International students
- Thread starter Marvin the Martian
- Start date
Thanks. I do not have an answer. I want kids that want to go to college to go. This started with,the idea of Blacks being locked out of college. I am just not sure there are millions of Black kids who are not going to college who are wanting to go to college. A lot of my friends from my youth had no interest in college, even making fun of college.
If we can change the fundamentals so there is a tremendous surge in college desire, we can deal with the conflict then. As it is, for a small town like Bloomington, to tell several thousand foreign students to stay away WILL have a negative economic impact.
Because they aren't going to one or the other. If there isn't a qualified pool of kids here, then why wouldn't you accept others, particularly if demonstrate an eagerness to become citizens? If your position is that lesser qualified U.S. kids should get into elite colleges, then I presume you are in favor of affirmative action policies?
I think one could argue that the elite private colleges should be free to recruit the best students from anywhere while also believing that state universities should favor in state kids. Again, I understand why state universities recruit kids who will pay full freight and also understand that most all of the schools need that money.
I know the whole point is to attract and keep foreign students. This is structural racism. Your “people of means” comment makes the point better than I could.
You thinking my point us “strange” says more about you than it does about me. If you want to see structural racism, look in the mirror.
For what possible reason does any student need to complete their undergraduate education abroad?
I would do a few things...
1. Strongly encourage exchange programs for both American and International students at the undergraduate level.
2. Only graduate level research programs are open to international students. For these programs, unis select the best of the best.
3. All Americans between he ages of 18-25 are entitled to a 3 month international experience in a non-Anglo developing country, paid for by the US government.
It's absolutely inexplicable that community colleges grant visas to international students.
I fundamentally disagree. Unless a university/college endeavors to make foreign students a % of the population for diversity or some non-financial purpose, this is meritocracy. Do you support affirmative action policies or meritocracy?
That is a good point Cortez and I will give you that there's a distinction between how a public or private school should operate in regards to its student population. But, if you start there, you should discourage heavily state-funded institutions from allowing out of state students, not just foreign students, right? And that is a semi-reasonable argument, even if I don't agree with it.
If Indiana suddenly chose to only serve in-state students, how would its reputation, research capabilities and student experience change? I would think significantly.
One your first point, I argued that in an earlier post in this thread. There in no fundamental difference between international and out of state students.
This was the point Marv made about and I thought he made a good point. Granted California is its own animal, but the commitment to have a place in its state schools for all Cali kids doesn’t seem to have lessened the academic standing. Now, the talent pool will vary state to state.
Affirmative action that would put a poor kid from the U.S., no matter the race box they check, ahead of a kid from China, India, etc.? Yes.
Foreign labor remitted $103 billion to other countries. Mexico, China, Phillipines, and India being the 4 largest recipients of that money. That is $103 billion removed from the U.S. economy each year. Some of it going to a country that is flat out our enemy. A portion of that money is related to those kids coming and getting a U.S. degree and then sticking around while sending money back to relatives at home. That is all well and good, free country and all...but if we are going to lose $103 billion a year by having them here, why not plunk that money into people who are going to keep their money in the U.S.?
Full stop, I believe in investing the time and money to "fix" the problems we have here instead of importing replacements.
There are a lot of moving parts here. And I generally agree with meritocracy. At the same time, when we see the miserable graduation rates of black young men from high school while simultaneously needing to fill college seats with foreign students, we have an obvious serious structural problem in education. Fixing this will take time. But we can't begin with a fix without seeing the issues for what they are. This won't happen overnight. I think the academic community whining about immigration feeds structural racism. I wish they would instead speak to the shortage of qualified students on the home front and advocate for change.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation recognize and address the problem. There is no reason why the Ivy League schools and many state schools with their bloated endowments could not take similar actions instead of bitching about immigration and worrying about whose names are on which buildings.
I asked this above, I will make it more direct. In discussions in the past you have pointedly said that college is not for everyone. Are you changing your mind to some sort of forcing kids to go to college? Without that, I'm not sure I see the problem. We might admit fewer international students but I just can't see the day that our universities are turning away qualified people (as a whole, not individual universities). Especially in STEM. If we throw out all international STEM students today, the system collapses. There just won't be enough STEM students to keep the doors open.
