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Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

bloomberg.com

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

#101

Post by red_admiral »

foldr wrote: post #87
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.

>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.

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

#102

Post by xiaolingxiao »

Yup. While in college, a friend of mine who worked in one of the departments said it's well known that if the department needs more money, then "just admit more Chinese grad students." The foreign students pay more, and receive poorer service in both from the school, and often from the professors.

This is of course by no means unique as the article says, Brown University almost went bankrupt in the 90s, so there was a program to target wealthy European families and admit their children to the school, in exchange for large donations and full tuition.

Many of these schools talk a big game about valuing education, but there is a reason many of them are older than the most storied for profit companies, and the fact that Universities are private and non-profit protect them from being audited.

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

#103

Post by amiga_500 »

red_admiral wrote: post #96

Good article, but I want to clarify a point since it could leave the impression that it's universities themselves driving this growth race. In the UK at least, we used to have a model where universities were funded by the government (through tax, of course) but the government also set hard limits on how many students you could enrol, with penalties for going over. The current model which Tony Blair in effect started…

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 given these gifts bestowed upon us by the tech gods, are we so hopelessly inefficient in the West?

What is the actual point in doing more research, when we have all this step jump in technology, and we can't seem to do anything any more?

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

#104

Post by tuankiet65 »

thawaway1837 wrote: post #61
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…

Rights so the Chinese pay hundreds of thousands of do,Lara so they can get F1 jobs (restricted largely to on campus or has to be study related, so it doesn’t pay), OPT jobs (capped at 1 year) or H1B jobs (needs to be renewed every year, at least by the Chinese who rarely get more than a 1 year extension), so they can get permanent residency after 10-15 years of being on an H1 based on current figures. Right, that mak…

> OPT jobs (capped at 1 year)

Minor nitpick, you get two years of extension if you graduate with a STEM degree.

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

#105

Post by killjoywashere »

amiga_500 wrote: post #103
red_admiral wrote: post #96

Good article, but I want to clarify a point since it could leave the impression that it's universities themselves driving this growth race. In the UK at least, we used to have a model where universities were funded by the government (through tax, of course) but the government also set hard limits on how many students you could enrol, with penalties for going over. The current model which Tony Blair in effect started…

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…

> we can't seem to do anything any more?

I disagree. We do some amazing shit. Elon Musk runs circles around ULA. My own research, as a far smaller example, has scaled up nicely despite the fact that in the old model it should be virtually impossible to do any research in the career track I'm in.

Tech doesn't help people who are bored (boring?). But it is like hydrazine for people who need to get serious shit done on the fringes of society.

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

#106

Post by thawaway1837 »

yardie wrote: post #83
thawaway1837 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rights so the Chinese pay hundreds of thousands of do,Lara so they can get F1 jobs (restricted largely to on campus or has to be study related, so it doesn’t pay), OPT jobs (capped at 1 year) or H1B jobs (needs to be renewed every year, at least by the Chinese who rarely get more than a 1 year extension), so they can get permanent residency after 10-15 years of being on an H1 based on current figures. Right, that mak…

I see a large population of SE Asian students at a university nearby. I honestly have no idea why they are here. The university is an expensive, private school. The campus isn’t particularly beautiful. Just an office park. And it’s not even ranked that high. I’m befuddled why anyone would choose to go to a low tier university in an expensive city. The only thing that comes to mind is getting an American visa. Because…

Marketing. And the fact that they are likely better than the universities most people would be exposed to in their home countries anyways, where the competition to get into the few decent schools is far more fierce.

The not so good universities spend a ton of money on marketing.

And some very good universities do too.

The American education brand was strong a decade ago, so any American university would be considered good. Further, people outside the US are often surprised by how many scams are prevalent in the US. The general belief used to be that the US was a largely sensible country where people did things the right way.

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

#107

Post by save_ferris »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #95
neumann wrote: post #13

I work at a University in Australia and have been on both sides of academic and professional. This unravelling was on the horizon for everybody, maybe not so soon, but definitely in the viewport. In an effort to drive up income streams there has been a slow erosion of Australian education (more at some universities than others) to cater for the international (Chinese and Indian predominantly) market. There are all so…

Something I've noticed is that universities in the US no longer seem to advertise their primary mission as education, but as providing the "college experience". Brochures are rife with amenities and activities like you're picking out a resort or extended summer camp where you can safely figure out who you are, make friends, and be protected until you're set free, job-pass in hand. These advertisements are also primar…

> 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 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.

I also think that the financial system around universities warped in such a way that it became easier to establish direct relationships with parents as university became less affordable to those trying to work while studying. Not to mention the absurd amount of money and effort that universities put into alumni communications to drive giving back to the school.

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

#108

Post by thawaway1837 »

tuankiet65 wrote: post #104
thawaway1837 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rights so the Chinese pay hundreds of thousands of do,Lara so they can get F1 jobs (restricted largely to on campus or has to be study related, so it doesn’t pay), OPT jobs (capped at 1 year) or H1B jobs (needs to be renewed every year, at least by the Chinese who rarely get more than a 1 year extension), so they can get permanent residency after 10-15 years of being on an H1 based on current figures. Right, that mak…

> OPT jobs (capped at 1 year) Minor nitpick, you get two years of extension if you graduate with a STEM degree.

Only if your employer has already applied for your H1B.

It’s 1 and a half year, and the reason it exists is (a) most students graduate and start jobs after the current year’s H1B process is already over, and (b) if you don’t get your employment visa in the first round (since it’s capped at 60k), then they want to give you a second chance.

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

#109

Post by KoftaBob »

Why stop there? They should be forced to face their addiction to easily accessible government backed student loans. It’s essentially a blank check that the gov has handed universities, and the gov is the one left to collect the repayment.

And then we wonder why college is so expensive? The current system gives them every incentive to charge whatever they want.

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

#110

Post by Merrill »

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…

The most efficient path seemed to be a BS in the home country, followed by an MS in the US, followed by employment in the US. The result is a lot of foreign students in grad school getting their ticket punched, while US students go on to work with a BS.
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