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

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

#151

Post by MyHypatia » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:54 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.

It is NOT true that you have to be a US citizen to work for a US aerospace company. Your comment can dissuade people from applying to jobs. It is true that there may be certain projects within a company that you cannot work on as a foreigner, and because of that it can be harder to get hired. But there are many foreigners who work at places like SpaceX, NASA, etc. For "sensitive country" foreign nationals (you can Google for the list) it will be extremely difficult to get hired. People from other countries should still apply to job postings unless the posting specifically says it is for US citizens only.

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

#152

Post by smt88 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

legolas2412 wrote: post #117

beojan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Isn't the former exactly what they should be choosing?

I guess they meant "latter"

Yes, thank you for the correction!

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

#153

Post by smt88 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

beojan wrote: post #34

smt88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Isn't the former exactly what they should be choosing?

I meant that they choose the latter.

As for what they "should" be choosing, I think the article hits on it: they should be running leaner operations that can survive without what is essentially a large scale diploma fraud operation, in which both the schools and foreign students are complicit.

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

#154

Post by non-entity » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #150

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…

That's weird, most schools offer one flat online cost, regardless of residency. That schools is woefully out of touch. Who is it?

University of Florida's online program for undergrad. It's like $129/credit hour in-state which is incredibly attractive but jumps to $552 out of state which is still cheaper than getting an on-campus degree as an out-of-state student, but still more than I want to pay as someone who's guaranteed to get minuscule aid.

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

#155

Post by jimbob45 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

Spin off college sports, cap foreign student numbers, cap acceptance of student loans, and kill off Admin staff.

Everyone knows how to solve the college problem. It’s just that colleges have no incentive to do so until they’re forced somehow.

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

#156

Post by smt88 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

catalogia wrote: post #129

smt88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, there was an implied premise that I probably should have included.

These US schools are teaching classes only in English, so the students' inability to speak, write, and (in some cases) read English means that they can't do the work.

I've observed them brazenly cheating during tests by looking at other students' papers, but I think it's more common to hire English speakers who know Chinese to do the work for them. They fail some tests, sure, but they end up with C's overall and a diploma to take home.

I actually had a classmate in college who ended up founding a successful business that exclusive connects American speakers of Chinese with wealthy students from China to write their essays and do their homework.

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

#157

Post by chithanh » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #87

sago wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities should not be responsible for both education and assessment. All of this disappears in a moment if those two are separate. But universities would resist that kicking and screaming to high heaven. Because it would not only undermine their 'great institution' claims, but educational routes that aren't universities would trump them (in terms of cost for attainment) in very short order.

>Universities should not be responsible for both education and assessment. Easier said than done. In more niche disciplines, the only people qualified to evaluate student attainment are other academics in the same discipline. At UK universities, grades are routinely reviewed by an "external examiner" from a separate institution. In my experience, the result of this additional scrutiny has usually be to put grades up…

>> Universities should not be responsible for both education and assessment.

> Easier said than done. In more niche disciplines, the only people qualified to evaluate student attainment are other academics in the same discipline.

It is actually done in quite a few places. And even when there is no non-academic alternative, at the very least the examiners could entirely come from a different university than the lecturers.

In Germany there is the concept of "Staatsexamen" where a government-run examination agency recruits examiners from representatives of the profession and academia.

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

#158

Post by postingawayonhn » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

Laforet wrote: post #67

JCharante wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but people traveling by plane can certainly be sent to concentrated quarantine facilities upon arrival and monitored on an hourly basis for two or three weeks.

China tried this in March and it failed rather spectacularly. Border officials were quickly overwhelmed and had to play it fast and loose; nobody knows who was responsible for what. In many cases, people showing symptoms who were supposed to be placed under medical observation were prematurely discharged, this plus some other oversight have resulted in at least one active disease cluster in Guangzhou. By the end of M…

Australia has already been doing mandatory quarantine for about a week now and it seems to be working fairly well. Obviously it could have capacity issues if the number of travelers increased.

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

#159

Post by bergstromm466 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:03 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…

Rent.

"…today, a tiny minority of people and corporate interests across the world are accumulating vast wealth and power from rental income, not only from housing and land but from a range of other assets, natural and created. ‘Rentiers’ of all kinds are in unparalleled ascendancy and the neo-liberal state is only too keen to oblige their greed.

Rentiers derive income from ownership, possession or control of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce. Most familiar is rental income from land, property, mineral exploitation or financial investments, but other sources have grown too. They include the income lenders gain from debt interest; income from ownership of ‘intellectual property’ (such as patents, copyright, brands and trademarks); capital gains on investments; ‘above normal’ company profits (when a firm has a dominant market position that allows it to charge high prices or dictate terms); income from government subsidies; and income of financial and other intermediaries derived from third-party transactions." [1]

[1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru...

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

#160

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #75

neumann wrote: post #13

I work at a University in Australia and have been on both sides of academic and professional. This unravelling was on the horizon for everybody, maybe not so soon, but definitely in the viewport. In an effort to drive up income streams there has been a slow erosion of Australian education (more at some universities than others) to cater for the international (Chinese and Indian predominantly) market. There are all so…

This reminds me of a New Statesmen article about UK universities[1], which point out university attendance has gone up 500% since 1990 and First class honours went from being awarded to 7% to being awarded to 29% of students. Either universities figured out a way of being 4x as effective teaching 5x as many students (with measurements for average intake attainment basically flat) - which would be a miracle. Or the ma…

> Either universities figured out a way of being 4x as effective teaching 5x as many students (with measurements for average intake attainment basically flat) - which would be a miracle.

I mostly agree with your cynicism, but this doesn't actually strike me as completely implausible. Phased differently, is it really so astonishing that with 30 years of research and development we can massively improve performance? Once Upon a Time, calculus was a super advanced thing that only the very most advanced students at University could do. Now we have high school students doing it on the regular. Other fields don't usually have the rate of improvement the Computing has, but everybody is making progress.