There are really three different downsides to this.
First, the foreign students cross-subsidize the locals' education. There are large fixed costs to running a university and these students pay way above their marginal costs. So now the universities have fewer resources; hence cutting the newspaper funding etc.
Second, the foreign students increase the schools' reputations and can collaborate with the faculty. Research is a public good. We do not have a research system so that we can think of things for nerds to do; we have it to produce valuable knowledge. In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than the foreigners. That productivity led to discoveries that benefit everyone.
Third, immigration: some of the foreign students would have wound up staying. We should want these people to stay here and have families. Educated people who work hard and are ambitious enough to go overseas and stay are good for the country.
Fourth downside: there are exceptions but most of the US educated foreign students who go back home tend to have a good opinion of the US and also tend to make a good career at home. This is a very powerful form of soft power.
There are other notable exceptions. Pol Pot was educated in Paris. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese elites being educated in the US did have a big role in the conversion of China to capitalism for example.
I’m not quite sure how you can call China “capitalist”. And even if you did, Nixon opened China up before people had any real ability to study in the US (at least compared to the last few decades).
This is a flaw in HN, he made legitimate and witty comment and has been punished for that. Now, I can't prevent people from downvoting, but it really prevents lively discussion.
Maybe limit number of downvotes people can cast. I feel that this behavior is restricting normal discussion.
It's better thought of as a trade-off than a flaw, because a different type of discourse can form. There are alternative venues if you want threads of witty comments.
No one is opposed to wit, but this comment didn't explain anything about the context. I needed to Google to know what the point was. It still seems more like a snarky comment than a serious argument.
I could have just responded with some lazy remark saying "Want short witty comments? Twitter this way." but I'd be a jerk for that.
And that's not say that sarcasm etc can't actually be viewed favorably on HN, but it needs to -support the discourse-. A single counter example to something that was not itself taking an absolutist position is not meaningfully enhancing the discourse; it's just snark.
I wonder how many of these students come primarily for the subsequent job opportunities. If they were able to come for the education but not the subsequent OPT, would they still be willing to come? I've seen the tuition some of them paying like $50k/year and not sure how they can afford it unless they are hoping for big returns afterwards.
Very often, yes, they expect to return. For example Samsung was built to a large degree by Korean students returning to Korea from overseas programs, along with students from top local schools.
You just answered your own question. If the only thing they cared about was the OPT, why would they pay $50k/year to attend a well-known university, when they can instead pay a fraction of that to attend a university no one knows about, and still get the OPT.
Source? I have a different viewpoint, a lot of people have national pride, still have a better network back home, or their parents' business, so that they actually go back to work in their home countries.
I'd say it depends on the quality of life in the student's country. Those from western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Australia and any other country with similar quality of life would not mind going back, but almost everyone else would rather stay.
Generally, I'd agree, although in come cases plans just change: A foaf of mine from Japan studied in Vienna. After graduating, he decided he didn't want to permanently go back to Japan's rigid social structure. So he decided to stay in Austria. (He later married my friend's sister.)
So... How is this exactly a silver lining? Avoiding fixed costs is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. And that end (actually saving money/increasing efficiency) just receded further away. And hey, nobody actually knows exactly what is overhead, and what is valuable; if we all agreed on that, it would be much easier to cut. So this is likely to cut valuable stuff that's just not as immediately obviously valuable.
For a hacker-news friendly analogy: the risks this causes for the unis is akin to short-term financial peril in a tech firm: so what gets cut isn't what's ultimately likely to be least valuable, but what's most risky: bye, bye moonshots and general innovation.
This is not about "valuable" staff. It is very clear that there is overhead based on historical and international benchmarks and such overhead can be identified without much trouble. Over the past decade or two decades the administrative costs have exploded. The salaries paid to some university administrators in the US is just too much and their numbers are mind-boggling. Also a fair number of prestige type buildings have been build which may contribute to student life and college attractiveness but little to student eduction. Some of this excess has been justified by having to compete with other schools but these other schools were also working hard on competing on beauty and not on substance. On the substance side teaching and research staffing is running more and more on short term contracts which either demotivates or forces a focus on publishing meaningless papers.
Besides the high fixed cost the universities are faced with unprecedented open access to information via the internet. Not all what a university does can be replaced but some stuff can. A low cost competitor is taking over part of their business - and probably the most profitable one.
It is not just that Trump made entry to the US more difficult. The cost for education went up. The competition is getting stronger. And the value delivered is decreasing due to lower social mobility. Unless one is going to the very top universities the chances to move up have decreased compared with the past. This is not so say it is not worth it but relatively it is less clear and for some subjects it became very risky.
If you read the article, you will see a that a lot of professors in more artistic fields (and many such programs) are being shut down. I don't think that is what you want from a University.
I think prostoalex is hoping universities would economise on things like administrators on seven-figure salaries, expensive luxury buildings, and so on.
I've read it as low-demand programs being wound down, which in one case included a CS program that happened to rely on foreign students.
But let's say from 10 artistic programs you're down to 8 or 6. Why is it a priori a bad thing?
Schools already compete on the quality of their specific programs - one applies to Berklee for music and to Berkeley for CS, but rarely the other way around. Instead of check boxing to meet some arbitrary criteria and teach anything from Aardvark anatomy to Zulu language with questionable levels of quality, the schools can double-down on programs they do best.
Well, the Arts sure doesn't bring in any great and amazing new works, nor does it really make money. So yeah, trash it and most "liberal arts". They're not STEM, and they're a sinkhole for money....
(Karl Marx warned of this, as capitalism only sees value in what produces more value. Artistic and liberal arts value is harder to calculate, thus pointless)
I did. It comes across to me as nothing but praise for the study of liberal arts. Am I misreading it?
I know plenty a scientists who'd love to create the next game-changing thing. But philosophy, governance, debate, argument, and understanding are not aspects taught in any good regard in STEM. Or should that thing even be created?
For the record, the first part is sarcastic. Marx warned that one thing the capitalists would cut is the very tools to analyze capitalism. The justification would be that it doesn't make money. Which, is true.
Current "liberal arts", aka feminism, SJW studies, and "who wronged me today" - those are absolutist political positions that frankly belong in a trash heap. These newer classes in specific schools only teach discord and strife. It is not the language of understanding the truth, but of victimization. They do not seek equality; instead they seek their pound of flesh.
Ive seen these arguments, especially about feminism on HN come around every 2-3 weeks, and it is the same tiring talking points. There is no meeting of the minds. There is dialectic -it just one screaming over another (with -1 mods to boot). I've avoided them as per recent because there is no resolution, and nobody seems to want any sort of meaningful change.
What I am talking of liberal arts, is that of classical liberal arts of the West and the East. It is the tools of philosophy and logic, argument and debate. It is how parties may argue and debate reasonably and uncover the truth of the matter. It is how to understand how a new invention changes society; it also shows the inventor's place in that structure.
Liberal arts education is essential if our goal is to have a well-rounded, educated, ethical, and cultured citizenry.
But, of course, this would mean that the liberal arts would have to actually go back to teaching the Western canon, and not simply using their positions as educators
to repudiate Western and European art and culture at any turn, to radicalize students and spew their ideological fantasies, to engage in censorship and stoke racial tensions, and, this should go without saying, stop committing acts of physical assault, such as smashing people in the head with metal bike-locks, when they disagree with you (Eric Clanton, Tariq Khan, Eric Canin..etc).
These are just suggestions of course, I'm sure the enlightened intelligentsia will find its way.
I think you're cherry-picking what liberal arts education is all about today. Most Universities do teach Western canon and not the sensationalist things that you mention. Perhaps the latter is easier to notice because it is sensational; but most liberal arts graduates I meet have a very well rounded education and understanding of the world.
The sciences show us how to do something. Liberal arts shows us the ramifications of doing said actions.
I know plenty a scientists who'd love to create the next game-changing thing. But philosophy, governance, debate, argument, and understanding are not aspects taught in any good regard in STEM. Or should that thing even be created?
If anything, when I think of liberal arts, I think of the Greats of Rome and Greece. I remember the ancients in India, or the rulers in China. I think of the discussions reported about the Roman Senate. Or how civilizations rise and fall and why. Or of social sciences, why people do certain things as a collective? This all is indeed logic and science, but with many more degrees of freedom and lack of understanding. Liberal Arts is essential to understanding the core of a problem, and not just the numbers and symbolics that it represents.
I went to college in between deployments, (~6 years ago) with the belief that college existed primarily to teach people how to learn for themselves. After a year and half I was almost happy to be deployed again, although at the time there were a number of classes I took which I would consider quality educational experiences.
I looked at the same college a few months after that deployment, and realized I didn't want to subsidize dogmatic obedience. Since then it appears to have gone even further downhill.
Yeah, the problem is that they don't cut admin first. They cut newspapers, and sports, and bring in adjuncts who cost a lot less and are desperate for work.
Only if they aren't something that attract a crowd. I see very few colleges cutting basketball or football programs so they don't have to maintain stadiums any more.
That seems not to be the case everywhere - they might make money but not profits anyway. It seems uncertain that they actually use the money to fund education. Not to mention the fact that they basically exploit the athletes, who aren't always even given a quality education in return. Some schools make every student help subsidize the sports programs.
> That seems not to be the case everywhere - they might make money but not profits anyway.
While it's mostly true that athletic programs as a whole are not profitable, it's also true that a majority of football and men's basketball programs are profitable[1]:
> > Between 50 and 60 percent of football and men’s basketball programs have reported net generated revenues (surpluses) for each of the nine years reported, while the dollar amount has increased slightly but steadily each year. (3.6)
> It seems uncertain that they actually use the money to fund education.
They don't. They use the money to fund sports programs that aren't profitable, like women's basketball. Women's basketball, in particular, cost FBS schools (in aggregate) about $1.8 million in FY 2014 (though ice hockey isn't far behind at $1.4 million).
