If Secretary of State Marco Rubio follows through on his threat to revoke Chinese student visas, some Maryland colleges could take a hit.

More than a third of the state’s roughly 24,000 international students were from China during the 2023-24 school year. That’s according to the latest data from Open Doors, a project sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and run by the Institute of International Education.

At the University of Maryland, College Park, this fall, China was second only to India in the number of students hailing from other countries.

That campus and others could face financial uncertainty as the State Department cracks down on student visas. Earlier this week, the department halted the scheduling of new visa interviews as it prepares guidelines for increased vetting of applicants’ social media activity.

Most international students at American universities pay full freight; their tuition dollars are considered revenue for the university, which can then spend that money on academic programming, scholarships and operating costs. At the Johns Hopkins University, for example, just 10% of international students receive financial aid. The rest attend the university at full cost, paying over $88,000 a year for their education.

Open Doors estimates that international students at Maryland colleges spent more than $1 billion last school year. Maryland ranked 14th in the nation for the number of international students it hosted that year.

Almost half of the international students studying in Maryland last year — 10,054 of them — were at Hopkins, which ranks among the top 20 colleges nationally with the most international students.

Thirty-seven international students at Johns Hopkins lost their visas in a crackdown earlier this spring. At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, four students lost their visas, and 12 students were impacted at College Park. Those visa revocations were reversed last month after universities filed dozens of court challenges around the country.

Michael Sandler, a spokesperson for the University System of Maryland, said in a statement that officials are monitoring the State Department’s decisions around student visas.

“We are very concerned for the welfare of all international students, as well as their ability to learn and study in the U.S. and make contributions to our broader academic communities,” Sandler wrote. “We continue to support our international community as we evaluate the impact these decisions have on our campuses.”

Chinese students at College Park came under scrutiny from a congressional committee in March. The Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent letters to six universities, including UMD, Stanford, Purdue and Carnegie Mellon, demanding a plethora of information on their Chinese students by April 1.

The committee called America’s student visa system a “Trojan horse” for Beijing in letters sent to university presidents, and demanded information about all Chinese national students at each institution, with breakdowns of other universities they’d attended, their research affiliates and their sources of tuition funding.

The committee also asked that University of Maryland President Darryll Pines provide the answers to a number of questions, including the percentage of the graduate student body made up of Chinese citizens, the percentage of Chinese graduate students engaged in federally funded research, and what background screening processes Chinese nationals go through to apply to sensitive research programs.

U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, criticized the Trump administration’s latest moves in a statement.

“Students applying to study in the United States are thoroughly vetted prior to receiving their visas. This is yet another example of a Trump Administration policy that has no basis in fact or reality,” he said. ”Rather than strengthening our national security, this will only weaken our universities, our economy, and our competitiveness.”

Van Hollen has become a fixture in the national conversation about immigration enforcement: He visited El Salvador in April to meet with 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was wrongfully deported.

Spokespeople for Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and Gov. Wes Moore did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that Open Doors data includes international students who are on Optional Practical Training, a benefit of the F-1 student visa, after graduating.

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