Fulbrighters in Flux

As the academic year comes to a close, international students in the U.S. as part of the Fulbright program usually turn to their advisers at the Institute of International Education, the nonprofit that administers Fulbright programs, for help with immigration paperwork. That can include signing off on visa renewals, helping students get authorization to work in the U.S. after graduation and even booking plane tickets home for those whose scholarships include travel costs.

But this year, those Fulbrighters—the colloquial term for both international and American participants in the program—are in limbo as the Fulbright Foreign Student Program advising team at IIE has been slashed from about 15 people to just one, according to one FFSP team member. Those cut are among the approximately 200 staff that have been furloughed from IIE as a result of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs freezing all outgoing funding starting Feb. 13.

At the time, the department said funds would be frozen for 15 days as it completed a review of the office’s spending. Now, almost a month and a half later, the freeze remains in place.

Every year, around 4,000 international students study in the U.S. through the FFSP program, plus another 900 scholars and instructors. Among that number is a European student currently enrolled as a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, who requested anonymity due to fears of retribution from the Trump administration. Usually by this point in the year, she would have already gotten her visa renewed for another year, a process that involves submitting her transcript and proof of enrollment for approval by her adviser.

But now, it’s been over a month since she should have begun that process—and only two months until her visa expires—and she has yet to hear from an adviser, outside of a message advising Fulbrighters that, due to the furloughs, IIE’s advisers would only be able to assist them in case of an emergency.

“I was supposed to do research work for my dissertation this summer,” the student said. “Now I’m not sure if that will be happening, because staying past May 31 will mean that I’m overstaying my visa, and that’s a breach of my visa and it will be very difficult for me to come back to the U.S.—I’ll be banned for 10 years if that ever happens.”

‘Challenges Still Remain’

For nearly 80 years, the Fulbright program has been the flagship cultural exchange program of the State Department, as part of an effort to foster intercultural understanding in the aftermath of World War II by allowing U.S. students and professors to study, teach and complete research abroad and for international scholars to do the same in the U.S. But thanks to actions by the Trump administration, Fulbrighters are stuck in limbo—with many of the program’s proponents concerned about its future.

After the U.S. Department of State froze the outgoing funds, news broke that some Fulbrighters, both in the U.S. and abroad, wouldn’t be paid their full stipends—relatively frugal sums that pay for their living expenses. International students in America initially only received a quarter of their stipends at the end of February, according to the furloughed FFSP employee, though in mid-March, IIE began the process of backfilling those grants. And some Fulbrighters working as English language instructors abroad initially received only one week of what was intended to be three months’ pay in February, though they, too, received the rest of the payment later, one of the instructors said in an interview with a Florida NPR station.

(Generally, it seems that instructors and scholars for whom the majority of the stipend is typically paid by the State Department were impacted by the pause. Others on stipends mostly paid for by their host country weren’t affected.)

This week, members of the Alliance for International Exchange, a consortium composed of over 90 organizations focused on international exchange programs, reported an influx of cash from the State Department. About 85 percent of the owed payments have come through, according to the alliance’s executive director, Mark Overmann.

“Despite this progress, challenges still remain,” he told Inside Higher Ed in an email. “First, it’ll take implementing organizations some time to restabilize after the disruption of nearly two months without funding. And second, organizations need to have confidence that this new payment process will continue to work and that they can count on future funding.”

Fulbrighters also face uncertainty about the future. Even though the State Department has released much of the funding that had been held, the freeze is technically not over, leaving some concerned about their upcoming payments. And furloughs at IIE continue with no word from the nonprofit as to when they may end.

Champions of the Fulbright programs also worry that the past two months of turbulence may indicate that the current administration doesn’t care about maintaining the program and the intercultural exchange it’s fostered.

“To me, it’s just so sad, because Fulbright is a binational agreement with 160 different countries,” said the furloughed FFSP employee. “You’re not just impacting your relationship with one country. You’re impacting your relationship with the entire world.”

Recruitment Chaos

The layoffs at IIE have also hampered recruitment for the next cohort of Fulbrighters, who are applying this year to hopefully go abroad in the 2026–27 academic year. The opening day for the coming application cycle is slated for April 1, but, according to four Fulbright program advisers—college and university employees who work with students and alumni to apply to the elite program—interviewed by Inside Higher Ed, there has been less communication than usual about the beginning of the application cycle. Some planned outreach events and trainings for advisers have also been canceled.

The 2025–26 session is also up in the air. Historically, final award decisions begin coming out as early as late February, but this year, almost none have been announced. Although award recipients are chosen by the host country, final approval comes from the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, which is appointed by the president.

When asked about the delays by email, two of the board’s members declined to comment, redirecting Inside Higher Ed to the State Department, which did not say on the record when the finalists will be selected.

One program adviser said that the program has been so chaotic over the past few months that he is advising the 30 semifinalists on his campus, most of whom are graduating seniors who will need to find a job if their Fulbright dreams fall through, that they may want to steer clear.

“My very strong recommendation for my students has been [to] continue to seek out other opportunities,” said Matthew Loar at Washington and Lee University. And even if some of them do get accepted, “my advice will be to think about it long and hard on whether to accept, based on our government’s willingness to cut Fulbright grants.”

For foreign students coming into the U.S., the situation is even more complicated. Although many 2025–26 Fulbrighters received word that they are awardees, many haven’t received their placements, necessary immigration documents or information about what funding they may receive. On top of the funding freeze, each Fulbright scholarship is unique, with some funding coming from the U.S. and parts coming from the participants’ home country, so manpower is needed to plan out each individual Fulbrighter’s grant.

The U.S. Student Program employee said that whether next year’s Fulbright programs will go on as planned depends on whether the funding is unfrozen.

“I think that even if we get the money back and a lot of people come back, our numbers are probably going to be hurt; the number of people applying is going to crater, I imagine, because even if we do get the funding now, this is a program people apply to a year in advance,” he said.

It’s not just Fulbright that might be at risk; other international education programs, like the Gilman Program, which is also overseen by IIE and funded by the State Department, have also been impacted by the funding freeze. Meanwhile, other programs have been swept up in the reductions in force elsewhere in the federal government. For instance, the Fulbright-Hays programs—four intercultural exchange programs with a particular focus on non-Western languages and area studies—was part of the International and Foreign Language Education office, which was completely eliminated amid the mass layoffs this month at the Education Department.

The Office of Higher Education Programs will take over the Fulbright-Hays programs, according to a communication sent by acting under secretary James Bergeron that was shared with Inside Higher Ed by an employee impacted by the reduction. But the employee told Inside Higher Ed they were concerned that having an office with no prior experience administering such a program will negatively impact the current participants and applicants.

Next Steps

What’s next for current Fulbrighters?

Jennifer W. Kyker, professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Rochester, has been in Zimbabwe on a Fulbright grant since September, curating the first solo exhibit of archival photographs by a Zimbabwean photographer who died in the 1990s. Amid the early days of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ funding freeze, she received notice from IIE that her funding might be impacted—but that she might not know for sure until the day it was supposed to receive the stipend, the organization said.

She ultimately received the payment in full but said that the ever-changing whims of the Trump administration mean that no Fulbrighter can be completely at ease. Even now, she is unsure whether she will receive her next and final payment, which is slated to cover her final month in Zimbabwe.

“It’s the insecurity of not knowing what might happen,” Kyker said. “If your funding has not been frozen, there’s no guarantee it will remain available … I would venture to say every single Fulbrighter right now is deeply impacted by the funding freezes and the idea of being in a foreign country without much infrastructure or support around you. Possibly having no access to funding is very scary, especially for people who might have dependents with them.”