Note that I'm not making a judgement here: I don't think we should eliminate women's basketball. But if we're going to argue about what actually costs the school money, we should at least be honest about it.
> Not to mention the fact that they basically exploit the athletes, who aren't always even given a quality education in return.
No qualms there. The NCAA's treatment of athletes is asinine and I'm quite certain we'll view this as a black mark in the history of sports.
> a majority of football and men's basketball programs are profitable
A majority of Division I programs. Only 252 out of 674 football programs and 351 out of 1099 men's basketball programs are Division I.
Division II[1] football and men's basketball programs are universally money losers. Every single one lost money. The Division III report[2] doesn't include as much detail, but I doubt that any of them are profitable either.
Oh sure, fair point. When I think of the college sports monolith I'm typically thinking of D1 exclusively.
I don't think many sports fans would care or even notice if you got rid of D2/3 programs. It's an interesting point when people like Ben Wallace or Chris Ivory come along, but it's mostly a non-factor.
I'm not even sure the NCAA would care, honestly, other than it being a talking point for them to claim athletes are "students first". I'm guessing it's mostly the athletes themselves who would care.
Yeah the entire NCAA system is basically funded by young men playing basketball and football, a few who are objectively being cheated out of millions of dollars (because the ncaa lobbies the nfl and nba to have minimum age requirements).
> Yeah, the problem is that they don't cut admin first.
Your basic value proposition is that admin is less important than basic research and that's getting cut.
In the article, it mainly that music, swimming, newspapers, and languages get cut. It says that they had to make cutbacks in CS but don't specify what the college did exactly.
As far as I know, there is no basic research going on in music, swimming, newspapers, and languages. CS definitely basic research, but that was glossed over. Any sort of professor who could be somewhat replaced with an adjunct is not able to perform basic research.
From what I have seen, admin is pretty lean at colleges and universities. Someone has to do all the work of deciding the curriculum, the change in fees, raising funds, awarding scholarships, recruiting and paying staff, coming up with programs and so forth.
> First, the foreign students cross-subsidize the locals' education. There are large fixed costs to running a university and these students pay way above their marginal costs. So now the universities have fewer resources; hence cutting the newspaper funding etc.
Well any out-of-state student would do that not just international ones. There is a deeper problem there in that these universities perhaps simply can't afford to have 10 foreign languages or gyms or sports clubs. Using international students to keep those going seems a bit of a round-about way. Since many of those are state schools, maybe seeing why the states have cut funding to the schools is more useful.
> Second, the foreign students increase the schools' reputations and can collaborate with the faculty.
Not really. Undergraduate students are minimally involved in research. (You did read the article to sew that it talks primarily about undergraduate students, right?).
> In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than the foreigners. That productivity led to discoveries that benefit everyone.
As I mentioned, the article doesn't talk much about PhDs and is mostly focused on international students. In my own undergraduate program, international students were about average or worse than American ones. The few that I knew were struggling with English and others were "struggling" with academic honesty. I won't mention which country they are from but I think people here might figure it out. Many were in school because their wealthy parents had money to send them more than say being chosen for their academic performance.
> Third, immigration: some of the foreign students would have wound up staying.
Some would have and some do. But it's not a program geared for permanent residence. There was an option to do a short internship / co-op with that visa after graduation but that was about it.
> Educated people who work hard and are ambitious enough to go overseas and stay are good for the country.
As I said, from what I have seen in this case it is mostly students who come from wealthy families. Do we need more students from wealthy international families in US? I don't know, maybe. I would rather it be based on merit, so perhaps refocus that effort towards graduate students in certain fields or who manage to do exceptionally well in their studies.
In general it seems to me you have conflated and mixed undergraduate and graduate international student groups. For the purpose of discussion there are quite distinct in how admission, tuition, research funding and self-selection works. It seems your arguments apply more to graduate students even though the article is mostly about undergraduates. You made good points in general, but for clarity, you might want to update your comment mentioning the difference.
> There is a deeper problem there in that these universities perhaps simply can't afford to have 10 foreign languages or gyms or sports clubs.
I always found it weird that universities evolved to become sports franchises; it's at the very least orthogonal to being an institution of higher learning if not opposed to it, given that sports programs siphon money away that could be used in intellectual pursuits.
I'm a bit proud that my university does not have a (gridiron) football team; we did once but it was disbanded in the 1910s because the sport was becoming more violent.
> Well any out-of-state student would do that not just international ones. There is a deeper problem there in that these universities perhaps simply can't afford to have 10 foreign languages or gyms or sports clubs. Using international students to keep those going seems a bit of a round-about way. Since many of those are state schools, maybe seeing why the states have cut funding to the schools is more useful.
Tell me why out of state students will pay significantly higher tuition when they can get a cheaper education in their State College? And are you saying that the State University wouldn't prefer Americans in their undergraduate programs? (please don't lob some racism/conspiracy theory: University administrators are Americans, and probably prefer Americans over others) It seems like international students are the only ones willing to pay higher out of state.
> Not really. Undergraduate students are minimally involved in research. (You did read the article to sew that it talks primarily about undergraduate students, right?).
The kernel of interest in research is laid during undergraduate study. US universities are in general better at promoting research during undergrad. Most undergrad programs focus more on learning than conducting research, simply because many don't even have graduate research programs of caliber. But many US universities do.
> Some would have and some do. But it's not a program geared for permanent residence. There was an option to do a short internship / co-op with that visa after graduation but that was about it.
Its not directly. But the hope is that the brightest and hard working will stay.
> As I said, from what I have seen in this case it is mostly students who come from wealthy families. Do we need more students from wealthy international families in US? I don't know, maybe. I would rather it be based on merit, so perhaps refocus that effort towards graduate students in certain fields or who manage to do exceptionally well in their studies.
You say this as if these wealthy students have no merit. Its not easy to get into US universities, especially as an international student. You have to have merit and wealth. I don't see why Universities shouldn't prefer students with both merit and wealth?
>Tell me why out of state students will pay significantly higher tuition when they can get a cheaper education in their State College?
Because an out of state university with a "nothing special" program in a field will give an out of state student who is moderately strong in that field a better price via favorable financial aid (grants, better loans, etc) than an in-state university that has a strong program in that field.
> Tell me why out of state students will pay significantly higher tuition when they can get a cheaper education in their State College?
Because states are different? Wouldn't you say OK, NY, CA are different states with different universities, budgets, students, cultures etc. Why is it surprising that a student from Mississippi might want to go to UC Berkeley?
> And are you saying that the State University wouldn't prefer Americans in their undergraduate programs? University administrators are Americans, and probably prefer Americans over others
Well yeah international students also incur an additional administrative cost to manage. Having lots of them also means needing to hire more staff in international students services department.
> It seems like international students are the only ones willing to pay higher out of state.
It seems not. Why is it crazy to think someone might want to go to school in a different state, and you're convinced only international students would do it? If people half way across the world want to fly out and study here paying double the tuition, why wouldn't people from other US states?
> The kernel of interest in research is laid during undergraduate study.
Not sure what you mean by "kernel of interest". OP was talking about undergraduate research as one of the top reasons US is losing out to other countries and so on. The point is there is minimal undergraduate research compared to graduate. Especially at the state colleges they are talking about. Kentucky State or Oklahoma State undergrads are not driving US research forward.
> But the hope is that the brightest and hard working will stay.
Whose hope? Not being sarcastic here just wondering. Do you think it is the US government's hope, universities or students? Maybe a combination of those? At the end of the day it is not a permanent residence track. It's H1B visas, marriages and other tracks which lead to permanent residence. Getting an F-1 and J-1 won't. Quite the opposite J-1 visas used to explicitly require students return and spend some time in their home countries with the "hope" of sharing the experience.
> You say this as if these wealthy students have no merit.
I say this because the OP implied it is pure merit. Though I think they mostly muddied the waters confusing graduate and undergraduate programs. And I didn't imply it was bad, was just wondering if that's something we want, as you said maybe we do.
> You have to have merit and wealth.
Besides passing TOEFL and showing up with a full tuition check what are the merit requirements is needed. You'd probably say high school grades, but I remember just handing them a hand written note from my high school principal which I translated myself and he signed. They didn't need SAT or ACT scores even. Maybe they do now, I didn't check.
> Besides passing TOEFL and showing up with a full tuition check what are the merit requirements is needed. You'd probably say high school grades, but I remember just handing them a hand written note from my high school principal which I translated myself and he signed. They didn't need SAT or ACT scores even. Maybe they do now, I didn't check.
If this is your experience, it sounds like you are baselining your opinions on less reputable U.S. universities (and there are quite a few of them around. The U.S. has over 3000 colleges.)
In most decent universities, you absolutely cannot be admitted without the right grades. In most competitive state colleges, international students actually require better (average) grades than locals for admission because they are placed in a separate, smaller pool of applicants. In-state applicants are often given priority.
> you are baselining your opinions on less reputable U.S. universities (and there are quite a few of them around. The U.S. has over 3000 colleges.)
It was an average state college. Not sure the "less reputable" sounds right but I guess you can put it that way. And that's mostly what the article at hand is talking about anyway.
> you absolutely cannot be admitted without the right grades.
Is the Kentucky State going to call a school in Bangladesh to verify the transcript? Wealthy people who can afford to send kids to school in US with full tuition can probably find a way to "buy" a good transcript from a local school. Maybe you meant that SAT is a requirement, then yes, it thing might have changed and it is more challenging.
Fair enough, the article does mention some very mediocre colleges. I was thinking of decent colleges like Ohio State or Iowa State.
> Is the Kentucky State going to call a school in Bangladesh to verify the transcript? Wealthy people who can afford to send kids to school in US with full tuition can probably find a way to "buy" a good transcript from a local school. Maybe you meant that SAT is a requirement, then yes, it thing might have changed and it is more challenging.
