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

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

#171

Post by foldr » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

red_admiral wrote: post #101

foldr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

One of the many metrics that UK universities are assessed on is graduate employability - I think it's something like average salary 3 years after graduation in the latest Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). Yes, we have a TEF to evaluate us, as well as external examiners and student surveys and other things.

Yes, I know. None of these things seems to have done much to combat grade inflation.

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

#172

Post by nradov » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #160

Traster wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? On…

A careful review of the scientific literature will show you that there has actually been virtually zero progress in boosting educational effectiveness over the past several decades. Many new techniques have been tried with encouraging initial successes, but nothing has really worked at scale.

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

#173

Post by mywittyname » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:25 PM UTC

seeTheAstroturf wrote: post #89

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.

The only thing I can say I learned from Engineering school is math. 4 years of my career completely changed my mind about what Engineering is. I didn't know I would be solving problems. Good that they teach math, but there's a giant disconnect between academia and industry.

That's a good thing, otherwise universities might be teaching 1950s "industry standards" that employers need to un-teach interns. Let the schools teach first principles and the industry shape new graduates.

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

#174

Post by chrstphrhrt » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:25 PM UTC

aikinai wrote: post #136

save_ferris wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no longer seem to advertise their primary mission as education, but as providing the “college experience.” This was already really noticeable when I enrolled in undergrad 12 years ago at a large public university. I think part of it has been driven by student demand for more parental oversight, but I also think the marketing is what got so many students to take out debt in the first place. So many of my undergrad c…

I think it is the best four years of life for many (maybe most?) Americans at least. But I think that speaks to exactly what people are saying in this thread. It's not about education anymore, it's evolved into a four-year time-of-your-life experience that through a fluke of history gets supported by guaranteed loans.

It should be completely free for everyone but regulated to jettison all that non-education stuff (except for some "soft" services like healthcare, therapy/counselling etc). The soft services should be 100% controlled by student unions so as not to be pillaged by rent-seeking vultures. Then there can be a whole economy for luxury experiences for those who want it, but it should be firewalled off from everything essential.

It's analogous to money in politics or insider trading as far as conflicts of interest go. I guess it would help if education was enshrined in our constitutions as a human right, which institutions had fiduciary duties to uphold.

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

#175

Post by tristor » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:27 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.

Because examinations they're passing and all the classes they're not attending are conducted entirely in English only. What I've observed happening in some places is that some specific schools are predominantly populated by rich international students from China and they pay someone else to attend classes and take their exams, or otherwise behave in cheating behavior to get the grade, but they themselves are not attending class or learning anything useful.

It's a scam on both sides and it devalues the degrees.

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

#176

Post by non-entity » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

thisisnico wrote: post #165

ludamad wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways, there is 'good disconnect' if the disconnect is that the academia merely informs your thinking, not your immediate actions. It shows that you learned the fundamentals in an insular environment that doesn't muddle them. If there is full disconnect, that is rough though

I Live in the Border city of Windsor to Detroit. We have a University that had been hailed for its engineering program. What I'm hearing from students/employers (big 3) is that the entire program is mostly mathematics, they have no usable engineering skills to begin work in the field because of minimal labs, and methods. Almost no CAD work/design control systems etc. They're so far behind the curve it's like they ign…

> More community college engineering graduates are getting jobs at the big 3 due to actually obtaining skills needed to do the job through labs and education that's on par with today's engineering.

How does this work in Canada in regards to professional licensing? In the US, it my understanding that getting an engineering license requires an accredited program and that majority of a reddit programs are 4 year bachelors degrees. Even most master degrees dont have the right accreditation.

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

#177

Post by nraynaud » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #52

nraynaud wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are a 1B people country, from their point of view, foreign education is a fringe anecdote, no country in the world would even be able to house a significant share of their students.

The elites are a far smaller cohort.

there is also the fact that as seen from a lot of people in China, American universities are a way for bad students with money to get a degree they wouldn't get at Chinese universities.

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

#178

Post by vonmoltke » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:34 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.

> So you need to be a citizen with a security clearance to work for any US aerospace company.

Absolutely not. No company requires a clearance for employment in general, only for specific programs. Also, US Permanent Residents can access unclassified export-controlled information.

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

#179

Post by Shivetya » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

red_admiral wrote: post #120

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…

Ironically at universities in the UK we seem to have more "professional services" staff than ever. Part of what they do is really valuable: customer services helpdesk/helpline for students for example, every question they answer is one that doesn't end up taking academics' time. But then there's also all the "quality control" where you really wonder how we ever managed to run a degree without every decision going thr…

fwiw, University of Georgia has approximate eleven thousand staff for forty thousand students[0]. however what they have property wise under their domain is amazing.

now, some of the ivy league colleges have endowments in the multiple billions in addition to other properties but UGA is a state college

[0]https://www.uga.edu/facts.php

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

#180

Post by lucozade » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

nvarsj wrote: post #69

lucozade wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to subsidize education for the very rich or rich foreign nationals Not a penny of your tax goes to subsidising their education. The charitable status of private schools means that the money used for their education isn't taxed twice. I agree that private schooling tends to exacerbate divisions. The majority of state school provision in the UK is atrocious. I have more concern that very little is being done a…

> The majority of state school provision in the UK is atrocious. I don't think this is really true anymore. I agree state schools were truly awful in the 80s/90s (my partner who went to state school didn't even learn times tables). Quality of state school has improved tremendously over the last 20 years, and I'd say it's very good these days. Especially as middle class families are priced out of independent schools.…

Turns out I'm about 5 years out of date [1], I retract. Schools have improved markedly in the last 5 years.

In what way are they for profit institutions? Who is profiting financially? They're charities (for the most part) and are legally obliged to be run like charities. Now if you're suggesting that some or all of them are paying dividends to some secret investor then sure. But you're not, presumably.

Again, it's fine for you not to agree with private schools. I understand that. But to suggest that you're somehow paying for them doesn't bear scrutiny.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-50563833