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As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

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Re: As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

#122

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. Resear…

> In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than the foreigners. I think the bias has swung way too far the other way. Racism against Americans is still racism. Also, this applies mainly to undergrads (full paying students), not PhD students who are generally fully funded.

>Racism against Americans is still racism.

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".

Re: As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

#123

It's really sad that research institutions are leveraging international student's high tuition to increase their revenues.

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.

Re: As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

#124
post #41

The only surprising thing about this article was how lowly paid a language professor is. $47,000? What?

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?

That's obviously not the only skill involved. Please don't post reflexively dismissive comments to HN.

Re: As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

#126

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. Resear…

> In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than the foreigners. I think the bias has swung way too far the other way. Racism against Americans is still racism. Also, this applies mainly to undergrads (full paying students), not PhD students who are generally fully funded.

[deleted]

Re: As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than the foreigners. I think the bias has swung way too far the other way. Racism against Americans is still racism. Also, this applies mainly to undergrads (full paying students), not PhD students who are generally fully funded.

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.

Would you please not post snarky and/or unsubstantive comments here? Especially on divisive topics, where it reliably sparks flamewars.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

#128

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. [1] https://www.indexmundi.com/china/age_structure.html

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.

Re: As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

#129
post #95

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. Resear…

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.

Math?

USA is projected to grow over 3%. China is projected to grow less than 2%.

At what point does China 'catch' USA? 3020?

Re: As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

#130
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Math? USA is projected to grow over 3%. China is projected to grow less than 2%. At what point does China 'catch' USA? 3020?

Source?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-gdp/chinas-...

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