Written by Naina Singh, a grade 6 student.

Two top universities in the US, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are suing the American government.

What does the word “suing” mean?

According to the Cambridge English dictionary the definition of the word sue (which is the root word of suing) is, to take legal action against a person or organization, especially by making a legal claim for money because of some harm that they have caused you. This basically means, that a person or an organization (in this case an organization) is making a legal claim by accusing another person or organization of some kind of harm or injustice that was done to them.

What did the American government do?

The American government recently made an announcement. They said that students who are going to start an online course this fall will not get a US visa till they are actually going on campus. They also said that foreign students who are already in US cannot remain there if their universities go online-only this fall. 

Why is this a problem for these universities?

This means that universities will not get any foreign students. This is a huge problem because a big chunk of their revenue (the money they make) comes from these students. In 2019, American universities made 45 billion dollars through foreign students! Imagine the loss they would have without them.

Only MIT and Harvard are actually suing the government. So, what are the other universities doing to avoid this?

Universities including Yale, NYU (New York University), Stanford and University of Pennsylvania are offering something called a hybrid model. In this case a hybrid model means that they are doing a few in-person classes and the rest online. What this will do is that it will show the government that they are not 100% online. So, international students will be able to get a visa and come to USA.

Written by Naina Singh

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