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Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

nytimes.com

71–80 of 125 posts

Re: Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero sum ass mentality. Top performing international students are likely to start companies and create jobs which is great for US high school and college students.

Are top performing US students less likely to start companies and create jobs than international?

Objectively yes.

Immigrants make up 14% of the population but start more than 20% of businesses.

44% of fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrants or their children. Steve Jobs' dad was a Syrian immigrant student. Elon Musk was on F1, J1, and H1B visa.

Re: Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

#72
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just stay and bring their gifts to their own country?

because the infrastructure in their home countries likely don't exist. some people are just that much smarter and need such an environment. Or, there's risk to being in their home country where academic freedom might not really be a thing. it's like why if you show serious promise in soccer at a young age, you go to Europe as soon as you can - you will be better developed there in a more mature environment as opposed…

Why not build the infrastructure with their smarts?

Re: Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just stay and bring their gifts to their own country?

Yup, that's what they will do now. Which is indeed a benefit for their countries. And is a loss for the US. The brain drain was real and the US was the beneficiary and that may be ending soon. Not sure what your point is? Are you happy that the US will be worse off than it was before?

I think America will be ok.

Re: Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

#76

So more spots for Americans? Doesn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing to me.

Not sure about the economics of it in the US, but in many countries international students subsidise domestic students, because they pay full fees whereas domestic students generally do not. Back during the financial crisis lowered enrolment of international students was a factor in Irish universities having to discontinue courses, say; they just weren't economically possible without that subsidy.

Re: Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

#77
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the infrastructure in their home countries likely don't exist. some people are just that much smarter and need such an environment. Or, there's risk to being in their home country where academic freedom might not really be a thing. it's like why if you show serious promise in soccer at a young age, you go to Europe as soon as you can - you will be better developed there in a more mature environment as opposed…

Why not build the infrastructure with their smarts?

The path of least resistance is obviously to go where the infrastructure is.

Also, smarts needed to bootstrap modern infrastructure from scratch with limited resources are different than smarts needed to design a popular app, for example.

Re: Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that's what they will do now. Which is indeed a benefit for their countries. And is a loss for the US. The brain drain was real and the US was the beneficiary and that may be ending soon. Not sure what your point is? Are you happy that the US will be worse off than it was before?

I think America will be ok.

Being okay is a lot different from maintaining academic, innovative, and cultural dominance which provides a standard of living many have grown used to.

Re: Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But personal experience is not. I went to college and was friends with the foreign students. They were average.

You must've been pretty busy hanging out with a statistically significant quantity of all of them.

[flagged]

Re: Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

#80
post #8

It's going to be a rough time for a lot of colleges that have been using foreign students paying full price to fund their operations. Especially now that the incoming college aged population is beginning to shrink and the percentage attending college has peaked, so the domestic population probably won't be able to fill the seats at less competitive colleges.

U.S. colleges poised to close in next decade, expert says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45171434 - September 2025 Looming 'demographic cliff': Fewer college students and fewer graduate - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42634596 - January 2025

Yep. This is, of course, what's really happening, same as before. The next step is that highly educated jobs in the industry disappear, which then gives you cheap colleges with great teachers, but not much reason to study, and then we're back where we started this whole debacle in the 1990s.
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