DHS finalized a rule capping F-1 and J-1 students at four years, effective Sept. 15. San José State's own numbers — a 34% four-year graduation rate and roughly 2,500 foreign students a year — show why it squeezes the pipeline that staffs Silicon Valley.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has finalized a rule capping most international students on F-1 and J-1 visas at four years in the country, replacing the open-ended "duration of status" that has governed student visas for nearly half a century. It is a final rule, not a proposal — published in the Federal Register on July 17 (91 FR 44976, RIN 1653-AA95) with a Sept. 15 effective date and a comment period that already closed. San José State University's own numbers explain why it lands hard: over the last five years, roughly 34% of its undergraduates finished in four years, per a university spokesperson. The cap bites precisely because most students don't beat it.

Here is the part the policy language obscures. Foreign students are a budget line, not just a headcount. SJSU charges international undergraduates $20,538 in 2026-27 tuition against $9,553 for in-state undergrads, per figures the university gave San José Spotlight, which first reported the local impact. The school enrolled 2,538 foreign students last fall and 2,332 this spring; San José Spotlight estimated their tuition at close to $49 million a year. SJSU has not published a confirmed figure for how much of its budget rides on that revenue, and says only that it is "working with the California State University system to assess the impact." Treat the $49 million as a reporter's estimate, not an audited number.

The sharper stakes are downstream. The route that actually staffs the Valley is F-1 → STEM Optional Practical Training → H-1B: a foreign graduate gets a two-year OPT extension, lands at a company, then files for the H-1B lottery. "A lot of patents are issued to companies that have founders who are foreign-born," Santa Clara University economist William Sundstrom told San José Spotlight, noting nearly 70% of the region's tech workers are foreign-born. A four-year clock, cut before Ph.D. and many graduate timelines resolve, throttles the front of that pipeline — the same pipeline whose back end, the green-card backlog, this desk covered in May.

What's still unsettled: students needing more time must now file Form I-539 with USCIS and clear biometrics and background vetting, moving oversight from schools to a federal agency with its own queue; the post-graduation grace period drops from 60 days to 30; current visa holders are grandfathered only through their program end, capped at Sept. 15, 2030. The rule is classified a "major rule" under the Congressional Review Act, and the NPRM drew roughly 34,800 comments, most opposed — which is to say the litigation and the enrollment math both remain to be written.