DHS wants schools to pay $70,000 before an international graduate can start Optional Practical Training, and $30,000 for every OPT period after that. The bill lands on colleges, but the hiring gap lands on the employers who recruit from that pipeline every year.
Key Takeaways
For a decade, Optional Practical Training has been one of the quietest workhorses in early-career recruiting. An international graduate finishes a degree, a school official recommends them for work authorization, and an employer gets a year of paid work from someone it already knows can do the job, or up to three years for eligible STEM graduates. In a rule published October 8, the Department of Homeland Security proposed putting a price on that first step that most schools will not want to pay.
Under the proposed rule, as summarized by Fragomen, a school would owe $70,000 for the first OPT recommendation it makes for a student after the rule takes effect, and $30,000 for each recommendation after that. The fee follows the order of the request, not the type of OPT, so a STEM extension would cost $30,000 if it followed an earlier OPT period. Today there is no fee at all for the school recommendation, only the student's $470 or $520 work authorization filing. The money would go to the U.S. Treasury, and schools could seek a refund if the student's work permit is denied.
On paper, colleges pay. In practice, the proposal is explicit that they do not have to absorb it. HR Dive reports that DHS said schools could pass the cost on to international students, to all students, or to the employers that hire OPT workers, and that the total could reach $100,000 per student. DHS says the fee is needed to curb fraud and abuse and to protect American workers, and warned it may otherwise shut the program down entirely.
That leaves three realistic outcomes, and none of them is good for a recruiting plan. Schools absorb the fee and ration recommendations to a small number of students. Schools pass it to students, most of whom cannot write a $70,000 check after paying tuition. Or schools ask employers to cover it, turning a routine campus hire into a five-figure line item before the first paycheck. An immigration lawyer quoted by the Associated Press doubted many schools would want to pay $70,000 for a student to get OPT, while DHS itself described the program as a pipeline for cheap foreign labor.
The scale is what makes this a talent acquisition story rather than a higher-education one. According to the Institute of International Education data cited by HR Dive, about 294,000 students participated in OPT in 2024-25, more than double the roughly 120,000 a decade earlier, and nearly 1.2 million international students were enrolled in the U.S. that year. In IIE's fall 2025 survey of 828 institutions, 92% of college leaders said international students would likely choose other countries if OPT were not available.
Employers would not pay the fee directly, but they would feel the shrinkage first. Attorneys at Jackson Lewis warn of a shrinking OPT talent pipeline that makes international graduates harder to recruit and retain, and say the $30,000 charge on later periods could be particularly disruptive to the 24-month STEM extension many graduates rely on. Fragomen frames it the same way: one more barrier to hiring foreign professionals, especially early in their careers.
The proposal also stacks on top of pressure HR teams already know. OPT is often the bridge to an H-1B petition, and the $100,000 H-1B fee is still tied up in court. NAFSA chief executive Fanta Aw said in a statement that the plan creates deep uncertainty for international students, and that OPT helps fill labor shortages in high-demand STEM fields. For employers, uncertainty upstream becomes thinner candidate slates downstream.
Nothing is in force today. Comments are open from October 8 through November 9, 2026, and Jackson Lewis notes that until a final rule is published and takes effect, the current OPT program remains unchanged. DHS proposes an effective date 60 days after a final rule, the fee would not apply to OPT already approved and under way, and Fragomen expects litigation if it is finalized. That buys time, but not much: students choosing where to enroll for fall 2027 are deciding now, and the cohort an employer would hire in 2029 is being shaped by this proposal.
The fee may be revised, delayed by the courts, or never finalized. But the decision it forces is real either way: whether early-career international talent is a pipeline worth paying to protect, or one your company is prepared to replace. Talent teams that answer that question in October will be the ones still hiring those graduates in 2028.
Toolkit
If a $70,000 fee narrows the U.S. visa route, hiring graduates where they already live becomes the backup plan. This toolkit covers the onboarding and compliance groundwork that makes it workable.
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Guide
A thinner international slate puts more weight on every other early-career candidate. Structured assessment and sourcing practices that protect quality of hire when the pool shrinks.
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Guide
Deciding whether to cover an OPT fee means knowing what the role is worth on the open market. How to benchmark entry-level pay reliably before the cost comparison lands on your desk.
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