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

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

#221

Post by jimbob45 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #194

jimbob45 wrote: post #155

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.

Why cap foreign students (or acceptance of student loans), though? Foreign students are not a bad thing. There’s not a limit in the number of professors. In fact, we’re graduating way more graduate students than there are slots of tenured teaching positions. The problem isn’t too many foreign or domestic students or not enough people qualified to be professors, it’s administrations ran by greedy MBA types.

Foreign students because too many of them perverts the motivations of universities (and we have more than enough universities to go around for all prospective foreign students.

Financial aid because unchecked student loans allow universities to charge as much as they want for tuition. Student loans being the most predatory type of loan (being non-dischargeable)

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

#222

Post by sullyj3 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 5:51 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…

Another reasonable hypothesis is that only the elite had the opportunity to become authors

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

#223

Post by burntoutfire » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #212

burntoutfire wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I blame all those '80s college movies showing college being all about drinking, partying, and getting laid. Gives kids a false impression that that's what going to university is going to be. I don't know where/when those people you mention went to undergrad. When I went, it was brutal and endless. In order to graduate in 4 years, I had to take 18-20 credits per semester. When I wasn't in the classroom, I was in lab,…

Here in Poland, only people studying medicine and maybe some hard sciences (chemistry, physics) at best universities get so much workload. I studied CS at a supposedly one of top universities and I probably studied (in and out of class) for 10-20 hours per week on average.

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

#224

Post by koheripbal » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #187

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…

US Education isn't a path to citizenship or even an H-1B visa. Even after getting a 4-year degree from a top American university, you are still competing for a visa slot with tens of thousands of minimum wage applications from overseas consulting firms. And that's assuming you get a job offer right out of college with someone willing to sponsor you. Then you'll have to go through the visa lottery ( Those with the mea…

This is not accurate. If you are physically here on a student visa and you land a job with a large corporate that is willing to sponsor you (which is common for graduates with tech degrees or from ivy league schools), then you do _not_ need to enter the lottery for your visa.

Many many fellow engineering students went down this road with me - all are US citizens now.

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

#225

Post by cvlasdkv » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 7:43 PM UTC

caseysoftware wrote: post #208

Melting_Harps wrote: post #196

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). 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 co…

A lot of "education" is just branding and prestige. For that, they will need a lot of money.

And before techies get up in arms about how much of a meritocracy their field is -- survey your FAANG/elite startup coworkers. See what school they went to.

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

#226

Post by robotresearcher » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 8:11 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.

The stuff you can learn on the job, you should. The stuff you won't is what college is for.

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

#227

Post by Robotbeat » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #221

Robotbeat wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why cap foreign students (or acceptance of student loans), though? Foreign students are not a bad thing. There’s not a limit in the number of professors. In fact, we’re graduating way more graduate students than there are slots of tenured teaching positions. The problem isn’t too many foreign or domestic students or not enough people qualified to be professors, it’s administrations ran by greedy MBA types.

Foreign students because too many of them perverts the motivations of universities (and we have more than enough universities to go around for all prospective foreign students. Financial aid because unchecked student loans allow universities to charge as much as they want for tuition. Student loans being the most predatory type of loan (being non-dischargeable)

Sounds like the solution for #2 is to make student loans dischargable and #1 to eliminate profit-seeking from university motivations. Capping foreign students sounds like a bandaid solution that wouldn't address the core problems and would make other things much worse (decline of rural communities, quality of American education system, America's influence, standing, and soft-power, plus reducing highly skilled immigration rate).

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

#228

Post by hazz99 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #86

hazz99 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is now online and they cannot access any university resources. Why should they pay the same price for a quarter of the value?

So the value is not really about "education"?

I definitely don't get the same learning outcomes without being in a classroom. Everything is harder. It's harder to ask questions and have in depth discussions. I struggle to pay attention. Lectures are less engaging.

None of the campus facilities are available. A large % of my course fees go toward maintaining labs, student groups and sports. I can't touch any of those.

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

#229

Post by paxys » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #224

paxys wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Education isn't a path to citizenship or even an H-1B visa. Even after getting a 4-year degree from a top American university, you are still competing for a visa slot with tens of thousands of minimum wage applications from overseas consulting firms. And that's assuming you get a job offer right out of college with someone willing to sponsor you. Then you'll have to go through the visa lottery ( Those with the mea…

This is not accurate. If you are physically here on a student visa and you land a job with a large corporate that is willing to sponsor you (which is common for graduates with tech degrees or from ivy league schools), then you do _not_ need to enter the lottery for your visa. Many many fellow engineering students went down this road with me - all are US citizens now.

Nope, that is incorrect. You can start working on an OPT work permit (which will have a duration of 12 months with a potential 24 month extension for certain fields), but after that the company WILL have to apply for a H-1B through the lottery.

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

#230

Post by geebee » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

twomoretime wrote: post #215

This is quickly spreading into the corporate sector. I recruit occasionally and even at top tier schools, 90%+ of our applicants and career fair participants are foreigners. I've counted the resumes. I don't have anything against immigration per se, and I don't want to be accused of xenophobia or any such nonsense, but this is not ok. We are catering to international populations while essentially leaving our countrym…

Elite US students scheme to get into top law, MBA, and medical school programs, but they don't show nearly as much enthusiasm for graduate engineering programs. This is probably rational market behavior, the result of opening engineering up to international competition while sheltering the professions from it.

As policy, the US government gives the bar and AMA tremendous power to exclude foreign degree holders and greatly limit the number of foreign nationals at US med and law schools. At the same time, the US government created a visa program to bring in hundreds of thousands of competitors in STEM fields, and created special exemptions to the lottery that encouraged US graduate programs to fill their classes with students from overseas.

People can agree or disagree that this is good policy, but it seems pretty clear to me that the US interfered with the markets and created policies that encourage people who would like to live in the US but don't have that right to study engineering, and it encouraged people who already have that right to do something else, like law, medicine, or other protected fields.

Even if you agree this was bad policy overall, there's a tremendous amount of room to disagree about how to solve it. Restrictionists might say that we should restrict all professions equally. Libertarians might say the problem isn't that engineering is wide open, it's that law and medicine and everything else aren't open enough.