Breaking Bellows: The proposed OPT fees (10/8/26)

Read the episode.

Breaking Bellows · By David Dysart · October 8, 2026

AI-generated illustrations. People and scenes are fictional.

The Department of Homeland Security has proposed a new school-paid OPT fee. This is a proposal. It does not impose the new charge today.¹

What OPT means

First, what does OPT mean? Optional Practical Training allows eligible international students to gain temporary work experience directly related to their major. The OPT covered by this proposal is for students in F-1 status, the academic student category.¹²

Someone participating in this OPT remains in F-1 status. They haven’t become a different kind of international student or moved onto a separate OPT visa. They have permission to undertake a particular kind of work connected to their studies.²

So yes, employers are involved, and the experience can be a paid job. But this isn’t a general employee-training course that a company signs its workforce up for. The connection starts with the student’s education and carries specific immigration requirements.²

Eligibility takes more than being an international student. Generally, the student must maintain F-1 status and have completed a full academic year of full-time study at an eligible postsecondary school. A designated school official recommends OPT, and the student applies to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for employment authorization. A job offer alone doesn’t give permission to start.¹²

Pre-completion OPT takes place before the academic program ends. Post-completion OPT follows it. Regular OPT is generally available for up to twelve months at each educational level. Time used before completion can reduce what remains afterward.¹²

Some graduates with qualifying degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics can apply for an additional twenty-four-month STEM extension. That requires more than a degree with a technical-sounding name: the field must qualify, the employer must participate in E-Verify, and the student and employer must complete a formal training plan, among other conditions.¹⁴

You may also hear about Curricular Practical Training, or C-P-T. That is a separate pathway for work that is integral to an established curriculum. It isn’t covered by this proposed OPT fee.¹³

That’s the higher education connection: the academic program, the student’s status, and the school’s responsibilities remain part of the picture even when the learning moves into a workplace.

Start with the student question

Let’s stop briefly at a fictional campus. The student and adviser in this scene are invented; this is an illustration, not a reported case.

An adult student arrives at an adviser’s desk with a headline open on a phone. The adviser pulls a chair closer. Before either of them starts calculating anything, she asks which question the student wants answered first.

The student has written three questions in a notebook. The first is, “What do I need to do today?” The adviser puts her much longer list beside it. For once, the shorter document gets to set the agenda.

That’s a useful place for us to begin, too. Someone asking about this story may need help finding the right person to review their circumstances. They may have a deadline they were already working toward. Start by listening to the question they brought.

What the fee proposal would change

Now to the proposed fees. A school certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program would pay seventy thousand dollars per F-1 student before the first covered OPT recommendation. Subsequent recommendations would cost thirty thousand dollars after the student had participated in OPT and the initial fee had been paid.¹

The proposal covers pre-completion, post-completion and STEM OPT. An employer change alone would not trigger the fee.¹

The proposed effective date would be sixty days after publication of a future final rule. The first recommendation on or after that date would carry the seventy-thousand-dollar fee if the initial fee had not been paid, even with earlier OPT participation. A STEM extension could therefore attract that initial amount.¹

Those amounts need their conditions attached whenever we repeat them. A number can travel a long way through a campus before the paragraph explaining it catches up. Don’t assume every STEM extension would fall into the lower-fee category.

A useful campus response

For staff, I’d start with the international office and the designated school officials who handle these questions. Agree on a short explanation that links to the official notice, shows when it was checked, and names the office that can help. Have the appropriate policy or legal colleague review it before it goes out.

Admissions, faculty advisers, and career staff can use that same explanation when a question reaches them. Give the student a contact and explain why that office is the right next stop. Avoid asking someone to retell their whole situation to several people.

Continue to use current official guidance and your institution’s established procedures. Check individual deadlines with the appropriate adviser. This episode explains the news; it doesn’t determine anyone’s eligibility or give a reason to pause a student’s processing on your own.

We’ll return to this story when the official record or guidance changes in a way that matters to campuses.

References

Sources checked October 8, 2026.

1. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Optional Practical Training Fees. October 2026. Notice of proposed rulemaking, DHS Docket ICEB-2026-0100; RIN 1653-AB01. Official public-inspection PDF. Background: section III.D, PDF pp. 12–15; section VII.A.2, pp. 48–49; pre-completion allowance, p. 64. Proposed fees: section V.A, pp. 36–37. Transition: section V.C, p. 39 and proposed 8 CFR 214.13(i), pp. 89–90. Page numbers count the first PDF page as page 1.

2. Jill H. Wilson, Congressional Research Service. Optional Practical Training for Foreign Students in the United States. May 30, 2025. IF12631. Opening and Background sections, used for the relationship between student status, employment authorization and academic study.

3. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Practical Training. Practical Training and CPT sections. Official guidance explaining the curricular connection.

4. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Study in the States. Form I-983 Overview. Training-plan requirements and the relationship between the qualifying STEM degree, learning objectives and employer responsibilities.