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Universities forced to face addiction to foreign students’ money

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

#211
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 weird thing is that people always seem to blame academia for the disconnect. If an industry wants its employees to receive a specific kind of training, it should pay for it.

In my industry (infosec), they do and it works quite well. Fact of the matter is that you really don't need that much training for most jobs.

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

#212

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…

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, and when I wasn't in lab, I was working on hours and hours of assignments. The professors never coordinated workload, so it all came at once in waves. All the exams were done in the same week, too, so you'd have to frantically cram. EDIT: Then, there was the job hunt during junior and senior years. Resume after resume, application after application, interview after interview. If I actually did any partying, I certainly don't remember it. Those four years were a blur of coursework that I still have nightmares about and am glad are firmly in the past. No job I've ever had in the decades since has come close to the amount of workload I had in university.

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

#213

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…

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…

Same here. I studied really hard while working 30 hours a week. I am so glad I never have to go to college again. It was easily the hardest time of my life. But it was worth it. I now have a great job (which is tons easier than college) that pays really well.

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

#214

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_...

That statistic only reflects students who graduated and doesn't support your claim that "most Americans do not go to college".

It appears that claim is wrong:

"In October 2018, 69% of 16- to 24-year-olds who graduated high school in 2018 were enrolled, with 9 out of 10 reporting they were full-time students – a marginal increase over 2017 high school graduates, 67% of whom were enrolled in college or university. Over the last decade, that figure has fluctuated between 66% and 70%."

https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-04-...

It is probably worth recognizing that for students who go to college for the experience there is little incentive to graduate.

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

#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 countrymen behind.

It isn't just some blind nationalism that fuels my concern; if you don't fix your domestic problems, soon foreigners won't have any more incentive to immigrate...plus, in addition to the pitiful devaluation of the degree, there's already a glut of grads in almost every sector, including STEM. Something has to change. We will also see wages rise as the employee pool shrinks and locals are less likely to work for lower wages because they're not escaping third world poverty.

It's high time to limit foreign students attendance. And maybe after that we can raise standards to recover what little prestige our schools had because between this international cash cow and diversity initiatives I can easily explain why so many people are graduating college today with minimal competence. Lowering standards makes us all worse off in the long run, even if your metric of "national college graduation rate" improves.

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

#216
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…

Is the situation any different across the Tasman

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I got to travel, work and collaborate with People outside my discipline

I got to do all those things during college (exception travel, but I'm not a big fan of travel). I've enjoyed my life since college, in some ways more. But college was a unique, wonderful experience that I remember fondly. Going back to school isn't in the cards for me, but it's certainly the source of the occasional idle thought.

The rest of your discussion seems to veer off on a tangent ranting about current social constructs at colleges. It certainly isn't part of the discussion I was having about how college can be a truly wonderful time in one's life. That has been true for decades, at the least, certainly predating the things you're talking about.

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

#218
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rocket- according to US employment policy- is a missile fired in a funny direction. So you need to be a citizen with a security clearance to work for any US aerospace company. This makes the cold shoulder a little more understandable, because they couldn't legally hire you even if they wanted to.

It is NOT true that you have to be a US citizen to work for a US aerospace company. Your comment can dissuade people from applying to jobs. It is true that there may be certain projects within a company that you cannot work on as a foreigner, and because of that it can be harder to get hired. But there are many foreigners who work at places like SpaceX, NASA, etc. For "sensitive country" foreign nationals (you can Go…

You need it to work on ITAR related projects. I worked in a company that had internally "subcontracted" uncleared employees from another unit for design work. One was belatedly found out to be a Canadian citizen and was removed the next day.

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

#219
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be mistaken and exaggerated, but did you really intend to write that wickerman is being disingenuous?

He's misrepresenting Dublin intentionally to contrive the point that AirBnB and student accomodation are entirely the cause of the problem. It's far more nuanced and complex -- involving tax laws, property dev incentives and planning laws and policy. None of which he mentions.

involving tax laws

property dev incentives - airbnb & student housing

planning laws - airbnb & student housing

policy - airbn and student housing

All of these except possibly the first item could directly address airbnb & student housing. I'm not seeing where you 2 disagree.

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah.

Or doing a PhD.

After that, any non-academic job is super easy.

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