UC Berkeley indefinitely suspends international student work authorizations

ccbzbc about 4 hours ago 71 commentsRead Article on dailycal.org

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biotechbio•about 3 hours ago

Is this headline misleading? From reading the article, Berkeley is pausing authorizations for Course Credit CPT, which enables international students on visas to work in exchange for credits to complete their degree programs. It doesn’t outright ban work experience if it is an “integral part of an established curriculum”.

The headline reads like Berkeley is suspending authorization of international student workers in general, but this actually seems like a relatively narrow restriction?

cvhc•about 1 hour ago

(Speaking as a former international student in the US) I don't know about other fields, but most CS (and STEM) graduate programs I know don't require internships. So students use CPT for summer internships.

The other option, pre-completion OPT, requires USCIS approval (in contrast, CPT is totally authorized by the school). This can take 2 months or even longer. It also deducts the 12-month post-graduation OPT, leaving students less time to switch to another worker status.

Many people abused CPT for employment by attending so-called day-1 CPT programs. Ironically, working is the entirety of such programs, so literally the new rule doesn't forbid using CPT under such programs.

I also fully sympathize with those who choose day-1 CPT. International students have to secure a worker status before running out of OPT (1yr standard + 2yr for STEM). For many, this isn't easy. H-1B requires a lottery so one can be unlucky -- it's also increasingly restricted by the admin. O-1's bar is much higher. For Indian and Chinese, even if they qualify for a green card, they have to wait for the national backlog that can be several years.

Bnjoroge•about 3 hours ago

The new directive requires that the course requires the internship. Most programs (especially CS/economics etc) dont. This effectively removed any pathway for international cs students interning. It’s far from a narrow restriction

tgma•about 3 hours ago

That is not true. It does not restrict anyone from applying for OPT and pursue one or more internships. Given your other comment, it is pretty obvious you are not super familiar with the details of CPT vs OPT.

chronic29521•about 2 hours ago

> That is not true. It does not restrict anyone from applying for OPT and pursue one or more internships. Given your other comment, it is pretty obvious you are not super familiar with the details of CPT vs OPT.

It's obvious that OPT will be banned next.

ipython•about 2 hours ago

We wouldn’t want someone to work in the US under the guise of a student visa, after all. It’s not like the current richest man in the world didn’t start his journey that way.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/us/elon-musk-immigration-wash...

schaefer•about 3 hours ago

As someone that went to community college...

I'm pretty sure that the kids getting admitted to Berkeley actually are the best and the brightest. we should absolutely be welcoming them.

what are we even doing here?

tgma•about 3 hours ago

How is this related to being "welcome" or not? Of course they are very welcome to study. They are simply not encouraged to circumvent their program of study and go to work under the guise of "CPT."

stickfigure•about 3 hours ago

How prevalent is that kind of abuse? Quantify it. I am sketpical.

tgma•about 3 hours ago

Not sure what you mean by "abuse" or what you are skeptical of? Please clarify what stats are you looking for?

ipython•about 2 hours ago

Elon Musk, for one. Maybe not the same program but came as a j1 student visa then promptly left to work on startups.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/us/elon-musk-immigration-wash...

Bnjoroge•about 3 hours ago

How is using CPT for a summer internship circumventing program pf study? To get CPT, the experience has to related to your degree, not just a random job. And you can only do it in over school breaks

tgma•about 3 hours ago

Reading the article it explicitly says if CPT is designed as part of your program of study that you need to complete to satisfy the degree requirements, they are fine. They just won't approve it for optional internships. That's what Optional Practical Training is explicitly intended for, Optional.

And no, to be clear, you are totally mistaken about "school break" thing. In fact, you have to be enrolled in credits to get CPT, not on a full break (this is in no way a new rule.)

culi•about 2 hours ago

Funnily enough if you go to community college in California, you can do something called the Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) that guarantees you admission into any UC except for LA and Berkeley. The UC system is required to increase the amount of in-state low-income students they accept due to agreements with the state and programs like these are crucial to that.