If we make changes to attract more kids to universities, great. I favor it. But again, I doubt we will attract enough to completely replace international. I am also sure this is a many year project, maybe even generational. And I'm not sure at all that we are going to fill STEM. You didn't study STEM, why not? I didn't. I thought about physics for a short while but calculus convinced me that was a terrible way to go through college.
Added on edit, the thread topic started on foreign students being asked to leave THIS YEAR. Do we have American students ready, willing, able to replace them THIS YEAR? If not, are universities like IU just going to close down math and science departments for the next couple years until we get our internal education problems sorted out?
Last edited:
I have never done the research, but is California an anomaly when it comes to public school options? I know IU has several extension campuses (PU may have one or two more?), there are Ball St., IN St., etc., etc. Is there a dearth of accredited public in-state schools for kids in IN?
Not CoH but I think there is a multi-pronged approach. I think there are kids who could do college but get passed over because economics or poor support at the K-12 level keeps them down. I see something where businesses and schools that want to bring in international students to fill gaps, should be charged a surtax that goes into programs that either help pay for University training for those who fit that mold or for apprenticeship type of training for those who fit that. Not enough welders? Good deal, we will let you hire an international person to fill that role but we will impose a 10% payroll tax on the employer to hire them. That 10% will be used to entice and train (or retrain) a U.S. citizen to do that job. In the case of colleges, scholarship fund. If we need programmers but people are going into humanities, offer to pay for people's schooling to do differently or pay someone who has the skills but not the money to go to school. One of the hardest things to do, coming from a family that does not have college experience, is to get guidance on picking a major that will actually support you when you graduate.
Corporate America got a huge tax cut 3 years ago. If they are saying they do not have enough workers to fill their spots, then they need to be involved in the intellectual and skill infrastructure development in this country.
No.
I know. I think the structural problem is so much part of the structure, it can't be seen. That is structural racism. Biden blurted out the problem. He has a point. Biden's problem is that he can't fix the problem. The GOP can and is.
So what? I'm not sure shrinking student bodies is a bad thing. (see above)
Slide rules weren't for me.
Of course not. But I've also heard college presidents use the phrase "best and the brightest" when talking about foreign students. As far as I am concerned, that displays a worse attitude than a Robert E. Lee statue at Charlottesville. I'd be happy if college administrators would talk about the miserable k-12 education prevalent in many cities and announce plans to fix it.
You are making some wild assumptions without proving that: 1) there is an unmet need of poor kids to find qualified colleges and universities, 2) those poor kids meet the qualifications or entry requirements for colleges and universities. I have not read about issues in supply, but I am open to the idea that there could be an underlying lack of if you point me to some credible studies.
Secondly, there is a tremendous need for technical skills (e.g., auto mechanics, plumbers, contractors, electricians, etc.) that do not require a full four year degree. There is plenty of room to improve incomes, job stability and quality of life for those in our country without forcing them through college which results in a dual problem: 1) students not ready or interested in attending are less likely to perform well or graduate, 2) public institution quality is going to get diluted and lag behind other countries (hard to see that working out well)
The problem with this logic to me is that there are more factors. Let's say we ship out all foreign laborers - that $103 billion going to other countries disappears, along with the internal spending (do you have an estimate for that?) and the U.S. tax revenue. Are you so sure that this is a net positive? The data you linked was based on 2019, where we saw the lowest unemployment in the history of the country, so it isn't as if they were "taking" jobs from Americans.
Another issue I have is that you assume there is qualified labor in this country. Regardless of sector, the economy needs skilled employees and there has long been a mismatch of supply and demand in specific fields (e.g., IT/tech/programming, physicians/medical), so it is erroneous to presume that we have the qualified labor in our country or that we can retrain or re-qualify that labor. If anything, we've seen an unwillingness of people who's jobs are in jeopardy of being outsourced or automated to proactively engage in training and career development.
How do you propose to fix the education gap, which stems from cultural (poor vs. middle and upper class) disparities around the importance of education itself?
None of that answers the problem. Do we have a STEM shortage? https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htm
Does eliminating foreign students/workers help alleviate that problem?
Would downsizing STEM departments around the nation address the problem?
