UC Berkeley indefinitely suspends international student work authorizations | Hacker News Reader

UC Berkeley indefinitely suspends international student work authorizations

dailycal.org

105 pointscbzbc84 comments

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?

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

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.

> 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.

May be obvious to you. I don't know, but to be clear, nothing new is "banned" here. The schools are now more carefully following the existing published guidelines, rather than playing fast and loose with work authorizations like Oprah. Dropping OPT would be a rule change; this one isn't.

I didn’t mention anything about OPT? It effectively makes it near impossible because most programs dont require an internship. And I’m definitely familiar with the process

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...

(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.

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?

> 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...

“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.”

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.

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!

This isn't normal?

Not in USA.

> 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

Yeah I did the French engineering school exams, I got a looooot of nasty grades in some of the test banks.

I was in the American school system up until HS and then moved to France. The _way_ stricter grading compared to what I had in the US was very hard to get used to.

One thing that I did witness while studying for the engineering school exams (which is a whole two year affair) was seeing a lot of people who were very used to being the top of their class and getting good grades flame out, because they had already been working super hard in high school to keep their grades up.

I think there's a good chunk of "straight A students" who might struggle with the hit to their ego in that environment. But it was helpful and humbling to me.

It also really opens your eyes to the reaches of what you learn can achieve when applied intelligently. My favorite class in university, by far, was an astronomy/astrophysics type class. I think I scored around a 60%, which ended up being a 4.0 for the class. It was just brutal, but seeing what was at least possible to achieve from what we were learning was also amazing.

Speaking as a teacher it's highly unfortunate that at most schools this doesn't really fly - even with curving, because parents and kids alike expect 100% for basic understanding and application. So it's the analog of understanding akin to an assembly line worker instead of an engineer. This is especially a shame in the era of LLMs when rote regurgitation is becoming increasingly irrelevant, and higher order 'understanding' is becoming much more relevant. Though obviously the rote work is necessary to achieve that deeper understanding, but not a path by itself.

I've always been much more an application than theory guy, but we all have to adapt to technology and this is where it's at now.

I've told myself if I ever become a teacher I'll do things like make tests out of 250 or something like that, and make sure enough points go around. Ultimately I wouldn't want to punish the students, but at least give them opportunities to get the points they need to get a good grade, and then have opportunities to push themselves for the rest of the material.

(on the entrance exams.... in some of the test banks they do something quite cruel where they determine that if roughly everyone gets some question right then they just award zero points for that specific answer....)

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

Please do.

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.

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.

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.)

Lol. Maybe it was the environment I was in, then. I worked in a law office throughout high school. Half of the firm were Hastings who talked up the fortress that was Boalt Hall.

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.

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

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.

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.)

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.

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

That's my point. It's not a prerequisite for them, so they're able to get accepted with remdial math scores, making the entire university look bad.

> Are they?

Imagine how the kids that get rejected are performing.

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."

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

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

You said "They are simply not encouraged to circumvent their program of study and go to work under the guise of "CPT.""

This implies that you are familiar with the system and aware of how it's abused, so presumably you can provide some evidence.

I wasn't aware of any during my time there, but my personal experience doesn't necessarily mean it didn't/hasn't happened.

I ask because I did not use the term "abuse," as that's subjective. Circumvent was picked precisely because it was a clear run around the intent of the program, without the value judgement.

The keyword is "Day 1 CPT" if you want to learn about the abuse.

Certain colleges basically knowingly wink wink and allow incoming students to go immediately work under CPT.

Can you quantify the scale of it or not?

I know what "Day 1 CPT" means and am specifically curious about real abuse of the system at Cal.

In my opinion, it would have to be obvious and fairly extreme to take action over, because there are issues that dwarf whatever impact it might have, the top one being bureaucratic bloat. If 90% of the non-teaching/researching staff at Berkeley were replaced with CPT abusers, I think it would be a net positive.

Yes, I agree that at any of these top universities, the egregious cases are not that likely. However, I do think they still do not do proper "diligence" and were reliant on students to basically take a unit and happily handed out I-20s to go work at their desired workplace with little supervision or specificity that can defensibly supplement the program of study, thus they never really developed the machinery to truly vet individual cases. They are now being cautious so as not to accidentally lose their SEVIS permission over such a small matter. My guess is the degree programs themselves will start incorporating more formal work experience similar to Canada, as the primary or an alternative path to satisfy degree reqs. This would make a much more robust justification for the student and the international office.

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...

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

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.)

School break means between-semester breaks.

Furthermore, CPT is used for STEM internships. You cannot do internships using OPT because that requires UCSIS permissions which can take upto 4-5 months. CPT is approved completely by university.

Without STEM internships, there's almost no chance of employment after internship.

Precisely this.

> You cannot do internships using OPT because that requires UCSIS permissions which can take upto 4-5 months.

Routinely intern recruitments at Google or Facebook start as soon as October of the prior year giving ample time for that. OPT has an optional 30-day response time if you opt to pay for Premium Processing.

> Without STEM internships, there's almost no chance of employment after internship.

Oh wow, you mean F-1 temporary non-immigrant student visa will finally work as intended, to complete a program of study and not as a backdoor for labor importation? Tough.

I have no clue why you are mentioning OPT. Almost no one uses it during their school years because it makes no sense to and reduces your post-grad time. That’s what CPT is for. They’re requiring programs to have mandatory internships which most dont and probably wont require it. You obviously have to be enrolled to get CPT, you just cant use it to work full-time during the school terms.

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.

what happens if you get GPA above 3.5? ;-) /s

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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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...

Totally embarrassing

And at best misleading, if not outright false.

What is misleading?

As multiple people posted 5 hours before you asked, that's 36% and 11% of international Berkeley students, not 36% and 11% of Berkeley students. International is around 15% total.

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

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.

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.

Cruelty is the point.

What is cruel about this?

> Cruelty is the point.

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

Couple of countries people are famous for this.

This is sad.

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Colleges look at grades, scholarship organisations look at grades, and employers look at grades too. However, you don’t need to have a 4.0 to be successful. But Good Grades can show every amazing quality you have, and colleges, scholarship organizations, and employers understand that too. Your school degree does not determine your life. However, good performance can earn you a good reputation and success

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