Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money • Hacker News Board

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#121

Post by LudwigNagasena » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:05 PM UTC

thawaway1837 wrote: post #61

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #21

At least in the US, rich foreign students shelling out big sums for US universities is one of the few legitimate paths towards immigration. You're paying 150-250k worth of access to an F1, CPT, OPT, a more streamlined path into the H-1B world, followed by permanent residency. You get to work for a US employer for a few years without having to bother with the lottery, while also applying to an H-1B at the same time. I…

Rights so the Chinese pay hundreds of thousands of do,Lara so they can get F1 jobs (restricted largely to on campus or has to be study related, so it doesn’t pay), OPT jobs (capped at 1 year) or H1B jobs (needs to be renewed every year, at least by the Chinese who rarely get more than a 1 year extension), so they can get permanent residency after 10-15 years of being on an H1 based on current figures. Right, that mak…

That's right, the US residency is very valuable, people are ready to pay big money to live there.

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#122

Post by red_admiral » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #113

amiga_500 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did we used to do this in the 1970s where the state paid for it all? We now live in a world where you don't need a secretary, because you can type up documents yourself, you can instantly send written communication via email. You can publish agendas, and other campus wide information instantly on a website. You can automate. You can distribute notes to your students for free instead of endless photocopies. Why gi…

> We now live in a world where you don't need a secretary, because you can type up documents yourself Probably because some other kind of unnecessary positions have been created

You need someone to check that your document conforms to the accessibility policy, equality and inclusion policy, corporate messaging policy and so on.

Most of these, on their own, are actually good things in my opinion (though I'm skeptical of the coroporate messaging one, we're supposed to be a university).

EDIT: just to clarify, after seeing the lecture slides that some of my esteemed colleagues used to produce, the accessibility policy is a very good thing indeed.

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#123

Post by non-entity » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

thawaway1837 wrote: post #114

non-entity wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion on university education has flip flopped overtime with me leading toward it being a massive scam at the moment, but this time for reasons like what you mention. Case in point: I found the perfect program for me: online CS bachelors, from a respected state school, very affordable. However, I cant even be considered a resident of the state I live and work in for several years and would be forced to pay out o…

So you will be paying what foreign students always do, without access to cheap loans, or scholarships, the majority of which are restricted to citizens. And they don’t even have a guarantee that they will be allowed to work afterwards even if there is a company who wants to give them a job.

If that's true than I feel sorry for them because that's a shitty deal. On the other hand, if this is just wealthy people with large cash reserves throwing them out in a chance obtain citenzship, then congratulations they have the extreme privilege of being born into the right family, which many of their countrymen didnt have.

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#124

Post by raverbashing » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:11 PM UTC

Tomminn wrote: post #85

spiritplumber wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience in the US. My major was EE and my passion was aerospace. I quickly learned to hide my accent because nobody would talk to me as soon as it transpired I wasn't a citizen. One time we did a drone competition sponsored by NASA, in which it was me (Italian), two guys and a girl from Mexico, and one local whose only job was to talk to the corporate types because they wanted to talk to a citizen.

A rocket- according to US employment policy- is a missile fired in a funny direction. So you need to be a citizen with a security clearance to work for any US aerospace company. This makes the cold shoulder a little more understandable, because they couldn't legally hire you even if they wanted to.

They are not wrong. In fact the origins of the space program were exactly like that: missiles fired in a funny direction.

(A bit ironic that it took-off after they "hired" that German scientist after WWII - pun intended)

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#125

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

killjoywashere wrote: post #105

amiga_500 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did we used to do this in the 1970s where the state paid for it all? We now live in a world where you don't need a secretary, because you can type up documents yourself, you can instantly send written communication via email. You can publish agendas, and other campus wide information instantly on a website. You can automate. You can distribute notes to your students for free instead of endless photocopies. Why gi…

> we can't seem to do anything any more? I disagree. We do some amazing shit. Elon Musk runs circles around ULA. My own research, as a far smaller example, has scaled up nicely despite the fact that in the old model it should be virtually impossible to do any research in the career track I'm in. Tech doesn't help people who are bored (boring?). But it is like hydrazine for people who need to get serious shit done on…

> Elon Musk runs circles around ULA.

That is because there has been a severe lack of competition until SpaceX arrived. Let's be honest there is no real alternative to Airbus and Boeing for airplanes, and it has been the same situation for space before SpaceX.

