Colleges and universities face sharply higher costs to hire foreign talent after the administration added a $100,000 fee for many H‑1B workers. The change raises recruiting and budget questions for research universities that rely on international postdocs, faculty and technical staff to run labs and sustain grant-funded work. Higher fees will increase total compensation packages, complicate tenure-track hiring and may slow time-to-hire for key STEM and research roles. Financial officers and provosts will need to weigh whether to absorb new costs in grant budgets, reallocate operating funds, or change hiring pipelines—moves that could affect institutional research capacity and graduate training.