White House calls for science funding shake-up, US caps length of student visas, and more

US eliminates ‘duration of status’

The Department of Homeland Security has finalized its plans to overhaul immigration rules for international students, ending the decades-old “duration of status” system that gave students the flexibility to stay for as long as it took them to complete their studies.

DHS’ final rule, published July 17, will take effect Sept. 15 and applies to F student visas, J exchange visitor visas, and I visas for foreign journalists. Instead of allowing these visa holders to remain in the U.S. for the duration of their academic program or journalistic assignment, DHS will now admit individuals for a fixed period of time tied to their program length and capped at four years.

Universities and scientific organizations warn that removing the duration of status system will create new administrative hurdles for international students and may deter them from choosing to pursue their studies in the US. The changes will have a significant impact on students pursuing advanced degrees, as doctoral and postdoctoral programs can take much longer than four years to complete. Under the new rules, students who need more time to complete their programs will have to apply and pay for a formal extension of stay from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or leave the country and obtain a new visa abroad before returning, neither of which is guaranteed.

A 2025 report by AIP’s statistics team found that about 97% of international students in physics and astronomy take more than four years to complete their Ph.D., with a median duration of 6 years for domestic and international students. The NSF’s 2024 Survey of Earned Doctorates reports that the median time to complete a Ph.D. program across all disciplines is 5.7 years.

After March 18, 2027, students on F-1 visas who seek to transition into optional practical training will have to apply for a separate extension of stay and work authorization, which was not previously required. OPT allows graduates to work in a field related to their studies for up to one year, or three years if enrolled in certain STEM programs.

The final rule also shortens the grace period after completion of a program. Instead of having 60 days to depart the United States or change status after graduation, F-1 students will generally have just 30 days. The regulation will also prevent undergraduate students from changing programs or switching majors during the first year of their studies. Graduate students will be prohibited from changing programs or switching majors altogether. Students who complete a degree in the U.S. will not be allowed to pursue another degree in the U.S. at the same or lower education level. For example, a Ph.D. degree holder could not obtain an F-1 visa for another Ph.D. or any lower-level degree.

White House calls for science funding shake-up

The U.S. research enterprise too heavily centers on elite research institutions, and fails individual researchers with bold ideas, suggests the White House Office of Science and Technology in a new report. The office recommends sweeping changes to where federal funding is spent and how it should be awarded.

Released on July 21, the “Science: A New Golden Age” report seeks to update Vannevar Bush’s landmark 1945 report “Science: The Endless Frontier” for the modern era. In the report, OSTP Director Michael Kratsios argues that today’s scientific landscape — shaped by AI, global competition, and private-sector investment — requires a fundamental redesign of how the federal government funds research.

OSTP published the report the day before Kratsios appeared before the House Science Committee to answer questions about the Trump administration’s science policy agenda and research funding priorities for the next fiscal year. While Republicans on the committee broadly welcomed the administration’s focus on innovation, AI, and research security, Democrats on the committee were highly critical of the administration’s approach, noting major disruptions to research grants and questioning whether OSTP is improperly influencing NSF research decisions by redirecting funding and overriding the agency’s award decisions. Kratsios denied any OSTP involvement in reviewing individual NSF grants, despite Rep. George Whitesides (D-CA) stating that his office had received information to the contrary.

Key recommendations in the report include prioritizing individual scientists over “a narrow set of legacy institutions,” with greater support for other kinds of research institutions such as startups, independent research organizations, and NSF’s recently launched X-Labs initiative, which supports research teams from a wide variety of organizations. The report also recommends more experimental funding approaches, including “golden tickets” that would let technical reviewers at individual agencies recommend “unconventional proposals that may not pass consensus-driven review panels” — a model that the report says is being piloted at NSF’s Technology, Innovation and Partnerships Directorate.

Trump proposes defunding National Academies

On July 19, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social ordering officials to consider suspending or debarring the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine from federal funding, the latest in a string of criticism from Republican leaders targeting NASEM’s work on climate-related science.

Trump’s post came days after NASEM released a report on extreme event attribution science, a relatively new area of science that assesses the extent to which climate change influences an individual weather or climate event. The committee that put together the report has experienced intense scrutiny, as have other areas of NASEM’s work related to climate science.

Republicans on the House Science Committee are pressing NASEM to provide information on the attribution committee that NASEM has said is confidential. They argued in a July 15 letter that oversight of NASEM is a matter of national security because NASEM is “one of the most trusted and respected providers” of science that agencies rely upon. They expressed interest in legislative reforms “with respect to the Academies as a whole.”

Trump’s Truth Social post took aim at the climate science chapter in the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, the main scientific resource for federal judges, which is co-authored by NASEM and the Federal Judicial Center. Separately, the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee criticized NASEM last year for its decision to study whether current evidence supports the since-rescinded endangerment finding.

House Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) issued a statement on July 16 saying climate skeptics, “MAGA Republicans,” and the president “have spent weeks building an opposition campaign against this very report because they feared what it would say.” She accused them of protecting “big polluters at the expense of their own constituents.”