I have suggested in the past that our corporate priorities are screwed up. I know a couple Bloomington kids that graduated high school with the 4.0, big-time participants in science Olympiad and took every possible math/science class that became business majors in college. The reasoning was money, one stands to make much more administrating than doing.
But when I suggested that in the past I was told that the market determines MBAs are more valuable than chemists and we cannot question the market.
So if we question the market and pay engineers more than traders, we might solve the STEM problem. But I suspect anything I suggest to do that will be called socialist.
So we are stuck in a nation than does not come close to meeting its STEM need. We could make STEM easier to attract more people. But I am not sure that we really want engineers who aren't fully trained in math and physics.
I want Americans in STEM. But the reality is it is not for everyone, it largely doesn't make people rich*, and it typically requires a lot of hard schooling.
* I have a nephew who was named a top 30 engineer under 30. He was working at 3M. Amazon called him, offered him a fortune, and now he is management. So engineering might lead to big money, just not necessarily in engineering.
I addressed several of your points already, but I believe that handling the foreign labor would be like a spigot that we turn on and off. There is not a one size fits all approach.
I guess I would ask this, I am 41 and have voted Republican my entire life and my entire life I have heard your same arguments used to shut down these conversations. I have used them myself. So what do you think is being helped by bringing in people? "We need the jobs filled and the skills to do them and these are the only people available." Is that true, or are employers demanding degrees for jobs that don't need them? Setting up financial barriers to employment. Skills? Maybe it is because employers will not hire and train people to do the job. Hey, instead of bringing in foreign labor or forcing you to pay to learn that trade, I am going to hire you and pay you while you get on the job training.
There are many reasons people can be resistant to career changes. It cost me over $20k to go back to school for a masters several years ago so I could do just that. We expect a coal miner to go into that kind of debt to switch to a $40k/yr job or else we bring on the Indians and Chinese. Corporate America expects all this shit from Americans and doesn't want to give anything back. They already have one of the most worked and under benefitted set of employees in the developed world and that still is not enough.
So great that Wall Street does well, that is awesome, my retirement thanks it. You know what would be more awesome for the country though? Having a bunch of these people that are embittered about systemic racism actually being offered a way into the system. Having a job does that. And yes, it does start at home, but you know what helps set up functional homes? Money to support them. And not a hand out, but something they truly worked for. The ownership culture creates conservativish people IMO.
Basically I feel like we have invested in the upper crust of society and I think it is time for them to start investing in us instead of doing the easy out. If they are "global" then treat them as a foreign company. If you want to claim the benefits of being a U S company then I want to start seeing some return on my 23 years of voting investment...and that return is not necessarily going to directly help my pocketbook, it may help by making my city a safer place to live because people have jobs to make money as opposed to crime.
Last edited:
The market is skewed because we bring in cheap STEM labor from out of the country. (Although engineers get paid pretty well....) but high demand and low supply would normally increase the price.
We also need to look at our k-12 education which I believe needs to get back to more classic teaching methods. I think the way we do things now is shitty. I have 3 kids in school and the way they teach things now is not optimal IMO.
It is moneytocracy, not meritocracy. There is no provided evidence that the foreign students have more merit to be there, they have to pay more to be there and that is what makes them so desirable for the Universities.
A meritocracy is ability based. Just because you have more money doesn't mean you have more ability.
I am not sure what your intent was with the graph since you did not explain, but I will try to answer based on what I think your point is: providing that the average score is higher does not correlate to the individual students having a higher score. Frankly, it could correlate to the idea that the best students would attend countries where they appear to be getting better results and the more well to do who cannot make the grade at home go abroad because a U.S. degree still helps open the door to our markets and jobs in a way that the home school would not.
Additionally, here I am arguing for non-Republican ways (at least traditionally) to help the type of people Democrats say they want to help and here I am getting pushback that basically says, "**** those people, lost cause, we'll just welfare them for the rest of their lives and bring in these smarter foreigners to do the jobs".
Managers and administrators always make more money than the producers. Doesn't matter if it's high tech, high skill stuff you're producing in a lab or simple widgets on a factory floor.
I also would like to ask Marvin, what do you think those scores would look like if broken down by race for just the U.S.? I ask that because I think you made a point above about the black community not really having a bunch of people clamoring to get into college. I think that is because many of them do not see that as attainable based on their parent's lack of wealth and so they don't put the effort into school. Those other countries probably have done a better job getting people to believe that the K-12 education is worth it for them because there is a benefit in the end.