TAG is usually quite simple to qualify for. You just need 30 semester credits and to maintain a GPA ranging from 2.0 to 3.5 depending on the program you're applying for.

dmitrygr•about 3 hours ago

> I'm pretty sure that the kids getting admitted to Berkeley actually are the best and the brightest.

Are they?

* UC-Berkeley math prof says she has to teach fractions to calculus students because standards have fallen so far. [1] [2] [3] [4]

* "I teach calculus at Berkeley. Some of my students can’t do middle school math" [1] [2] [3] [4]

* Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google -- Zhong had a 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT's [5]

* Star California student rejected by 16 colleges, hired by Google, gets legal win in racial discrimination suit [6]

Seems like the best and the brightest are being rejected and suing over it, with receipts...

[1] https://nypost.com/2026/08/16/us-news/uc-berkeley-math-prof-...

[2] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-27/uc-math-...

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizdoestone/2026/08/24/when-str...

[4] https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/08/15/uc-berkeley-sat-te...

[5] https://abc7news.com/post/stanley-zhong-college-rejected-tee...

[6] https://nypost.com/2026/08/30/us-news/california-student-sta...

rtpg•about 3 hours ago

University objectives of making a diverse student body (an objective I basically agree with!) make this tricky and futzy (but not impossible IMO! You can always do something a bit hybrid), but I really feel like if some US university just decided to go to an entrance exam model they'd probably instantly have a cohort of students that would be _much_ easier to onboard into university materials.

Biggest problem is you'd need to make the entrance exams _actually tough_. Like "basically nobody who takes it gets an A". The objective is to rank students between each other, after all! It doesn't matter if the top scorer only has a 70% or something.

Every argument against standardized testing in this kind of thing seems to boil down to "test results are heavily correlated to socio-economic status". But... every other form of university entrance criteria process is even more correlated, right? All those extracurriculars aren't free after all.

Georgelemental•about 3 hours ago

> Biggest problem is you'd need to make the entrance exams _actually tough_. Like "basically nobody who takes it gets an A". The objective is to rank students between each other, after all! It doesn't matter if the top scorer only has a 70% or something.

Plenty of other countries already do it this way

dmitrygr•about 3 hours ago

I would support this wholeheartedly. In fact, make the exams blind. No name or info on the exam. Completely fair and level ground for all!

jazzpush2•about 2 hours ago

This is basically exclusively for the Humanities students at Cal. Majority of the STEM ones all came in with the calculus sequence finished already.

Another big issue is that many of these under-prepared students came from the same Bay Area 'under-represented' feeder schools: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2026/uc-acceptance-rate...

The sooner Cal cleans its act up, the better. College admissions IS zero-sum and it's absolutely harmful for the students rejected and those enrolled to accept unqualified candidates.

frugalmail•27 minutes ago

Calc isn't required to get into a humanities programs in UC schools

raegis•about 3 hours ago

Concerning [5], the article says he was rejected at UC Santa Barbara. Haven't checked in a while, but I believe UCSB historically accepts 40-50% of first time applicants. The schools were not using SAT scores at the time, and UC has banned race considerations in admissions for nearly 30 years. Surely there's more to this story.

somenameforme•about 2 hours ago

Most schools that say they don't consider race in admissions mean they don't use a racial quota where e.g. they require x% of the student body to be some minority or whatever. That's because such quotas have been ruled illegal. But the way admissions generally work is that your application is graded on a points system, and they get around the law by using a points modifier based on race. And that modifier can be adjusted as necessary to ensure they get exactly x% of the student body to be that minority. So it's racial quotas by proxy.

Another modifier is going to be parental income, which I think makes much more sense than race. But those two modifiers can compound to make it where something like an Asian from a high household income family needs to essentially be the next Einstein in order to be admitted over an average student who happens to be from a historically poor performing minority.

dmitrygr•about 2 hours ago

They “banned” them. This lawsuit contends they don’t actually stop using them. That's the basis of the claims. Read it

Bnjoroge•about 3 hours ago

I can make any point by cherrypicking whatever data I want.

jazzpush2•about 2 hours ago

With enough researcher degrees of freedom, you can make the data appear to support almost any reasonable story, sure. But that's not what's going on here - unless you have a pointed issue with the methodology, which if so, please state.

