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

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

#201

Post by RHSeeger » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

Melting_Harps wrote: post #183

aikinai wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I think it is the best four years of life for many (maybe most?) Americans at least. I think that is the most disheartening thing of all that its become such an accepted and prevalent narrative; from Junior year of High School to to my Junior year of undergrad I had my own business(es), and was involved in professional motorsports (University was always my 'Plan B' if it all went wrong) in some capacity. My Life wa…

> I think that is the most disheartening thing of all that its become such an accepted and prevalent narrative

I have a hard time seeing how this (college being a great time in your life) is disheartening. For many, it's a time that a combination of

- learning

- meeting new people

- experiencing new things

And for many of them, there's much less stress about how they're going to pay their bills, feed their kids, etc. Those are great things for a LOT of people. If you can, you should enjoy them to the best of your ability.

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

#202

Post by TremendousJudge » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

burntoutfire wrote: post #192

EngCanMan wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, or maybe even fortunately for the rest of us, this 'wisdom' isn't necessarily true unless you believe it to be. I worked extremely hard during university both in my school work and at multiple jobs, it was far from 'the best years'. Now, most of the people who had all the fun in university agree with you. For me, it just keeps getting better. "The harder you work, the luckier you get" might have been b…

You just may be in the group of people who enjoy working!

Or, maybe he actually did a lot of work during college instead of "enjoying the college experience". Compared to that, "real life work" is usually nicer

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

#203

Post by mytailorisrich » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #147

mytailorisrich wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only boarding schools. Many, if not most, independent schools do not offer boarding and thus don't have foreign pupils at all. Boarding schools have always been for a minority and this hasn't changed because of foreign pupils. Now, boarding schools are often keen on foreign pupils (esp. Chinese nowadays) because it IS actually good for their reputation: The Chinese education system is such that these pupils tend…

> Boarding schools have always been for a minority I sincerely doubt this. I’m not sure if my father’s school had day students when he attended but boarders were definitely a large majority. The omnipresence of boarding schools in post WWII British fiction doesn’t make any sense unless there was at least rough parity among independent schools. CS Lewis, George Orwell, Roald Dahl, off the top of my head. Seamus Heaney…

I think it might have been more common to send children to boarding schools among the elite, but that does not mean that it was not a small minority overall.

Obviously boarding schools are always going to be much more expensive than day schools.

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

#204

Post by eli_gottlieb » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

burntoutfire wrote: post #148

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…

> So many of my undergrad classmates (perhaps even a slim majority) believed that undergrad was going to be the best 4 years of their lives and they had to make the most of them, which I personally found completely insane. For people who don't neccessarily like working (i.e. for most people), school and college are usually the best times of lifes. It's just that it's hard to appreciate that when you have no point of…

>My parents and aunt had this wisdom and, while I was a child, told me "enjoy yourself now, because it will be all downhill from here".

Being told that as a child really fucked me up, actually. It's a really bad, pernicious idea.

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

#205

Post by Melting_Harps » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:44 PM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #201

Melting_Harps wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it is the best four years of life for many (maybe most?) Americans at least. I think that is the most disheartening thing of all that its become such an accepted and prevalent narrative; from Junior year of High School to to my Junior year of undergrad I had my own business(es), and was involved in professional motorsports (University was always my 'Plan B' if it all went wrong) in some capacity. My Life wa…

> I think that is the most disheartening thing of all that its become such an accepted and prevalent narrative I have a hard time seeing how this (college being a great time in your life) is disheartening. For many, it's a time that a combination of - learning - meeting new people - experiencing new things And for many of them, there's much less stress about how they're going to pay their bills, feed their kids, etc.…

> I have a hard time seeing how this (college being a great time in your life) is disheartening. For many, it's a time that a combination of

That you're mentally setting yourself up for be stunted for the rest of your Life is inevitable if you reach your apex by 22 and is incredibly sad; personally speaking, despite that phase of my Life I really didn't know how much more joy I would get out of Life until I turned 26 and saw how my skill set enabled way more opportunities as I got to travel, work and collaborate with People outside my discipline.