I think we have a sector of our society that we just write off and it drags the score down. Whether that be poor inner city blacks and Latinos or poor rural whitesp in Appalachia or BFE, Midwestern State.
I am all in favor of helping people. But we face a clear and present STEM shortage, I linked a BLS page above. We aren't going to start producing internal STEM graduates tomorrow even if you figure out the perfect educational system today. I am highly skeptical any system will get a high school senior to go from major underperformer to STEM superstar this year. Maybe I am wrong but I don't think so.
I was at a computer security conference 15 years ago, the guy was talking about how much work the US government is doing in computers. He worked for one of the biggest groups in computer security. He said the government had a long history of going out and tracking down the best graduating mathematicians in the world and bringing them into the NSA. Now they tended to focus more on attack than defense, but they were there. The point is that we depend on our technology in defense. We depend on it in our economics. We depend on it in our medicine. There are no miracle fixes to produce American STEM students in mass quantities next year.
According to Congressional Research Service (https://crsreports.congress.gov/pro...urce: CRS display of data,22% in SY2016- 2017.) :
Foreign STEM students also make up an increasing share of total students receiving STEM degrees at U.S. IHEs, doubling from 11% in SY1988-1989 to 22% in SY2016- 2017. This percentage is even higher for graduate degrees, as foreign students accounted for 54% of master’s degrees and 44% of doctorate degrees issued in STEM fields in the United States in SY2016-2017
...
According to the National Science Foundation’s 2017 survey of STEM doctorate recipients from U.S. IHEs, 72% of foreign doctorate recipients were still in the United States 10 years after receiving their degrees. This percentage varied by country of origin; for example, STEM graduates from China (90%) and India (83%) stayed at higher rates than European students (69%).
Even if you developed the perfect high school today and this year's high school seniors devoted their lives to STEM, they are 6-10 years from having advanced degrees. And they might be going to universities which rely heavily on current foreign students/faculty as instructors. If they aren't here, that creates a problem in teaching.
There might be a long term solution to Americans and STEM. I'm all for finding it. But the plan to kick foreign students out of the US this year, the thread topic, ain't helping a single American interested in STEM. I feel VERY confident that US universities desperately want minority students enrolled in their STEM programs. I would bet if you spoke to the chairs at departments at universities around the country, they would say that is a top goal.
But I seriously doubt we turn that ship around with this year's senior class. I doubt it is true even for Jr or SO, or FR. Why am I wrong with that, do you think we can fill those 22% of undergrads in a year?
I love the idea of trying to rebuild our educational system long term. But in the short term we are screwing ourselves hard by kicking out STEM. We can't develop a minor league system fast enough.
Now how we go into the south side of Chicago and convince kids nuclear physics is their path and not gangs? I don't have an answer. I've said too often here that the one very consistent thing I noticed putting 3 kids through school was that almost all the parents of honors students were at school open houses and almost no parents of poorer performing students. I can't come up with a solution to that problem, but I firmly believe it is the key. If parents push their kids to be students AND take an interest in how their kids do, the results will be much better. But I cant come up with a government program, I can't come up with a private program, that forces that to happen. But I fear until it does, our dream isn't happening. If parents don't give a damn, students aren't going to (not in any statistically significant number, there will always be the outlier).
I would agree with that. Which is why I think it needs to be long term and it needs to be something that we "convince" businesses to help with. I believe that solid personal economics breeds more stable homes which in turn is a breeding ground for more successful students. We are talking several generations to change.
I think change #1 is having employers pay for the OJT for some of those trade school type of jobs you mentioned and make sure they are being offered to able bodied people who are willing to work. One of the systemic issues that gets brought up in systemic racism is that blacks were not afforded the economic opportunity that whites were and that lack of economic support holds them back. You could start building that by training them to do these high demand jobs. And it helps to solve 2 problems.
I am judging you based on your posts on this forum. So, if you have been honest about what you have been posting, you are what you have been presenting in this forum, and that is how I judge you.
Following your advice, I have looked myself in the mirror. I see a very handsome man with integrity. Thank you for the advice. It's gratifying to know a friend who can give me such nice advice.
