No new international students at Harvard due to restrictive immigration rules

Harvard will be ok. Most students will defer until things normalize.

But for a lot of local/state schools, this is a death knell. There is only one thing they can do anymore to survive.

Lower standards of admission to enroll more domestic students and then raise tuition costs.

Well, there is another alternative. Default on debts, lay off admin and faculty and reduce number of programs.

Either way, the ripple effect of this on college towns, downstream services and average quality of education will be so high that there will be a lot of damage going around. And this is not even counting the long-term impact of lack of skilled American educated labor force or the permanent damage due to competing countries seizing the market for good.