Most decent colleges admit international students based on some standardized test like the SATs, IB, A-Levels or equivalent. High school transcripts are rarely acceptable due to variability in standards.
But you are right about Kentucky State. Its website states that it accepts "Official SAT/ACT OR TOEFL scores" from international students with their high school transcripts. This is utter garbage.
> Is the Kentucky State going to call a school in Bangladesh to verify the transcript? Wealthy people who can afford to send kids to school in US with full tuition can probably find a way to "buy" a good transcript from a local school. Maybe you meant that SAT is a requirement, then yes, it thing might have changed and it is more challenging.
They often do. And admission committees learn from experience: if they admit students from a school and they don't perform well, they recruit less from that school the next year. Conversely, if they have students performing well, they will continue to admit more. There is a chain of trust.
> Because states are different? Wouldn't you say OK, NY, CA are different states with different universities, budgets, students, cultures etc. Why is it surprising that a student from Mississippi might want to go to UC Berkeley?
There's only a few well known schools that attract students from all over the country. Note that we're not talking about the top 5 or even top 50. The typical example is Wright State University in Ohio. I don't think anyone from NY, CA or Texas would be interested in paying more and going to that school.
> Well yeah international students also incur an additional administrative cost to manage. Having lots of them also means needing to hire more staff in international students services department.
Look, I'm not going to argue with you for the sake of argument. Like I said before you can invent reasons. This is just so far fetched... really? Admissions officers and the International Students department is colluding to increase number of international students to increase the budget of the latter? Oh please. Gimme a break.
> It seems not. Why is it crazy to think someone might want to go to school in a different state, and you're convinced only international students would do it? If people half way across the world want to fly out and study here paying double the tuition, why wouldn't people from other US states?
Because there aren't enough US students. Why is it so hard to understand that even after so many fucking incentives, low interest loans and whatnot, many US citizens just don't want to go to college? The US has a shit ton of Universities and there is more than enough room for all students, domestic and international. And like I said before, if American students did apply, I find it hard to believe that they would not get preference over international students.
> Not sure what you mean by "kernel of interest". OP was talking about undergraduate research as one of the top reasons US is losing out to other countries and so on. The point is there is minimal undergraduate research compared to graduate. Especially at the state colleges they are talking about. Kentucky State or Oklahoma State undergrads are not driving US research forward.
Now you're conflating things. The OP was talking about research in general. Graduate research programs frequently employ undergrad researchers, to give them a taste of what research is like, in hopes that they will be interested in pursuing graduate research later. That is the "kernel of interest", and US undergraduate programs are incredibly good at accomplishing that. Many of the grad students I worked with started graduate research because they did a little research undergrad and that got them hooked. Without that taste, they might have never known.
> Whose hope? Not being sarcastic here just wondering. Do you think it is the US government's hope, universities or students? Maybe a combination of those? At the end of the day it is not a permanent residence track. It's H1B visas, marriages and other tracks which lead to permanent residence. Getting an F-1 and J-1 won't. Quite the opposite J-1 visas used to explicitly require students return and spend some time in their home countries with the "hope" of sharing the experience.
Of American society. Civilizations move forward on the back of innovation and innovation is possible only with the smartest, hard-working people living, contributing ideas to your society.
> Besides passing TOEFL and showing up with a full tuition check what are the merit requirements is needed. You'd probably say high school grades, but I remember just handing them a hand written note from my high school principal which I translated myself and he signed. They didn't need SAT or ACT scores even. Maybe they do now, I didn't check.
Again, please don't use these hand-wavy anecdotal arguments. Maybe some Universities are like that. I was rejected by basically all the undergraduate programs I applied to in the US (even after showing proof of ability to pay tuition) and was accepted only later for a Graduate Program after applying to 12 places. It. Is. Not. Easy. Its really hard and these kids who do get in, they're very smart. They also happen to have parents willing to pay. Why exactly do you want to punish them for it?
> Admissions officers and the International Students department is colluding to increase number of international students to increase the budget of the latter? Oh please. Gimme a break.
Did I say that? I thought I was agreeing with you there that universities might prefer American students in general because they _don't_ have to incur the additional admin cost. But you turned it around into universities want to get international students so they can incur the extra cost and hire more people. How does logic even make sense, do they get paid more state money if they have more admin staff?
> many US citizens just don't want to go to college? The US has a shit ton of Universities and there is more than enough room for all students, domestic and international. And like I said before, if American students did apply, I find it hard to believe that they would not get preference over international students.
Ok there aren't enough students, and universities might have to scale back.
> Now you're conflating things. The OP was talking about research in general.
Right but the article is talking about undergraduate international students and OP was talking about research setback in US in general. Yeah we can talk about general interest or kernels of interest and how some undergraduate students are involved, but that's moving the goal post. If we discuss graduate research, grants, state funds, then that's a different discussion.
> possible only with the smartest, hard-working people living, contributing ideas to your society.
Still don't see how undergraduate international students coming most likely from the wealthiest families paying full tuition to go to Kentucky State or Oklahoma State necessarily equates to a major setback in our society. There is nothing about them that's necessarily more hard working or being the smartest.
> Again, please don't use these hand-wavy anecdotal arguments. Maybe some Universities are like that. I was rejected by basically all the undergraduate programs
Ok but aren't you using the same hand-wavy anecdotal arguments? What's wrong with sharing personal experience. Thanks for sharing yours, I shared mine. You don't think that's representative that's fine. I went to college around 2000s so things might have changed since then. Also there are enough schools that everyone is going to experience something different.
> Ok there aren't enough students, and universities might have to scale back.
Why? Give me a reason why having more smart people studying at your universities, contributing to society and research is a bad idea.
> Right but the article is talking about undergraduate international students and OP was talking about research setback in US in general. Yeah we can talk about general interest or kernels of interest and how some undergraduate students are involved, but that's moving the goal post. If we discuss graduate research, grants, state funds, then that's a different discussion.
Its not moving the goal posts as much as including more relevant points in a discussion which is certainly permissible. You don't just dismiss it simply because its "another discussion". I believe I made some excellent points about how undergraduate research has an important effect on graduate research. And cutting the former significantly affects the latter.
> Still don't see how undergraduate international students coming most likely from the wealthiest families paying full tuition to go to Kentucky State or Oklahoma State necessarily equates to a major setback in our society. There is nothing about them that's necessarily more hard working or being the smartest.
Its the admission process that selects the brightest. If you don't agree that American Universities are good at selecting the best, then you're probably right. My experience has been otherwise.
> Ok but aren't you using the same hand-wavy anecdotal arguments? What's wrong with sharing personal experience. Thanks for sharing yours, I shared mine. You don't think that's representative that's fine. I went to college around 2000s so things might have changed since then. Also there are enough schools that everyone is going to experience something different.
Only responding to: "Well any out-of-state student would do that not just international ones."
International students rates are even higher than out of state for my state uni. So you would need a greater number of newly enrolled out of state students to make up for the reduced enrollments of international students. Additionally, international students have other required costs like health insurance, etc that may also generate revenue.
This is all negative for the US but our loss is the world’s gain. China’s economy will pass the US’s in the 2030’s, for example. India will rise to #3.
We should expect more R&D from the rest of the world. China may lead the world in AI and space exploration. India in drug research. Billions of people will come out of poverty.
American students may flock to India to get a better education at a fraction of the cost.
Having graduated from high school in 1989 I can assure you that people have been saying this since as long as I have been a teenager. It used to be that people were obsessed with how Japan was going to suddenly dominate the American economy with their extraordinary technological prowess.
It seems like what people really want is to encourage American kids to study science and math and they are using the boogey man stories of foreign domination and excellence to somehow play into that narrative.
I think it's a mistake to think of "countries" in this way. America has never helped most of the people in it get good educations. I don't personally want to be "dominant" in this nationalistic way. So it doesn't bother me at all. If you are interested in math, study math.
China may lead the world in AI and space exploration. India in drug research
China yes, but is there a lot of drug research coming out of India right now? Their pharma industry seems largely based around mass-producing generics.
India's approach is line with their needs: the vast majority of their population need cheaper access to common life-saving drugs that you and I take for granted: once a significantly large number of their population "levels-up" in terms of wealth, education, and health, the research will follow.
> This is all negative for the US but our loss is the world’s gain
That's fine, why shouldn't other countries do well and achieve success. There was a story about China offering a house and a huge research budget to a Chinese national who just graduated from a US school. And people were upset and kind of negative about it, but I think it is great that China can do it.
> American students may flock to India to get a better education at a fraction of the cost.
Yeah, it would be good to see more international cooperation. And it can and should come from other countries becoming centers of research and learning.
Other countries should achieve success. However, the American view, or better say the view of the powerful countries is that success equals strength and leadership. America wants to maintain that position, they need diplomacy, AI, education, weapons, agriculture... Etc. If you fall down in any of these categories to depend on another nation, that gives them a hand above you.
Its "brain drain" and no way is it colonialism. None of these students are being "made" to emigrate; in fact a sizable amount actually return to their home countries.
Regarding PhDs, grad international enrollment is declining.
Regarding the full-paying foreign undergrads, their tuition contributes towards the costs of the university that are shared. American students, especially at middle-ranking public schools, are hurt when schools lose their funding.
Regarding the "racism against Americans," there is no such race, and if there were one it would not explain research productivity. What would is the self-selection of who will go across the world to study something technical, the much better high schools in other countries, and in the mere fact that the rest of the world is a larger talent pool than the US. It is easy to think of reasons.
> Regarding PhDs, grad international enrollment is declining.
Your source on that? All the schools I’m in contact with are still as international as ever in their CS PhD departments. I’m not sure what the trends are outside of CS, but I can’t imagine they would be very different. I think you are just pulling this number out of thin air.
