On the surface, you are right, it appears international students help cross-subsidize domestic students and I would even concede that this is true when you look at the immediate impact ceteris paribus. However, I also think you have to consider the fact that NPV of college education even at full tuition is positive. And that NPV actually declines quite a bit as you move down the quality axis which comes back to my point of displacing domestic students who now face lower NPV and lower quality education. Supply is always limited. I understand it cuts both ways but the current dynamic is very much one sided in my view.

Supply isn’t particularly limited. Schools can expand, given enough money. International students pay more than enough.

If international students disappeared, the result wouldn’t be all those spots filling with American students, it would be a bunch of spots disappearing due to lack of resources.

Education is not fundamentally different from any other product here. When China gives Boeing a couple of billion dollars for some airliners, they’re not taking airliners away from Americans.

I saw a bit of it in Orange County which has some of the best schools in CA. It was usually a two-fold scheme. You build a business hosting foreign students in a residential home and providing some ancillary services. They attend local public high school and struggle with English because of the language barrier.