Learning the 'Game of Life' via the University lens is what makes the 'academic' trope so astonishingly laughable: making 'safe spaces' a norm has to be the most infantile notion I've ever heard of. What part of Life, outside the perversions of a FAANG like corp where you're pretty much vetted for social regression/immaturity, accommodates that?

And as we saw with all the cancel culture and mob violence mentality that has been created (mainly on University campuses): it is cancerous. If you cannot see a problem with this, then I think you are the Problem.

I'm so glad I got out as that phase of campus life was starting to became the norm.

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

#206

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by red_admiral » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #168

red_admiral wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where independent schools are leading the way, universities are following. There was an ongoing political debate on some of the news sites before everything got taken over by coronavirus: independent schools have charity status (which includes exemption from business rates tax that goes back to the local area) because historically they were indeed typical examples of charities. For example: > "Eton College was founde…

HPSquared was talking about international students (effectively) subsidising scholarships for UK students in private schools. As far as I know, there is little evidence of any such "trickle down" effect at present, or reason to think that there will be one in the future. That is, it is unlikely that a typical British student at a private school will be paying lower fees owing to the contributions of their internation…

It's a tangent, yes. My point here (which I didn't articulate earlier) is that one of the arguments against independent schools having to pay business rates is they're indirectly helping the local community through this trickle down effect - sure they're taking in huge sums from overseas students, the argument goes, but that means home students get cheaper education than otherwise. As you say, there's very little evidence for this in practice.

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

#208

Post by caseysoftware » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

Melting_Harps wrote: post #196

chrstphrhrt wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 essent…

> 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). What do you think made the CSU/UC system the most affordable and attractive option in the Country? The thing you need to accept is that the unfettered administrative bloat was by design, and will always lead to this; the CSU/UC system was essent…

A few years ago, I had to consider whether I should create college funds for my kids. Based on everything you describe, I fought it for a while.. and then changed my mindset.

They don't have "college funds," they have "education funds" because they will always need education, regardless of how it's delivered.

I'm looking forward to a time when that can be used for Coursera, Lynda (LinkedIn Learning), and any other continuing education program. That will be a powerful shift.

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

#209

Post by VLM » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

non-entity wrote: post #176

thisisnico wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bachelo…

There are no US requirements for a PE stamp. There are 50 state level requirements, all somewhat different.

In my state, a four year BS degree in an engineering discipline is an automatic accept, although a non-engineering but engineering-related degree is accepted with four years of experience working essentially as a PE's apprentice. And regardless of degree situation, six years of PE apprentice type work qualifies. The criteria are not set by the state gov but by a professional cert board.

So a BS in EE from an ABET approved school is an automatic accept to start stamping civil engineering sewer projects, which seems a little weird as if obtaining a neuroscience degree qualifies one to perform open heart surgery, but whatever. My BS in computer science is "engineering like" enough that a four year apprenticeship under a PE would qualify me, although I didn't pursue that path. My SiL's primary K12 educator degree would qualify her after six years of apprenticeship under a PE, hilariously implying her liberal arts degree counts negative two years toward learning to be a PE, LOL.

I know some PEs and the required written test is reportedly very easy if you recently graduated, virtually impossible the longer you've been focused tightly in one industry. Stealth ageism much like how CS jobs "require" algorithm whiteboarding.

My state is extremely interested in prior felony convictions as a criteria. Not sure why that's relevant in any fashion to PE stamp a civil engineering project. I don't know how common that weird fixation is, this might be doc dropping what state I live in?

Anyway, in summary, there are 49 other states with differing opinions.

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

#210

Post by caseysoftware » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

jackpirate wrote: post #163

aikinai wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it is the best four years of life for many (maybe most?) Americans at least This cannot be true as most Americans do not go to college. Of those that do, most do not do it the "traditional" timeframe of 4 contiguous years after high school. For example, only 36% of 25-30 year olds have a college degree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...

You're right, it's not true. It's just great marketing through university's marketing departments, the media, etc.