The change could impact doctoral students who typically take five years to seven years to complete their academic work.
The United States’ Department of Homeland Security has proposed to limit all international students to four-year stays in the US regardless of their programme length, potentially ending a policy that allowed students to remain throughout their studies.
The draft rules were proposed on August 27 and the department will take public comments on the proposal till September 29.
Before the agency can finalise the rule, it will have to review and respond to the comments.
International student visas in the US, known as F visas, typically allows students to stay in the country for as long as it takes to finish their programme. Therefore, they can stay in the US as long as they maintain their student status, rather than being given a fixed end date.
If the new rules are finalised, students requiring more than four years to complete their course would need to apply for extensions and undergo regular assessments by the homeland security department.
The Donald Trump administration, during its first term between 2017 and 2021, had tried to introduce this change. The proposal was withdrawn by the Joe Biden administration.
“For too long, past administrations have allowed foreign students and other visa holders to remain in the US virtually indefinitely, posing safety risks, costing untold amounts of taxpayer dollars, and disadvantaging US citizens,” a spokesperson of the homeland security department said in a statement.
