities.
His most recent book is Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats, and the Future of Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press and available a free Open Access eBook via Project Muse). Other books include The New Flagship University: Changing the Paradigm from Global Ranking to National Relevancy (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), The Conditions for Admissions (Stanford Press 2007), The California Idea and American Higher Education (Stanford University Press, 2000). Among the research projects he founded is the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium – a group of major research universities in the US and internationally that conduct survey research on undergraduates and graduate students, share data, and seek innovation and institutional self-improvement. The recent SERU report The Multi-Engagement Model: Understanding Diverse Pathways to Student Success at Research Universities utilizes 11 years of survey research and data collection. He is now working on the book From the Rise of the Publics to Trump’s America: Historical and Contemporary Turning Points in Higher Education (de Gruyter/Brill).
He has been a Visiting Fellow or Professor at The New Institute (Hamburg), the University of Bergamo (Italy), Amsterdam University College (a unit of the University of Amsterdam and Vrije University of Amsterdam), the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil), Sciences Po (Paris) and on the past and for the month of September 2025 at the Oxford Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (OxCHEPS).
Image creator: Pixabay
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