Research is funded quite differently from undergrad programs. Sure, fewer TAships are available, but your research funding is much more detached. DARPA and NSF aren’t going to become stingy all of a sudden.
> Regarding the "racism against Americans," there is no such race, and if there were one it would not explain research productivity.
If I claimed (without any evidence in fact) that “Indians or Chinese are less productive than Americans” I would totally be accused of racism even though both India and China are multi-ethnic. It is especially a stupid thing to say as foreign and domestic students are pretty diverse, with slackers (or dreamers) and very focused students on both sides.
> Your source on that? All the schools I’m in contact with are still as international as ever in their CS PhD departments. I’m not sure what the trends are outside of CS, but I can’t imagine they would be very different. I think you are just pulling this number out of thin air.
So you're asking for a source when your own view is based on anecdotes? Great.
Both of those state there is a slowdown in enrollment percentage (and only .9% at that), not absolute numbers. There are still more international graduate students in 2017 than in any previous year.
It's unproductive to dismiss a factual claim as racist. You can simply show data that disproves the parent's claim and implicitly confirm their racist tendencies towards Americans rather than screeching "racism".
> In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than the foreigners. That productivity led to discoveries that benefit everyone.
The original claim was an anecdote generalized to everyone. They are stereotyping millions of people based off a handful they have met.
It could be true. The reverse could be true. We don't have good data. Why assume that there are differences based on background?
The claim wasn’t factual, it was blatantly racist. How do you fight an unfactual claim with data? How would you prove that Americans were less or more productive than foreigners? These kinds of claims are not designed to be argued with data, they are simply designed to be decisive and hurtful.
Yes, it was. That is, it was a claim about a matter of fact.
> How would you prove that Americans were less or more productive than foreigners?
There's a number of possible operationalizations of productivity applicable to a Ph.D. program that are measurable and by which the issue could be addressed. Usually, the first thing to do would be to challenge the party making the dubious claim to both provide their operationalization and show data supporting the characterization.
It's quite possible that after that, the result would be that it would be fair to dismiss the claim as inadequately supported (although the mere fact that a single claim asserting a difference in performance based on nationality is inadequately supported does not, in and of itself, provide more than extremely weak evidence that the claim comes from racism.)
The party making the claim is using anecdotal evidence. They have no data. I do not think anecdotal evidence is good evidence for such a strong claim. This makes the claim an opinion and not factual. This is only my opinion.
> The party making the claim is using anecdotal evidence.
No, the party making the fact claim made a fact claim limited to a particular program they had been in, and has, as yet, neither provided evidence (or even an operationalization) for that claim not been challenged to do so.
> They have no data.
That may or may not be the case; it's perfectly fine to dismiss the claim due to lack of data, better to challenge the claimant to provide support for the claim. Calling it racism is as unsupported as the claim itself.
> I do not think anecdotal evidence is good evidence for such a strong claim.
The fact claim made was particularly limited (about productivity in one Ph.D. program—from which no further generalization was claimed), it wasn't a particularly strong claim. That said, sure, anecdotal evidence is inadequate to support it, but then, not even anecdotal evidence was provided, only the bare claim.
> This makes the claim an opinion and not factual.
A claim on a matter of fact doesn't become anything other than a fact claim because it isn't offered with adequate support.
I read it more like selectivity is higher for foreign students then for Americans, which would inevitably lead to such a skweed outcome. That said, I will agree with [citation needed].
"Americans" is now a race? How about Texans or Australians? If I say that I hate Australians because of their silly accents, am I now a racist? Race and national citizenship are very different concepts.
It’s illogical to claim you can be racist against diverse countries like the USA or Australia. Pretty sure the OP is more referring to xenophobia than racism.
Americans do not share a common culture or history. We share a political system that is at least in theoretically based on guaranteeing the freedom to participate in whatever culture you want, that isn't limited to people of a specific historical association (either by genetics or citizenship).
> the English race
While England does have a history and culture that traditionally was officially established by the king, Merriam-Webster's use in
this example can apply when referring to historic England, the term isn't really appropriate for modern England.
However, in Merriam-Webster's defense, this mildly misleading definition might be an attrempt to keep explanations simple with references young people would know. The definition that you copied was from the "RACE Defined for Kids" section of the page. Their recommended definition at the top of the page doesn't have the same issues:
1 : a breeding stock of animals
2 a : a family, tribe, people, or nation
belonging to the same stock
b : a class or kind of people unified by shared interests,
habits, or characteristics
3 a : an actually or potentially interbreeding group within a species;
also : a taxonomic category (such as a subspecies) representing
such a group
b : breed
c : a category of humankind that shares certain
distinctive physical traits
Most of these variations refer to what we now know is genetics. Isolated groujps of a species experience genetic drift (and other effects) that create genetic features unique to each group. Eventually the differences are large enough and we call them separate species (see: Darwin and the entire field of study that followed we call modern biology).
None of that applies to "Americans" as a group of people. We are famously a "melting pot" where people from very different races (again in theory) are supposed to have the freedom to "melt" together however they desire.
For a different but useful definition, from the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK:
> The Act says a "racial group" means a "group of persons defined by reference to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins."
You have to be crazy (e.g. addicted to the process of a research career) or clueless to start a PhD unless it figures your path to citizenship, so yeah most american PhD students are probably not the best and brightest assuming the talented crazies are a minority.
Eh. Also, Chinese are in it for the green card and Americans are in it because they just love the subject. What other gross generalizations can we come up with?
I don’t know a why you’re getting downvoted. I find, at least in my department, international students don’t get the same opportunities Canadians do. There’s definitely an archetype of a CS professor who does “interdisciplinary research” with a stable of international students doing software development projects for the bio and medicine departments.
This is bad news. People like Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, not to mention CEOs of Google, Microsoft and Adobe all came to the US as students. Without the immigration of the brightest on the planet, the US will, over time, lose its edge.
As other have pointed out, this is mostly about the schools losing full-tuition international students, ie.e "International students pay double the $6,445 tuition of Missouri residents" --which is insane. I mean, it's insane for in-state students to have to shell out 6.5 thousand a year for higher ed...
The international students are typically those kids of parents who are perhaps middle to upper middle class in a foreign country (JP, KR, TW, IN, CN, UK, AU, etc) who want to send their kids to an American school and get an "American" degree and go back home for a job --those who come from non-English speaking countries get the bonus/cachet of now having a degree from an English speaking country which potentially gets them an international station or at least a slightly better slot.
Haha. Not really. American salaries, standards of living are among the highest/best in the planet. Plus an abundance of economic opportunities and relatively low discrimination compared to what one may face in other developed countries.
These are the only factors which decide whether a family sends their kid to the US for higher ed or not. The degrees themselves aren't worth much at all.
Unless on course you are talking about the very elite, who have well established businesses and properties in their home countries, who then want Ivy League degrees for their kids. They won't give a fk about the average mid western universities that the article is actually talking about.
My old country gave to whoever returns home with a foreign degree up to 95% salary match from what they would have made if they stayed.
You can rack $100k USD, in a country where average yearly salary is $2k and living expenses are nil.
When you talk about 'standard of living', imagine what standard of living you'd have in USA at 50x average salary. If I'm not mistaken that would be around 1-2 million a year. Add to that free unlimited healthcare, free prescriptions glasses. No land ownership fees, no condo fees, some money to buy your way anywhere, etc.
Certainly not true for India (second largest contributor of international students, behind China [1]). By my (extremely unscientific) estimate, less than 5% of Indian students arriving in the US for higher education go back to work in India.
Your country sounds highly unusual. Are these government jobs? Talking about naivety, this certainly doesn't seem like it's true generally.
Also note that I said US offers a lot of economic opportunities not that other countries didn't. And I was talking from the perspective of a person from a developing country looking to travel to a developed country. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
I've met enough international students to know different countries have different strategies to bring the knowledge home. Some have 2x time retainer for whatever length one studied on their expense. Others have guaranteed government jobs. Mine had any general engineering/it jobs in the private sector. Where are you drawing the conclusion from that this is the exception?
I fully get that a STEM graduate has an easy life in USA, we have that anywhere. But you have to look at regular people, with average jobs. What you refer to as "developing country" most of the time offers better free healthcare that the top notch USA option that's simply out of financial reach.
Not to derail the discussion but just to illustrate. Canada just brought a law for maternity leave to be up to 18 months, paid.
You underestimate the value of an “overseas” degree in “developing” countries like China. A student who comes back to China with a US/UK degree will get preferential access to first-tier city resident permits, direct financial “housing” benefits from the city, a good job and faster career advancement and more besides.
Some of those benefits are starting to get scaled back but it’s still a big advantage.
Personal experience: My college undergrad education which is considered one of the hardest in the country was a fraction of the difficulty compared to the education friends at home went through.
What it lacked in rigor, however, it more than made up in the remarkable growth of perspectives I experienced by interacting with students from a massive spectrum of backgrounds from all over the world.
That will be another major loss for US universities, outside of the purely financial side.
Those good universities have caps and very tough entry exams. People who go to Midwestern schools are not typically your elite students --but rather students whose parents thought it would be a good investment in career to send their kids to study a couple years in the US.
Ok, you seem to be missing this factor in all of your arguments.
The currencies of all the countries you mentioned trade very unfavorably (maybe not the right word) with respect to the USD. So even if the cost of a higher ed degree seems like a lot to US locals, that cost is a few orders of magnitude higher from the perspective of a family considering this investment for their ward.
The only way this degree is worth the money, even after the substantial scholarship/assistance that US schools used to offer, is if you got a job that pays you is US Dollars. If at the end you don't get such a job, then the degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
A masters degree used to cost about 20-30 thousand dollars in total if you got the aforementioned scholarships/assistance. Then once you landed a tech job you'd have made up your original investment within a year if you lived frugally, which most international students tend to anyway.
