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.
