51–60 of 231 posts
Seems like bs to me. If you're on the other side of the planet you're expected to be online at 3am for lectures and exams? Ridiculous.
I know this will be very unpleasant and will entail a lot of hardship for a lot of people but I can't help but wonder if in the long term this will help to start reversing the "brain drain" problem that many developing nations are struggling with. They'll still have access to their classes and be able to acquire the requisite skills, but now they'll be building something in their home country not stuck in a middle ti…
$50,000 a year for a Harvard undergraduate course exclusive of accommodation and food. Sounds like there's a lot of fat that could be trimmed. Sounds immoral in fact.
It's not immoral, it's business. Harvard has presented a product and you are free to take it or leave it. What is unfortuntate though is that we've been conditioned as a society to believe that a higher education is the most valuable thing you could ever earn.
Key quote: >” Visa requirements for students have always been strict and coming to the US to take online-only courses has been prohibited.” So it’s a reinforcement of policy rather than change although some institutions would like to see accommodation for this kind of circumstance —which is understandable if students came here with the intent to attend in person, but it’s worth noting the the visa requirements have n…
“It’s the law” is a terrible rationale though. Our values should inform our laws and their interpretation, not the other way around. There is a clear externality forcing this situation and it is clearly more detrimental to force them out of the country than to just make special accommodations/provisions. Pass a bill if that makes it more palatable and set it to have a termination date with the ability to “re-up” if t…
Student visas make good sense, allow people from around the world to come here and get an education which is better or different and have a cultural exchange... but if coming here just gets you the cultural exchange of going to the grocery store and watching lectures online that could be watched from anywhere... what's the point?
I personally have a problem with how international students are used as cash cows and then later often as a lower class of intellectual labor in labs (I have heard first hand stories of this happening, more than once). When universities have an ample supply of people willing to do anything in order to get citizenship, the people who don't have that circumstance are pushed out because of the poor conditions enabled by the many people who accept it. Career academia sucks. Grads and post grads are paid little and way overworked chasing after the dream of a rare tenured faculty position.
If you could get a student visa just by enrolling in a US-based online class, that would be quite the loophole for immigration.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That requirement was waived this spring. They're unwaiving it.[0] Rigid enforcement of rules designed for a world that doesn't exist anymore, and won't for a while, is a deliberate choice and not one that we have to make. The pandemic is an ongoing rolling emergency. Making life worse for people for no good reason may be the default, but that doesn't mean that the people who can waive the rule shouldn't be held respo…
The university i'm associated with, because of the pandemic, not only all the international students are having online classes, but the international grad students teaching the classes are giving them online too. And all those grad students on a teaching scholarship were told to remain in the US because their scholarship is tied to being residents of the State for some tax reason or another for the institution. fun t…
This is just another step in a broad-based program to make sure as few highly qualified people as possible can come to learn and work in the US. (1) F1 visas have been effectively banned in much of the world since COVID started - the required interviews could only be done in now-closed centers. (2) H1B, L1, H4, and J1 visas have been suspended until the end of the year, leaving OPT transfers, H1B lottery winners (alr…
40% of the Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families [2][3], so the U.S. is really shooting itself in the foot (again).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy)
[2] F500 2010: http://research.newamericaneconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/20... (pdf)
[3] F500 2017: https://startupsusa.org/fortune500/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“It’s the law” is a terrible rationale though. Our values should inform our laws and their interpretation, not the other way around. There is a clear externality forcing this situation and it is clearly more detrimental to force them out of the country than to just make special accommodations/provisions. Pass a bill if that makes it more palatable and set it to have a termination date with the ability to “re-up” if t…
Some logic needs to come in too though, what is the point of an international student renting an apartment in the US and taking a class over the Internet? Student visas make good sense, allow people from around the world to come here and get an education which is better or different and have a cultural exchange... but if coming here just gets you the cultural exchange of going to the grocery store and watching lectur…
And as for 'lower class intellectual labor', lets talk medical Residents? Years of indentured servitude post-doc. And we consider that reasonable.
As someone who studied in the US on an F1 visa, I can tell you that this rule has always been in place. The F1 visa was always extremely restrictive whether it was regarding minimum number of in person credits or regarding allowing students to work part time. It seems especially cruel that they'd choose to enforce the rule at a time like this.
> See this guidance from March: "Given the extraordinary nature of the COVID-19 emergency, SEVP will allow F-1 and/or M-1 students to temporarily count online classes towards a full course of study in excess of the limits... This temporary provision is only in effect for the duration of the emergency" Absolutely nothing substantive has changed since then, but ICE has apparently changed its mind.
https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The effect would be these students would not opt for these courses. For majority of these students the main attraction is employment in USA, for a small subset experiencing American culture. In absence of both of these there is no reason for students to take online courses from American Universities.
> The effect would be these students would not opt for these courses. For majority of these students the main attraction is employment in USA, for a small subset experiencing American culture. In absence of both of these there is no reason for students to take online courses from American Universities. Keep in mind that this is expected for 1 of at least 4 years of undergraduate, or 1 of 2-5 years of graduate, educat…