School accused of giving foreign students a back-door pathway to worker visas

An Indiana university faced allegations of being a pass-through for noncitizens seeking work visas after an investigation found nearly all of its graduate students were foreigners.

Trine University— a small accredited private university in Angola, Indiana—came under scrutiny following claims that its graduate programs offer foreign students on F-1 visas a pathway to begin off-campus employment immediately through so-called “Day 1 Curricular Practical Training.”

The allegations were detailed in a report published on X by LayoffHedge titled “The Degree Nobody Finishes: Inside the Day 1 CPT Schools,” which examined enrollment data, university disclosures and immigration regulations surrounding the programs.

The report alleged that some colleges have structured graduate programs in a way that allows foreign students to obtain work authorization immediately. LayoffHedge emphasized that the schools it examined were not “diploma mills,” noting that they hold recognized accreditation.

Curricular Practical Training (CPT) allows F-1 students to work when the employment is an integral part of a curriculum. Federal regulations generally require students to complete one full academic year before becoming eligible. However, an exception is made for graduate students whose programs require immediate participation. That exception is the basis for what is referred to as “Day 1 CPT.”

Trine University explicitly advertises an early CPT pathway, with its website saying that students enrolled in its “Experiential Learning Track” can begin internship experiences “as early as their program start date.” The university has drawn particular attention over its reporting to the government.

According to LayoffHedge’s review, Trine University is a small institution of 4,646 students, with 273 being graduate students. However, a separate institution listed as “Trine University-Regional/Non-Traditional Campuses” is reported to the Department of Education. That entity had 7,786 graduate students in fall 2023, with 7,657 identified as nonresident aliens. This means that roughly 98.3 percent of its graduate students were foreign students.

The report further found an annual graduation tuition of around $10,350 for the regional/nontraditional entity, compared with roughly $47,850 at Trine University’s primary institution. Additionally, the international graduate program was structured differently from its traditional programs. In a December 2020 announcement regarding its Phoenix Education Center, the university said classes would meet in person just once per term on a weekend, with the remainder taking place online.

The investigation suggested that the model warrants greater attention given the high concentration of foreign students, as there are concerns that the system is being used as a means for foreign students to come to the US and begin work right away.

“Trine paid roughly $16 million to a single recruiting agency that runs its offices out of Hyderabad and Warangal. The person that agency lists as its contact is the same person Trine's own press release calls its director of international graduate student recruitment,” LayoffHedge posted on X. “None of those payments appear anywhere in eleven years of Trine's audited financial statements.”

The findings have since attracted attention from officials, including Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon, who reposted the report with a monocle emoji.

Other schools have faced criticism on social media for what appeared to be an inordinate number of foreign students, including viral posts showing attendees at Texas and Georgia Tech football games.