Or, to express it better: Why should ULA have tried to divert to agile processes or try out new ways of doing things when the status quo reliably keeps jobs in congressional districts and money in supplier companies?

The goal of these semi-governmental mega companies is not to efficiently produce goods/services, the goal is to ensure distribution of public taxpayer money to jobs, no matter how wasteful they are, in order to essentially bribe voters. Airbus, for example, could drastically cut costs and time in airplane production if they would not have to send airframes and parts sometimes three times across Europe, but that would not fly well with politicians as voters would ask "we pay r&d money to Airbus but why aren't we getting anything back?"...

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#126

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

amiga_500 wrote: post #118

killjoywashere wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can't seem to do anything any more? I disagree. We do some amazing shit. Elon Musk runs circles around ULA. My own research, as a far smaller example, has scaled up nicely despite the fact that in the old model it should be virtually impossible to do any research in the career track I'm in. Tech doesn't help people who are bored (boring?). But it is like hydrazine for people who need to get serious shit done on…

But the core functions of society are no longer working. Universities provided education that pushed society forward for centuries. In just 30 years of applying growth obsessed capitalism, that has stopped working. Tech isn't my complaint. Tech helps, yet despite this huge boost, we are going backwards.

[deleted]

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#127

Post by ilamont » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

martyvis wrote: post #53

michaelt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants to shut down their country, they just want thousands of deaths even less. And there ain't no way for people travelling by plane to follow social distancing.

I heard the mayor of Byron Bay literally say on this evening's news to potential holiday makers this Easter "We don't want you here". Clearly things are serious when a region that thrives on tourism income pretty much forgoes it for the foreseeable future.

Same thing is happening all over the US, Especially in places with large numbers of second homes owned by rich people from suburbs and cities. The official reasons are the limited number of local hospital beds as well as grocery supply lines not set up for off-season surges, but there is also a lot of latent resentment toward rich “summer people” that can now be freely exercised.

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#128

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #79

cyphar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australian here too, just graduated along with my partner (who was an international student). You're right about the long-term consequences for the university, but I would also add that universities actively undermine their international students at every turn (perhaps because there's little profit motive to help them succeed in their ludicrously expensive education). The thing that pisses me off the most is that the…

I had a similar experience in the US. My major was EE and my passion was aerospace. I quickly learned to hide my accent because nobody would talk to me as soon as it transpired I wasn't a citizen. One time we did a drone competition sponsored by NASA, in which it was me (Italian), two guys and a girl from Mexico, and one local whose only job was to talk to the corporate types because they wanted to talk to a citizen.

[deleted]

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#129

Post by catalogia » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #14

balola wrote: post #10

If it can subsidize native students, it's not a bad thing, what's needed is an enviroment in which cheating and political manipulation can be freely called out.

I had the same attitude as you, but many of the wealthy, Chinese-raised students at my local (prestigious, private) university can't speak basic English. The school then has to choose to either fail the student or ignore their cheating. With a $250k incentive to choose the former, that's what they choose.

> Chinese-raised students at my local (prestigious, private) university can't speak basic English. The school then has to choose to either fail the student or ignore their cheating.

The financial pressure to ignore their cheating makes sense to me, but it's not clear to me how that's related to language skills.

Re: Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

#130

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

amiga_500 wrote: post #103

red_admiral wrote: post #96

Good article, but I want to clarify a point since it could leave the impression that it's universities themselves driving this growth race. In the UK at least, we used to have a model where universities were funded by the government (through tax, of course) but the government also set hard limits on how many students you could enrol, with penalties for going over. The current model which Tony Blair in effect started…

How did we used to do this in the 1970s where the state paid for it all? We now live in a world where you don't need a secretary, because you can type up documents yourself, you can instantly send written communication via email. You can publish agendas, and other campus wide information instantly on a website. You can automate. You can distribute notes to your students for free instead of endless photocopies. Why gi…

There were fewer students. And less administration; the public sector has been led into the trap of mistaking metrics for productivity, so it's very easy to end up spending more time on the paperwork to show that a process has been followed than it is to just do the thing.

Between the "REF" and grant applications it's very easy to spend more time getting the money for research and producing the required outputs than it is on doing the research.

There is also the much wider question of what it is that "we" want universities to "do".