After that you could save up your money, which would be a substantial amount once exchanged for the local currency and return. This is unlikely.
Because most would choose to stay and climb higher on their career ladder and provide a more luxurious standard of living for their families.
This is the whole point of going through the university system, not the degree.
You may have a valid point --I will not contest that. However, what you say there was not the experience related to me by international students. Maybe I knew atypical international students. As I understood it, for the most cases, a degree from here afforded them better chances back home at some BIG CO., given they were unable to attend elite home country Uni (National Uni of xx]
>a degree from here afforded them better chances back home at some BIG CO
Again, you don't need the foreign degree if the BIG CO is hiring locally anyway. Sure it makes you stand out, but your net gain is very little compared to someone who got educated locally as well.
This is true, but your in with a foreign degree is different. For china in high tech, returnees (sea turtles, 海龟) are very much in demand and will command US-like salaries (for the same reason, China attracts Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean tech workers, they pay very well in comparison to other Asian countries). This applies to Big Co as well (or at least the big co I worked for in Beijing).
Sure, having a degree from a prestigious US school is a big advantage both here and in China. OPs point, I think, was that when it comes time to cash in that advantage, you will probably get more dollar-equivelents for it here than you would in China.
Of course, there are other considerations besides pay... but if you are trying to maximize pay, beating Silicon Valley or New York takes some doing.
U overstated it vastly...In China, UK degrees got so inflated, many of which being one year master, that they are pretty useless now.Oversea working experience is still valued
This is driven by ex-poly degree mills cashing in. If you’re studying in the UK it’s Russell Group is still prestigious for the right reasons. Otherwise the value is questionable.
Even that is changing. I know of a masters course in a UK Russell group uni where Chinese students outnumber any other group including locals. The result of this is terrible, terrible English skills and huge pressure from the "sales" department to give better grades to keep that sweet Chinese money flowing. Essays written in broken English that suddenly and suspiciously transition into perfect prose are common and no longer punished. When one of the students was asked why they picked that course at that uni, they said it was because the entry requirements were easiest and the level of English required was low.
Now, obviously, this course at this uni is clearly going to crash and burn at some point, having used up all good will pandering to rich Chinese students. The problem is that this is an industry race to the bottom. Sure, the main stem subjects at Cambridge or Manchester are in good shape, but all the fringe subjects are going to shit, especially the one year masters courses.
I can't name the specific course or university as I was told this in confidence by a faculty member, so believe what you will, but the race to the bottom is happening and is causing immense harm to UK institutions at all levels, not just the ex-poly degree mills.
Yes I though about doing a masters in cyber but it would only be worth it if I did it at Oxbridge or better Cranfield though id have needed a sponsor for that one :-)
Obviously depends on WHICH schools you attend. Even in case of UK, if you went to Oxford/Cambridge, people would still recognize it. However, studying in some random UK/US schools won't bring you too much benefits as you might think.
> Haha. Not really. American salaries, standards of living are among the highest/best in the planet. Plus an abundance of economic opportunities and relatively low discrimination compared to what one may face in other developed countries.
"Let me fix all of these points for you!" - Donald Trump
If the degrees didn't matter, then they would not send their kids here in the first place.
Most of the folks I ran into liked America but loved their countries of origin and looked forward to getting a job and doing well. I was not talking elite students (which is different from students at elite unis who can be a mixed bag)
Obviously you don't stop loving your home country just because you chose to immigrate. Unless your home country is some hellish warzone which China isn't.
That still doesn't mean you wouldn't rather settle in the US when you went through all the trouble to get educated there, in most cases.
There is absolutely no shortage of excellent universities in China.
The degrees open doors to high-skilled visa programs. Same reason many of my international coworkers have Masters degrees in CS - it massively increases the success rate at getting official permission to work in the US, even if employers themselves are indifferent to them.
I know lots of international students and the vast majority would like to get a job here. In fact, by and large most of the people I knew who returned to their home countries did so because they didn't succeed in finding a visa-sponsored job here.
> The international students are typically those kids of parents who are perhaps middle to upper middle class in a foreign country (JP, KR, TW, IN, CN, UK, AU, etc) who want to send their kids to an American school and get an "American" degree and go back home for a job
Source? Most of the international students I went to school with are still here, working.
I don't have stats but given that in order to stay after an F-1 you need to have job lined up and getting a job as an F-1 is not easy and in addition seeing the vast majority of F-1 students I was acquainted with in UNI went back home after graduation, I would have to suggest the great majority do go back home, generally speaking.
There's a selection effect, but I think that everyone who's worked in Silicon Valley knows plenty of people who stayed on F-1 visas. So there's an anecdote that's the reverse of yours.
Yes but then you're talking STEM and stem may be about 30% of int'l students. Most int'l students are not STEM. I also knew international students in STEM and also most of them came here for a couple of semesters and went back home. Additionally we're talking state schools, many in the Midwest --places Silicon Valley does not often go to the well.
Most of the ones I did are still here also. But the students coming to the USA in the last few years paying full tuition studying in non-STEM areas have mostly gone back home. My wife’s cousin, for example, went back to China after getting a master’s degree in accounting from a school in Philadelphia. (I guess it is still different for CS majors, as they can easily get jobs in the states)
I'm not sure about the other countries you mentioned, but Indian students cannot repay a dollar loan in rupees. The currency conversion is just not favourable and that is why Indian students tend to stay longer in the states trying to repay their loan.
Let me ask you: do you think lesser funding will make the universities admit more international students that pay less tuition? I, for one, don't see that happening. Especially in state schools.
There is a market to provide good education. Some students have the merit and the means to pay for it, others don't have the means but have merit. It makes 0 sense to deny those that are able to pay just because they can.
Sergey Brin went to Stanford. Musk went to UPenn and Stanford. Picchai went to Wharton and the University of Chicago. Narayan went to UC Berkeley. Only Brin and Musk came as undergrads and only Nadella originated at a so-so school: Wisconsin-Milwaukee (he made his way to an MBA at Chicago, too).
By and large the article is not talking about those people. Undergrads are where schools make their money (lots of graduate students are funded anyway). Almost none of these people would have been affected. It's hard to overestimate how useful and desirable the top schools are.
When students from Akron are running any of those companies (a school the article talks about), then we can worry about losing out on top talent. I think the way US society is so divided based on if you went to a top college or not is just as problematic.
This is also an issue at Stanford, UPenn and so on. But as you probably know, those schools will never in a million years go candid with a reporter about it (due to prestige and other issues).
> This is also an issue at Stanford, UPenn and so on.
Stanford has an endowment of 22.2 billion. UPenn has one of 12.2 billion.
The University of Missouri school system has an endowment of 1.2 billion spread over 4 campuses.
I doubt that Stanford and UPenn would feel the pinch over the next century. Even the income off the interest of the endowment would probably suffice for campus upkeep and professors' salaries.
Missouri's timeframe is drastically shorter, as they have four times the physical facilities to take care of and ~4 times the professor salaries.
Also, who would be easier to find grants from either the public or private sectors? Stanford professors with industry contacts, Ivy League professors with that cachet, or somebody from a regional public school?
Probably the opposite. American students with options are deliberately avoiding the fields the foreign students crowd because of the wage and working conditions suppression the added competition produces. Deliberately discouraging the huge numbers of foreign students will help better cultivate greater American talent.
A talent pool of 320 million people is plenty. We don't need to scour the globe.
I am yet to meet a single American who didn’t have access to college because of an international student. High tuition and fees are always the number one culprit.
I'm white and have a native accent, but in my 2 short years of grad school I had four (!) instances of someone responding with shock at learning that I was a US citizen. One postsdoc even asked flat out what the hell I was doing in grad school if I wasn't working towards a green card.
My engineering advisor stressed that, despite the fact I'm a woman, it's critical the university does all that it can to keep me in the program because it was so bloated with international students.
Come to Washington State. The University of Washington's preference to international students over in-state has become so lopsided that the state legislature has been threatening to cut off funding and force the school to change its name. Most of my in-state friends were denied admission into their majors during undergrad.
I don't know how things work in Washington, but the last article I read on California state schools (where you hear similar complaints) was that the international students were actually funding more in-state students with their higher tuitions, since the state itself wasn't funding the schools enough. So, lots of international students yes, but that also meant the school could afford to host more in-state students than if you got rid of the international students.
"There are 3,003 international students enrolled in degree programs at MIT—430 undergraduates (10%) and 2,876 graduate students (43%)—for the current academic year."
Really? First school I googled is 3k students.
"High tuition and fees are always the number one culprit."
No. US students attend IF they get in. This is why we are in a student loan crisis. There is no lack of money backed by US guaranteed college loans.
the idea being that if you are accepted, you can get a loan to go to school. A loan that you can't discharge in bankruptcy. A loan that can cause problems later on, if you can't get a job in a high paying field.
Or, at least, I think that's what the post you are replying to was getting at.
Another view is that the "student loan crisis" is a much bigger deal for people who take out loans for colleges that are easier to get into, colleges that have lower graduation rates and that don't have the same pipeline into higher paying jobs.
Most of the elite schools have 90+% graduation rates, and if you graduate from one, you have a pretty decent crack at making good money (and thus paying off your loan without too much trouble.)
The idea here being that the elite schools are what colleges promise to be (a path up the socioeconomic ladder) but they are extremely selective (I could totally pay, for example, but they wouldn't let me in; not without me taking two years off to go to community college first. My high school grades were terrible.) - many of the less prestegious schools don't have such high success rates. Community and state schools have graduation rates that are half what the elite schools have. San Jose State, a really pretty good 'state school' has a graduation rate around 50% (Of course, San Jose State is also pretty cheap) University of the pacific, a mid range (expensive) private school in Stockton has a 60% graduation rate.
