My prediction is this is the first step towards kicking out Chinese students, which are increasingly viewed as spies/national security risks. Students from Brazil, France, Kenya, etc will be invited back soon enough.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, this is a reasonable interpretation that matches what the universities themselves claimed:

> The universities said in their court challenge to the latest policy that “by all appearances,” the government’s attempt to force international students to study on campus had also been a political move, calculated to advance the Trump administration’s agenda to force universities to reopen their gates with in-person classes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/coronavirus-internatio...

Of course the fact that this hurts immigrants is icing on the cake to the administration, but it seems like the primary goal of this was to use international student revenue as leverage to force universities to open.

Yeah, which is contrary to elementary lockdown advises to fight the covid... Purely virtual education, for the time being, is the best solution.

(virtual, but nonetheless the student living in the same country as where the live lectures are being held, for the reasons I detailed in my other comments)