[garden_hermit]

Generally speaking, foreign students subsidize public universities by paying full sticker price for tuition, whereas US students are either in state (paying less) or often receive scholarships and support.

Foreign students are not stealing “slots” from Americans. If anything, their tuition dollars make more slots available.

[corimaith]

Assuming funding correlates to more slots, which is not really true. The number of important professors to take mentorship from, the number of research lab slots are certainly lagging the increased funding, if increasing at all.

The money might be going into nicer buildings or administrative costs, but it's also a white elephant once the foreign funding dries up as the domestic situation improves for many internationals. After which then these universities find themselves in major trouble.

[v5v3]

In some countries foreign students are charged a higher price for a course than domestic students.

[newswasboring]

That includes USA. Most programs charge foreign students more as they don't get any state subsidies.

[potato3732842]

That's like trying to apply "the average american gets 20% of their fiber..." type nutrition information to a 500lb obese person.

It's probably true but not really meaningful in the broader context.

With the current easy money federally backed loans US university funding model the foreign students are just easy money on top of an already screaming money printer more than a noteworthy subsidy of their operations.