I personally feel that rating schools based on their graduation rates is super problematic; I mean, an elite school isn't going to 'take a chance' on a student who might not tough it out just because they take a reputational hit if the kid swings and misses. But it does make sense from a student loan perspective; if someone is accepted to Stanford, chances are they will graduate, and chances are, the student loans incurred won't be a huge burden, due to the opportunities available. - But a lot of this is simply that you aren't accepted to Stanford unless you are the sort of person who has a lot of opportunity. Maintaining these high graduation rates means that students who are less likely to succeed are not given a chance to try; Because a high graduation rate is part of what makes an elite school, and because high graduation rates generally mean an input filter that filters for people who would have succeeded anyhow, elite schools are not good ways for people who don't have opportunity to gain opportunity.
You may wish to look at recent performance of different countries in academic competitions like International Math Olympiad and International Physics Olympiad for some objective metrics:
Edit for the last sentence of my comment above (which is not factually accurate, although the point stands):
The US usually ranks well but often comes behind China, Russia, or less well-known countries like Vietnam.
Top talent are born all over the world. With global education becoming more decent esp in developing nations, these talented people can flourish and become competitive with those born in developed countries. 7+ billion surely include many more top talent than 300+ million.
I would highly recommend to Indian students not to study in the US going forward. At least until the generally hostile attitude towards immigrants and meaningful reforms in GC attainment is done. If you plan to lay down your roots in America after school, it will simply not happen in the current climate. Go study in Canada, Australia, UK, and India and contribute to those societies
I thought of applying for Phd(Biology) in US because it has graduate school, there is one year course work then Phd. In most of the other countries, you have to select lab and decide early on which project you have to work on. There is no flexibility if you don't like the project.
Second the quality of education in US is better I guess.
Apart from that being fraud (marriage for the sole purpose of citizenship), getting married is not the top priority for most at that age.
Also, as part of the F-1 visa requirement they're required to demonstrate homeland ties that indicate there is a high chance they'll return after completing the course.
Not that easy. Most first-gen people I know are absolutely against marrying anyone who isn't a permanent resident, basically because of advice like yours.
Indian/Chinese men are much less desired than whites and sometimes blacks and latinos in the US dating market. Marrying an American is probably harder than alternative approaches, at least for males from these countries.
Even my old community college stuffed itself on mediocre kids from overseas paying 3x market rate, but god their parents were probably really stoked to see them be someone else's problem.
Universities need to cull their bureaucracies and stop wasting their time, money and effort with their spin-out accelerator programs. Research, teach and keep the roof patched. Problem is, they will probably double down on out of state tuition and patent grabs.
> International students pay double the [...] tuition of [in-state] residents
> Nationwide, the number of new foreign students declined an average of 7 percent this past fall
I mean, perhaps Trump can be blamed for some of it, but maybe these schools might consider lowering tuition a little to become more attractive to foreign students?
Seems right to me, given the job prospects for someone whose talent is speaking two languages. Do you think the market for Italian / English specialists is super hot?
Leaving everything to be decided by market factors definitely has it's flaws. There should be room for authorities\patrons to intervene and prevent a certain skill set from being wiped out because it doesn't make business sense to preserve them.
It's not being "wiped out", it's being scaled down to sustainable levels.
If "the authorities" protect price levels for every job that is in a larger supply than demand, that money goes straight out of the pockets of the people who perform jobs that are in demand, i.e. the people performing the tasks that are needed the most by all the other people.
You have a less efficient economy as a result, which makes people poorer on the average.
Sure, not everything should be left to market forces, but there should usually be a reason to interfere with market forces—what reason do you propose for this case? Italian-English bilingualism is not in the least a rare skill that needs to be prevented from being wiped out.
I would argue the primary qualification of teaching Italian is knowing Italian, but yes, many other skills are involved. Every job that exists requires a multitude of skills, but there is usually a primary skill. I would disagree that I was being “reflexively dismissive” and given the following commentary and upvotes, would appear a majority agree than disagree. But I appreciate your opinion.
Reflexively dismissive comments often get lots of upvotes, especially when the dismissal expresses a common prejudice. That is a weakness of the upvoting system, not evidence of goodness in a comment.
True for Good Schools. It is a great privilege to get into Ivys and top US institutions. Those Midwest public schools in the article don't really have a reputation for themselves.
Are you saying they don't need to have a dean in order for the school to function?
That might be true but, assuming it's not true, the best they could do to reduce the cost of deans would be to reduce the dean's salary by half. And laying off 2 or 3 faculty from departments that are not in high demand will lead to a much higher cost savings than half of a dean's salary. Removing a whole out-of-demand department even moreso.
Not just that but those same students want GTA positions. To fund those positions the universities are increasing fees and no-credit courses on students.
This can be largely explained by the drop in birth rates in China associated with the one child policy. The number of college-aged Chinese in 2020 will be roughly half what it was a decade before[1]. People have seen this coming for years. The administrators blaming this on politics are most likely scapegoating for their poor planning.
> The administrators blaming this on politics are most likely scapegoating for their poor planning.
Couple of people I know in India right now are looking at going to Canada, Aus or NZ because they are uncertain what is going on under Trump. 5 to 10 years back almost everyone in my friend circle in India wanted to go to the US.
Well one might think that it would be beneficial for Americans if there is less immigration but you never know if US corporations might outsource more for to save costs.
If this was the case, it would be a gradual decline, instead of a dramatic decrease in one year. Also, anecdotally, none of my family members want to study in the US anymore.
How gradual would it have to be for you to find this plausible? The prior NYT article referenced in this work mentions that first-time international student fell 3% from 2016. Those were numbers collected prior to the election, mind you. And a 50% change in the largest cohort of international students over only 10 years is going to make for a pretty big impact. Especially considering that these middling American schools are seen as alternatives to better domestic choices like Tsinghua. If the schools being discussed here were low on the priority list of potential students, the change would be even more exaggerated.
Imagine the hypothetical where there were 2 schools, each of which could educate 50 students per year and where all students prefer school 1 to school 2. If the population drops from 100 to 80, school 2 would see a 40% decrease in enrollment, even though the general population only dropped 20%. Now if school 1 is in China and school 2 is in the US...
Yeah, isn't that the general attitude in China that a US degree is not as valuable as it used to be? That should be contributing to the observed decline as well.
Losing international students is bad, but the cuts they claim are hardly draconian. Given the current environment (high change, bloated costs, online education) we should expect massive changes at non-flagship public schools. Should local students working full time pay to subsidize a money losing swim team? (Independent of internationals)
Apparently I'm the only one who is happy about this. I went through undergrad/grad school just as the explosion of foreign students occurred. Don't get me wrong, I'm open minded and liberal but I saw class rooms go from a dozen English speaking students with close connections to the professor to rooms stuffed beyond the fire code specifications of 50+ students who I couldn't even communicate with, not to mention the precipitous fall in education quality associated with this transition. Foreign money and skill is nice but I saw top tier programs go to shit to cram in a bunch of high paying mediocre foreign students. Domestic students deserve access to high quality education, and I personally saw major US programs fail at that.
This is also due to Obama era scholarships/money provided to refugee students aren't done by the Trump administration anymore. The universities were indirectly subsidized by the US government and aren't done so anymore.
Attack universities by discouraging foreign students. Cut federal funding for research. Encourage political attacks on universities. The most damaging will be not forgiving student loans from people who went to scam universities, like Trump university.
What Trump and others don’t recognize is that the American university system is a distributed system of factories that manufacture knowledge, innovation and the future.
Just look at self driving cars. Much of the tech and the talent came from various universities.
What the current White House administration is doing right now is akin to the short-term-gain-focused changes one would do in a company to please investors who want to short:
* Remove or shrink employee (citizens) benefits
* Stop investing on R&D (education), just ride on what you currently have
* Alienate potential customer base and partners (other nations)
* Drive away top performing employees (citizens, entrepreneurs)
* Make sure your company is not attractive to new hires (alienate immigrants)
* Increase long term debt by giving bonuses to already rich people (tax breaks to millionaires)
This is going to come back to bite the country back in a decade or so, and it. Is. Not. Going. To. Be. Pretty.
>> Trump and others don’t recognize is that the American university system is a distributed system of factories that manufacture knowledge, innovation and the future.
There is another side to this. And that is that the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate.
It is a bad thing for innovation when there are fewer smart people immigrating into the U.S. However, when you have a system of institutions that adopt adversarial political positions toward a large chunk of the electorate, you should expect that at some point you will end up in a situation where the electorate elects leaders who work, to some degree, against what the winning side of the voting public regard as powerful institutions firmly in the hands of political opponents.
There is not, unfortunately, an easy solution to the adversarial relationship between academia and half of America. The shift toward a mono-cultural academia (from a political standpoint) has occurred over decades; the left is now firmly entrenched in American universities and unlikely to relinquish its position any time soon.
We can't ban politics from universities either; you will never get politics out of any organization in which humans are involved. We are distinctly political animals.
So perhaps the focus should be on returning academia to a more politically balanced setup... that we might no longer end up in scenarios like today, where half the voting public views academia as a shining part of the leadership of progressive society, and the other half views it as a once-great former pride of our country, sadly fallen and increasingly adversarial. So long as the universities remain a bastion of the American left and an enemy of the American right, they will continue to feast during the years in which the left holds power, and continue to starve during the years when it does not.
Disclaimer: I'm not American. But my view is that the American right has placed itself outside the Overton window of anyone with a higher education.
For example, the President is a climate change denier. How do you expect those views to be represented in universities when they fly in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence?
In most countries, this problem doesn't exist because parties with ideas equivalent to the GOP don't exist or are marginal.
> For example, the President is a climate change denier. How do you expect those views to be represented in universities when they fly in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence?
That scientific evidence is created, studied and reviewed by people who self-select to study it and are very much part of the overwhelming liberal bias in academia.
