US President Donald Trump has halted Harvard University's ability to enrol international students, targeting a key funding source for the nation's oldest and wealthiest college. This marks a major escalation in the administration's efforts to pressure the elite institution to align with the president's agenda. The decision has sparked widespread criticism, both domestically and internationally. On one hand, China has labelled it a "politicisation" of educational exchanges. On the other hand, many business leaders and corporate figures argue that the move could harm the country's own growth and global competitiveness.
Akshay Chaturvedi, Founder & CEO of Leverage Edu, has recently tweeted about this ban, and it has gone massively viral. He said through his posts that Harvard news may impact US talent attractiveness, financing markets, and university endowments, benefiting other countries meanwhile.
"It's going to have an impact on the US's attractiveness as a talent magnet. How deep that hole gets is anybody's guess right now. Third, given so much of our institutional finance flows from Harvard, Yale and the like (their $50B, $30B and so on endowment's), this is very likely to have a trickle-down effect on the financing market - the PEs, the VCs, even RE; at some stage every endowment will have to do a mark-to-market, and that won't look pretty," he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Woke up to the Harvard news.
— Akshay Chaturvedi (@Akshay001) May 23, 2025
Firstly, wow.
Second, of course it's going to have an impact on US's attractiveness as a talent magnet. How deep that hole gets, is anybody's guess right now.
Third, given so much of our institutional finance flows from Harvard, Yale and the likes… https://t.co/XNOpYvN7Hj
"The entire world is watching, eyes wide open; I am typing this an hour away from a meeting with a French cabinet person, and he sent me a link to a related article with "Yay"... they/other selected European nations/Middle East ARE GOING TO LAP UP this access to international students, aka high-quality talent," he further mentioned.
"The macros don't lie. The need for international students, for talent, is only going to go up. The need for universities to have them to show a back-to-stability balance sheet is going to be all too apparent. So just stand by and give it time."
Highlighting the importance of the immigrants in the developed economies, he wrote in a separate post that "immigrants have built the US. They are capable of building other countries too."