My guess is that you're just repeating something to dismiss something you agree with, and misunderstand the quote you're using.

dmitrygr•about 3 hours ago

Please do.

DANmode•about 3 hours ago

“Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.

Stankova — who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria — described the admissions process as “less like careful evaluation and more like chance.”

snapetom•about 3 hours ago

Coincidentally, I just checked law school rankings in CA. In my day (mid 90's), Boalt Hall was at the very top, and most kids were told don't even bother trying for it. Now it's not in the top 15 in the nation and latest USNR has it third in CA behind Stanford and UCLA.

KPGv2•about 2 hours ago

Stanford has been top three in the US for at least twenty years (the other two are Yale and Harvard), and UCLA hovered in 14–16 range for twenty years as well. The past few years, the rankings went haywire. I think their methodology changed, bc there isn't a law firm in the world that would hire a Chicago student over a Harvard student, ceteris paribus.

Boalt has kind of been the butt of a lot of jokes since I was a student decades ago. Maybe those jokes came to fruition. (A bit like Brown among the Ivies.)

locknitpicker•about 1 hour ago

> Are they?

Imagine how the kids that get rejected are performing.

mmooss•about 3 hours ago

Hmmm ... lots of NY Post stuff.

> Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google -- Zhong had a 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT's

How does that relate to Berkeley?

> Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google -- Zhong had a 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT's

What's the point here? Whatever happened with that person, there are many more Berkeley applicants who have exceptional records.

(There must be more to the story - neither citation says why he was rejected. To the degree there is discrimination, I expect it would be against borderline applicants and not exceptional ones.)

southbound•about 3 hours ago

When I did my CPT more than a decade ago in an age before the current admissions policies, I had to ensure that the place I was going to work at was a good fit for what I was studying, and there needed to be a written explanation of why it would directly benefit my studies. And it was no joke, I couldn't do an internship for a role not directly in my field of study.

Either Berkeley isn't doing things right, or this is a shakedown. International students are the biggest money-spinners for universities (to the detriment of everything else at this point, from what I hear), and ICE is going for the jugular.

cheonc720•about 3 hours ago

> International students are the biggest money-spinners for universities

That is exactly the problem.

Stanford University owns 7 private jets for “administrative use”. The fuck?

Perhaps cut the free money from international students, then universities can finally focus on producing research, or god forbid, educating students.

dahinds•about 2 hours ago

Do you have a cite for Stanford University owning any private jets?

raincom•about 3 hours ago

So, this is not about OPT, but CPT. Many from various schools have abused CPT; so, they want to put to close that loophole. Some real ones get affected by this because of others' actions.

737min•about 2 hours ago

Some comtext 36% of Berkeley students now from PRC (China), another 11% India. Big growth in last 15 years:

https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files...

m681•about 2 hours ago

Of the international students at Berkeley, 36% are from China and 11% from India. Very big difference.

beebmam•about 2 hours ago

Totally embarrassing

m681•about 2 hours ago

And at best misleading, if not outright false.

Der_Einzige•about 2 hours ago

The majority of these kids go back home after getting accused of being CCP agents and are then accused of being puppets of the west back home.

They mostly are loyal to the USA and that's why they come here.

It's colossally stupid to spit in their faces like this.

culi•about 2 hours ago

36% of international students. International students are the biggest source of profit for the UC's. They pay much much more than in-state and (in-nation?) students. UC Irvine is the most infamous of the UC's for prioritizing international students for the profit motive.

Not that I'm against international students. But I think it's misleading to parade them around to show how "diverse" your student body is. The truth is that these international students are almost all the upper crust of the various countries they come from. Not much diversity in "rich kids" around the world.

cheema33•about 3 hours ago

Cruelty is the point.

ungreased0675•about 2 hours ago

What is cruel about this?

chronic29521•about 2 hours ago

> Cruelty is the point.

Tell that to immigrants being cruel to other immigrants, even in America.

Couple of countries people are famous for this.

potentdream•about 3 hours ago

This is sad.

behnamoh•about 3 hours ago