That's not to say the evidence isn't valid--but this is kind of a "chicken and egg" situation. If you already distrust academia, you are less likely to unconditionally accept that groupthink and bias could have no possible impact on the conclusions. You can't personally measure changes in climate without implicitly trusting the measurements and adjustments of these institutions, so it's tougher to accept the need for dramatic changes in policy.
Put differently: If science in academia had more conservative thinkers, the party's position might change, or at least soften over time. Or it's even possible the science could be made better by having more diverse viewpoints in the fields.
Climate change isn't a very good example. Individuals who subscribe to anthropogenic global warming and individuals who are skeptical of it have equal levels of scientific comprehension. [1]
It's more accurate to note that either side of the political divide in the United States has its share of unscientific beliefs. On the right, you have things like creationism and anti-vaxxers. On the left, you have things like gender theory and anti-GMO. Dismissing either side as rubes because of deeply held (if unscientific) ideologies doesn't help bridge the divide any.
>> In most countries, this problem doesn't exist because parties with ideas equivalent to the GOP don't exist or are marginal.
As an American who has not lived in or visited America for quite some time, I agree there is typically more uniformity in most intranational political ideologies worldwide. Though I would not agree "most countries" don't have parties similar to America's GOP.
I think it'd be more accurate to say most Western European and Western European-descent countries do not have parties like America's GOP. Meanwhile, most non-Western European or non-Western European-descent countries do not have parties like America's Democrat Party.
For example, every major political party in Asia and Africa, with very few exceptions, pursues an ethnonationalist agenda. This is more akin to the modern American GOP than the modern American Democrat Party. On the other hand, in Western Europe, ethnonationalist parties tend to be not only out of favor, but illegal.
America is a rather strange country politically in that regard. Half of it is more like Western Europe. The other half is more like the rest of the world. In that sense, I suppose it is a bit like if you created a country made up half of England and half of China. The result would be a type of tumult similar to that of the U.S. (if a bit more extreme).
The right and left are not equivalent. While anti-GMO may be a personal preference for many hipsters, its most certainly not the defining agenda of the left. Also the left seem to be much more willing to change their beliefs in the face of scientific evidence, whereas the Right is more theology, faith and other such nonsense. So don't say they're equivalent, because they simply aren't.
Most of those who think highly of Universities have been educated at Universities. And they don't believe in it because they have all had a positive experience: that is statistically impossible. But they are aware of what it is and what it isn't.
The divide isn't half and half as you put it. Rural areas wield a lot more political power nationally simply because of the way our system is structured. The half that is on the right is old and white. In the coming decades, they will cease to exist (apologies for sounding morbid, I'm just stating facts) and their political influence will reduce dramatically.
>"The half that is on the right is old and white. In the comings decades, they will cease to exist (apologies for sounding morbid, I'm just stating facts) and their political influence will reduce dramatically."
This is precisely why Trump got elected: to stop large scale demographic manipulation on the part of the left and intelligentsia. If he doesn't solve that for the right, there won't be a second term. For him or for Republicans.
And to quote another anti-Trump commenter here: "That. Would.Be.Bad."
> This is precisely why Trump got elected: to stop large scale demographic manipulation on the part of the left and intelligentsia. If he doesn't solve that for the right, there won't be a second term. For him or for Republicans.
Short of financial incentives for promoting more white-only couples (which is probably unconstitutional) to have more children, this doesn't seem like its possible. There is no "demographic manipulation" as you say. The fertility of white women has been constantly reducing and besides there are a lot more mixed race children and children of other races. This is a consequence of prosperity: as society becomes more prosperous, fertility falls. Without the influx of immigrants, the labor force would greatly shrink and economy would probably contract.
The demographic change cannot be stopped. Even if you deport all the "illegals", it won't suddenly cause more whites to be born.
Yeah but then why advocate for low skilled immigrants from low-IQ population pools? And why not immigrants from similar cultures? Why not select for only intelligent immigrants? There are plenty of struggling and war torn nations that are predominantly white. And plenty of educated and intelligent people of all races that I guarantee you most so called "white/GOP racists" won't mind importing, intermingling with or increasing the population of.
The demographic change can be stopped. You simply need to stop protecting, defending, subsidizing and encouraging the unproductive and uncontrolled breeding of low-quality individuals. They bring nothing but suffering to those that they bring into this life.
What is "large-scale demographic manipulation on the part of the left and intelligentsia"?
It sounds like you are trying to say people voted Republican to stop white people from becoming a minority in America? That cannot be achieved in 4 or even 8 years. And even if it could, why would the failure of that agenda be bad?
It may not have been a conscious thing. But I'm firmly of the opinion that this may have been the last election where Republicans were given the chance to reverse things.
Daca, illegal immigrants voting, chain migration, refugees voting, PC control of public debate, leftist biased media and reporting, another 4 rounds of liberals leaving college indoctrinated into leftism, etc. All these things have been steadily causing the deck to be stacked against the right. Without any of it being reversed or stopped, the next election would have been a solid win to Democrats.
Another item I forgot to add to the list: SJW and activist control over highschool and primary schools. I'd argue that as brainwashing the next generation into specific voting patterns.
> Daca, illegal immigrants voting, chain migration, refugees voting, PC control of public debate, leftist biased media and reporting, another 4 rounds of liberals leaving college indoctrinated into leftism
I wouldn't say "indoctrinated into leftism" as much as it's outright facing malicious rejection and animus from the right. Latin-American immigrants are a natural fit for the religious right: they are more religious and socially conservative than average, the only problem is that they are brown. The GOP had a narrow window to pivot, but unfortunately, that was around the time the tea-party wing was ascendant, leaving no room for moderates.
It has always been surprising for me how much overt racism is still there in the GOP (I mean, not surprising after Bannon and Trump's election). Latin-Americans are (generally speaking) conservative, Christian, Pro-life etc. But since they're brown and speak Spanish, they were alienated by the GOP?
They may be all those things, but those things are overridden by something that the Democrats offer.
And they're voting in exactly the same way that every other group does: For their own benefit. In the case of immigrants, they vote in the interests of themselves. I.e. "brown people" as you label them.
I'd like to say I'm surprised at the double standard but I'm not. It's just another case of acceptible reverse racism against whites and western cultures which are conveniently clumped together as "white".
The "unsolvable" problem politically here is the United States' university's international student population. This contradicts the current nativism streak in Trump style politics. Yet you cannot have the best universities in the world without a focus for attracting global talent.
Apart from that, I've always been of the opinion that the reports of Excessive Campus Liberalism in conservative populist media have been greatly exaggerated. I'm sure there are some grains of truth for certain school fields and certain colleges, but from what I saw when I went to college, strong politics one way or another wasn't terribly true for the vast majority. Certainly at the very least most in the engineering fields were too focused on studying to pay huge amounts of attention to political concerns. :)
The overall distrust of colleges among Republicans is very new, only in the last few years (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/11/dramatic-shif...). I have no idea how this new attitude will play out, especially considering that one half of the Republican coalition is the business wing of the party, which tends to overall be a college educated workforce. Education still plays a big role in United States social status and career, and a strongly educated workforce and strong research facilities (largely oriented around colleges at this time) is one of the attractive elements of this nation (to businesses, even!). That so many of one party feel that college is only about "adversarial political positions" is a bad sign to me.
> There is another side to this. And that is that the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate.
Do you have any evidence for that? What is the agenda of the American university system? What is the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate?
If a lot of academics think Donald Trump is dumb as fuck, it does not necessarily mean that there is a problem in academia. It could also be so that Donald Trump is dumb as fuck.
> the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate.
The ideological conservative movement repeats this claim, but it doesn't make it so. Can you substantiate it? Can you define what it means?
Like any ideological movement, there can be no debate or discussion; anyone who fails to drink the kool-ade and promote the ideology must be silenced. It can't be that the facts simply are inconvenient to the ideology, that reasonable people can disagree, or that a member of the movement could learn something. The ideology is correct and those who don't accept it are apostates.
They'd done that with climate scientists, journalists, the entire State Department, universities, and more.
I absolutely believe that this is recognized, and is considered by some to be the precise point of this assault. A poorly-educated workforce drives down wages, speeds automation of low-skill jobs, decreases social mobility, and makes for a more predictable and easily-manipulated electorate. The few remaining high-skill, high-pay jobs can be filled by those who can afford to foot the entire bill for 12-18 years of private education.
It is not seen as a "ruination" of the economy, merely a continuation of existing policies designed to "reshape" the economy into a less-equitable form. It only seems like ruin to the majority on the wrong side of those changes. I believe someone else on HN referred to these changes are "corporate feudalism", which I think is apt.
Schools like Cal are still offering too many slots to foreign students despite being chartered to serve the families of taxpayers who provide their funding.
The same issue will eventually plague Canadian schools...foreign students will simply pay more directly for tuition even though taxpayers are still the core source of funds.
For private universities, no one should care..they should select students from wherever they like. But State schools should exist to serve their residents.
Like many things, it's not that quite simple. I would argue that in some ways the charter between the state and the university was broken when the state of California drastically cut funding during the Great Recession and didn't restore it once the budget stabilized.
How can California residents consider it a state resource when its supported primarily by out-of-state/international students paying sticker price and international corporations?
In 1977, education was 27% of the California State budget. In 2008, education was 37% of the California State budget, it is now 42%. And the absolute size of the budget itself is rising. So in fact funding is increasing as a percentage of the budget and in absolute scales.
The only real recent drop was 2007-2008. There is plenty of money available to run UC prudently as a resource for residents...indeed, more than ever before.
Downvote all you want, these are UCs own numbers so they are true regardless of your opinion or angst.
> In 1977, education was 27% of the California State budget. In 2008, education was 37% of the California State budget, it is now 42%. And the absolute size of the budget itself is rising. So in fact funding is increasing as a percentage of the budget and in absolute scales.