Of course you read with a filter. Many liberals believe that conservatives are racist and/or don't give a rip about minorities and education. Your posting confirms that you are part of the crowd.
Glad you have a magic mirror.
I thank you again for the compliment. Coming from you, I feel very much honored!
Then tell the Trumpublicans to quit misrepresenting conservatism. When your ideology is hijacked by racists shouldn't you do something other than enable it?
Naw, that would require some conviction and principles. Easier to just take the judges and tax cuts and deregulation and overlook the rest.
My BIL runs a PhD program in neuro engineering in Columbia -- annually with 8-12 students in each batch. There maybe one US-born candidate in one batch -- and he may not be white either.
He also teaches undergrad and grad classes occasionally. Majority of his students at the higher levels are foreign.
I had asked why? Lack of interest is one. It's about culture as the American culture and the hierarchy of goals from education.
The pursuit of knowledge just isn't high up in their list. The goal of education is to make money to pay off the student loan and then to make as much money as possible. Partly due to the lack of financial support but also its a more short term, money-focused society.
Even his son, my nephew who just got his STEM PhD last summer said he wouldn't do deep, basic research like his dad because it just takes too long to get either fame or fortune. (My BIL is in basic research in the area of how visual is then translated into the brain. So he looks at fruitflies as a start.)
I think you are on the right track with this post. The value of education, and the value of certain kinds of education, is a largely cultural thing. One of the primary ways for a society to build culture is K-12 education. We need to up our game there in a number of different ways. This certainly is not a quick fix, but the longer we don’t fix it, the harder it will be to fix it.
The notion that MIT and Harvard might have standing even to make this claim is the problem. Institutions believing public policy is intended to benefit their individual interests, and that the institutions have a vested right to a given policy, is what is wrong with so much of our government.
I am a chemistry professor. My lab educates students through research, ultimately ending in the granting of a PhD. 30 years ago, probably 75% of Chemistry PhD students in US schools were US citizens. That is no longer the case. It's probably more like 40% now.
Many countries value scientific education more than the USA does. Thus, many students from China, Indiana, Japan, Korea, the EU, and elsewhere want to come to the USA for an education.
They tend to come here, work hard, and (in my experience) about 75% end up stayng here, teaching or working in the USA, permanently.
International students in chemistry usually come here on a J1 visa. Often they need to get their J1 renewed before they complete their studies. They transition to H1B visa, or try for a green card, when their degree work is complete.
My interational students already here can get their visa renewed, though precessing is very slow.
International students who want to come here, who have already been admitted, need their first J1 visa. They are NOT going to get one, as it stands now. 25 international students (in a class of 45) in my Institute were going to start in August and now they won't . Maybe never. Or they will go to another county that values them more (Canada schools are pushing hard!)
This policy is a disaster. These bright young people are valuable contributors to our society and POTUS just can't see it.
Many countries value scientific education more than the USA does. Thus, many students from China, Indiana, Japan, Korea, the EU, and elsewhere want to come to the USA for an education.
They tend to come here, work hard, and (in my experience) about 75% end up stayng here, teaching or working in the USA, permanently.
International students in chemistry usually come here on a J1 visa. Often they need to get their J1 renewed before they complete their studies. They transition to H1B visa, or try for a green card, when their degree work is complete.
My interational students already here can get their visa renewed, though precessing is very slow.
International students who want to come here, who have already been admitted, need their first J1 visa. They are NOT going to get one, as it stands now. 25 international students (in a class of 45) in my Institute were going to start in August and now they won't . Maybe never. Or they will go to another county that values them more (Canada schools are pushing hard!)
This policy is a disaster. These bright young people are valuable contributors to our society and POTUS just can't see it.
This is delusional and absolutely false. International student admissions are much more difficult and competitive from a score standpoint. There are millions of applicants fighting for 10% (or less - IUB had ~6%) of admission spots.
IU requires either SAT or ACT scores. Preference will be given to international students who score above the U.S. national average. The middle 50 percent range of SAT scores for admitted freshmen is typically 1180–1360, and the middle 50 percent range of ACT scores is typically 25–31.
The average ACT score for all IN students was only 22.5! It's no wonder why Indiana has chosen to market to and accept out-of-state and international students!
Similar threads
