Universities across the country are using the H-1B program to hire foreigners instead of Americans — with more than 16,000 such visas issued for the last two semesters.
While the foreign worker program is ostensibly meant to fill highly specialized roles on a temporary basis, it instead has turned into a privileged hiring initiative for colleges and universities.
To illustrate the issue, consider Purdue University, which says it must use the H-1B visa program if it wants to find someone to teach quantitative methods for $200,000 per year. The claim was deemed “implausible” by Kevin Lynn, the founder of U.S. Tech Workers and the executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy. Worse yet, the university has targeted non-Americans for hiring nearly 1,000 times in just the past few years. The Big Ten college ranks in the top 50 among universities for hiring foreign workers in the current fiscal year, beating out Northwestern University, Georgia Tech, and even Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The public university in Indiana recently posted a “notice of intent to hire H-1B,” as required by law, for an “assistant professor” in the department of quantitative methods. The job will last for one year.
It is not clear Purdue officials took any significant steps to find Americans to fill the role, despite the university’s supposed status as a hub for STEM education and innovation. There are a dozen STEM jobs currently listed by Purdue, including computer science teaching roles paying up to $145,000 per year.
Lax Requirements
One problem is there is no actual requirement the school make even a halfhearted attempt to hire domestically.
Rather, the “notice of filing” is a mere formality, according to Lynn.
Universities in particular benefit from the visa program than other employers, Lynn said. He told me that universities, including Purdue, can be exempt from limits on hiring. They also will often sponsor foreigners who are currently in the country on visas. “Roughly half of post-docs are foreigners on employment visas,” Lynn said.
But hiring so many foreign professors can create problems, especially when the content is specific to America. A business professor must have “familiarity with American laws, norms, markets, and business culture,” Lynn said. He doubts there are not enough qualified Americans to fill these roles.
The university’s quantitative methods department, housed inside the Mitch Daniels School of Business, did not respond to requests for comment.
I asked Chair Thanh Nguyen and a department assistant twice in the past two weeks about specific steps the department took to advertise this role, how many H-1B workers the department hired in the past five years, and any plans he has to increase the number of American applicants for professor jobs.
Purdue Newspaper: Trump’s H-1B Fee Could Harm Student Body
Purdue’s campus newspaper underscored how the visa system creates a pipeline, starting with students who come here, ostensibly for just a degree, and then continue to get hired, taking jobs away from Americans.
Their Sept. 2025 article highlighted the effect President Donald Trump’s proposed $100,000 fee on hiring H-1B workers would hurt foreign students — of which there are “thousands” at Purdue alone.
“As thousands of international Boilermakers graduate each year, they will be faced with increasing efforts from the White House to redirect jobs away from foreign workers,” The Exponent reported.
The campus has used H-1Bs nearly 1,000 times since fiscal year 2021, according to a student newspaper analysis.
“According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 159 H-1B visa applications from Purdue have been approved in Fiscal Year 2025, and nearly 750 between Fiscal Year 2021 and Fiscal Year 2024,” the student newspaper reported.
The problem is much deeper, even in Republican-run Indiana. Purdue has used the H-1B program almost 2,500 times since Fiscal Year 2009, according to the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services’ data hub. The biological sciences department itself has used it a whopping 158 times, beating out local tech and engineering companies.
The now-dissolved Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis also used the program nearly 2,500 times during the same time period.
Reform Proposed
There are possibilities for reform, however. State Rep. Andrew Ireland (HD-090), a Republican, is proposing legislation that would require universities and other government entities to get permission from the state before applying for H-1B visas.
Ireland often uses his X account to highlight H-1B abuses by Indiana’s universities. On Jan. 27, the legislator said Indiana should follow Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s lead and freeze the use of visas by universities and government agencies.
“Indiana should join Texas and Florida and stop importing foreigners to fill jobs that Hoosiers are qualified to do,” he said.
“America[n] jobs are for Americans.”
Matt Lamb is an associate editor for The College Fix and previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA. He lives in Indiana with his wife and two kids.