Yes, education funding has gone up because of a Constitutional mandate to allocate a certain share of increases to K-14 education; the UC and CSU systems have not been beneficiaries of the increase, each has a much smaller share of the state budget than it used to, and smaller state support per student than it used to.
even if they just get rid of Prop 13 on rentals and passing the benefit to children- at least a future generation may have a chance to affordability in CA... "Thanks to a state proposition that took effect in 1986, known as the "parent-child reassessment exclusion," a child can inherit a parent's principal residence, whether modest or worth millions, without triggering a reassessment for property taxes."
A question I would have, if I were an international student living in say, California, is why would I pay tuition as a legal immigrant on say a F-1 visa, but if I came in illegally, I would have a chance at getting a subsidy[1]? Could they just pretent to be illegal for the subsidy and then when done just go home on your F-1. It's not like the school would check or even less ask the feds about status.
Couldn't you go AWOL and then register as undocumented? Or why not be able to register for Non-Resident Tuition Exemption? Wouldn't that be discriminatory in some sense?
> Couldn't you go AWOL and then register as undocumented? .
Well, you can't qualify for DACA without a time machine, so you'd need to estsblish eligibility under AB 540 by spending three years as a California resident attending a California high school to qualify. Having done this, you wouldn't have to pretend to be undocumented, since you'd pretty certainly lose your F-1 status. So, you'd potentially be eligible for in-state tuition—but also potentially eligible for deportation. Plus, unlike an actual good-standing F-1, you’ll have a lot harder time ever getting legal status in the US.
> Wouldn't that be discriminatory in some sense?
Of course it would; every status distinction made in law is “discriminatory in some sense.”
The relevant issue is does it fail to meet the legal standard of legitimacy of purpose and adaptation to that purpose applicable to the basis and nature of discrimination.
> why would I pay tuition as a legal immigrant on say a F-1 visa
No such thing as a “legal immigrant on an F-1 visa”, as an F-1 is a non-immigrant visa and F-1s are non-resident aliens legally prohibited from establishing a US domicile.
> if I came in illegally, I would have a chance at getting a subsidy
The only people who came in illegally who can be considered residents for UC tuition purposes—as stated on the page you link—are those who are qualified for and have been granted status under DACA (a policy established in 2012), which means you had to be brought over as a child under 16, and must have lived in the US since 2007, or those that have attended 3 years of California high school.
> Could they just pretent to be illegal for the subsidy and then when done just go home on your F-1. It's not like the school would check or even less ask the feds about status
Yes, if you claim to be in DACA status, the state will check your DACA status. If you claim to be an undocumented student that attended three years of California high school, they will check your high school records. If you are a foreign student on an F-1, neither one of those is going to work.
I concede it look like DACA has some time requirements most F-1 students would not satisfy (in addition to the entry age req)
Still a non insignificant amount came here on non-immigrant visas also (tourist visas).
In any event, there may be some meat for a class action by international students who may not want to pay the "full-fare" price they pay, given otherwise international students (on expired tourist visas) are eligible for state subsidy.
> I concede it look like DACA has some time requirements most F-1 students would not satisfy (in addition to the entry age req)
Well, plus if you are in a legal status, you aren't eligible for DACA, plud DACA has been closed to new applicants, so literally no one can qualify for it newly now.
> Still a non insignificant amount came here on non-immigrant visas also (tourist visas).
So?
> In any event, there may be some meat for a class action by international students who may not want to pay the "full-fare" price they pay, given otherwise international students (on expired tourist visas) are eligible for state subsidy.
International students (including a very restricted set of undocumented ones) who are residents are eligible for a state subsidy; residency is, however, incompatible with certain immigration statuses that are nonetheless compatible with study, including F-1.
If I were an international student, that's the incongruence I would challenge right there: "residency is, however, incompatible with certain immigration statuses that are nonetheless compatible with study, including F-1."
I'd say give me the same benefits -or at least in-state tuition.
> I'd say give me the same benefits -or at least in-state tuition.
So, you'd declare your intent to establish permanent residency in the State (and therefore the US)?
That sounds a lot like having immigration intent, which can be a basis for revoking your F-1 status.
Not being a resident is the deal you sign on for with F-1 status. If you'd rather take your chances immigrating illegally, spending three years attending California high school, and then trying to go to UC on in-state tuition as a deportable undocumented immigrant when you are qualified to instead get an F-1, well, sure, you can try. No sane person with the option is going to choose that, though. An F-1 with non-resident tuition is a much better deal.
> Schools like Cal are still offering too many slots to foreign students despite being chartered to serve the families of taxpayers who provide their funding.
Taxpayers don't provide their funding, taxpayers provide a partial subsidy of the costs associated with in-state students; this is why their is reduced tuition for such students.
> Okay, taxpayers provide part of their funding, the remainder of which is through donations and student fees.
Taxpayers provide part (a declining share and declining real per-student amount) of the funding for in-state students. Why would this subsidy have any bearing on the number of out-of-state slots, which are fully (or more than) self-funded? If taxpayers want more in-state slots, then the taxpayers can fund more in-state slots.
> the remainder of which is through donations and student fees
And research contracts, IP and publishing revenue, etc.
I can't say for California, but in NYS, out-of-state students are money-makers for the university. In other words, reducing out-of-state students would increase in-state tuition, or result in facilities/services being cut.
In most cases if the student is a resident but still international (dependent) of a visa holder, the student still ends up paying international fees. Not fun for the parent/guardian
Unfortunately both the UC and CSU systems are very top heavy. They've been nickle and diming the students and taxpayers to prop up some obscene salaries for regents and executives. Hell, UCSF outsourced a bunch of its IT staff to HCL (H1B), but hasn't even begun to trim the fat at the top.
Of course another option would be to lean more heavily on private donors like Zuckerberg and Benioff.
No, foreign students are keeping UC corrupt. UC has been plagued by scandal after scandal, horrendous waste, graft, patronage...etc etc
The UC system needs more oversight, not more funny money. Cal had enough money to build a gorgeous football stadium. They have enough money to fund the Chancellor's alleged slush fund.
California residents have an extremely high tax burden. They are doing their part. UC needs to be cleaned up, starting with a renewed focus on their core mission. None of the necessary reforms will happen while California has one-party rule.
You make it sound like foreign students are stealing resources from the US. To the contrary, they pay a lot for the privilege of studying, and they're likely to try to immigrate later -- and even if you're anti-immigration, it's madness to be against young, educated, skilled immigrants who've experienced your country at an impressionable age.
The UC system was created to serve residents of the State. These are publicly funded institutions. They are here to serve the taxpaying public. Private schools exist to serve aspirational foreign students.
If residents feel the system does not serve them, they will defund it, and everyone will be worse off. We have these things called Propositions, and they tend to elicit emotional responses. Most California residents are probably beginning to have a negative impression of UC...most of the news from UC is graft, corruption, etc
They are institutions which are less and less public funded, and heading in the direction of the fully privatized formerly public institutions in much of the country.
> If residents feel the system does not serve them, they will defund it
They've been effectively defunding UC and CSU for decades through a number of measures, particularly the Prop 98 mandate that forces nominal budget increases to go largely to K-14 education.
That defunding is actually at the root of many of the complaints against UC, including it's reliance on non-resident students and their higher tuition.
> The resentment comes because the UC system has a limited enrollment capacity with competitive admissions, and has a mission of educating residents. So when foreign students take some of those enrollment slots, local students who missed the cut feel cheated.
It's competitive, however it is anything but impossible to get admission into a UC. I'd consider the paths to getting in straight forward.
Either in highschool you are in the top 9% of students statewide, or top 9% in your local highschool if the school participates in the program. You are guaranteed an admission to at least one UC campus.
Didn't make it? Most community colleges offer guaranteed transfer agreements where you complete a requirement of classes and GPA, giving you an automatic admission.
And if this is still too much, there is the entire CSU system to consider.
On the contrary, California's budget is awful because of a combination of Prop 13 and the lack of one party rule. By requiring a supermajority vote for tax changes, Prop 13 all but guaranteed that any additional programs would be funded by ballot initiative, which has forced way too much of California's tax revenue into no longer needed programs and bond repayment. The recent Democrat supermajority has slowly been cleaning up what little of the government remains in control of the legislature.
George Mason University leans heavily on international graduate students. The school increased no-credit-but-required classes on undergrads to pay those same international students who wish to be GTA's. It's almost like a Ponzi scheme.
This is good news. At the moment, universities are the primary gatekeepers to becoming a citizen in the U.S. Right now universities are capturing nearly 100% of the "citizenship cost" that immigrants pay start their path to becoming citizens. That is disgusting and greedy.
With 100K in loans paid to the university, anyone can come to the U.S. on a student visa, make contacts with companies, and eventually become a U.S. citizen. A U.S. graduate degree serves as the primary "citizenship cost" for a lot of immigrants.
Instead of New England universities shaking down immigrants, I would like to see midwestern small towns, red states, small business all get a piece of the small fortune that immigrants spend to come to the United States.
> Also what visa allows immigrants to skip university enrolment and be directly employed in a small town small business?
The student visa allows one to be in the country for an indetermine amount of time (until their degree is done) and that person is free to obtain employment while enrolled in university
First, the foreign students cross-subsidize the locals' education. There are large fixed costs to running a university and these students pay way above their marginal costs. So now the universities have fewer resources; hence cutting the newspaper funding etc.
Second, the foreign students increase the schools' reputations and can collaborate with the faculty. Research is a public good. We do not have a research system so that we can think of things for nerds to do; we have it to produce valuable knowledge. In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than the foreigners. That productivity led to discoveries that benefit everyone.
Third, immigration: some of the foreign students would have wound up staying. We should want these people to stay here and have families. Educated people who work hard and are ambitious enough to go overseas and stay are good for the country.