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U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

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Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#231
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are so obviously wrong. Every single class I took had attendance taken. I went to university a few years ago. https://www.lssu.edu/financial-aid/retaining-aid-eligibility...

You are both wrong because you're making strongly absolutist claims. Why don't you both get it through your heads that different situations can be different.

My claim is that not all schools receiving federal aid are required to check attendance. My example proves that claim, because my school didn't.

The parent comment's claim is that all schools receiving federal aid are required to check attendance. But his example doesn't prove his claim and doesn't disprove mine, because my claim allows for schools to have attendance checks, it is just that they are not obligated to. And his example aligns with my claim just fine, while his is disproven by mine.

Tl;dr: my claim is that schools are not required to check attendance, not that all of them are required NOT to check attendance.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not a bug? A straightforward patch would be the introduction of FPTP and moving the executive role from the office of the head-of-state to a body controlled by congress.

I would argue the end-users (voters) mostly consider this a bug while the developers (majority party legislators at the state level) consider it a feature. Also, the founding fathers famously made it difficult for Congress to change anything, so dysfunction was definitely a feature.

Not so sure about that. I suppose the original intent was to have a healthy debate around major policy decisions. It's a check against wanton liberalism or conservatism. Congress seems eager to pass spending bills and take away our privacy. They move at light speed when doing that.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard and MIT don’t come to mind? (Mass. Gov Charlie Baker is a Republican)

And Johns Hopkins (MD) makes 3 out of 10.

MD is pretty blue, but the governorship flips back and forth. Similar to MA.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#234

Show of hands, who looks around today at the biggest challenges and problems we face, the ones that affect the greatest numbers of people the most perniciously, and that need swift & decisive solutions at almost any cost, and concludes that they're the ones having to do with foreign students being in the country taking online classes?

> Show of hands, who looks around today at the biggest challenges and problems we face, the ones that affect the greatest numbers of people the most perniciously, and that need swift & decisive solutions at almost any cost, and concludes that they're the ones having to do with foreign students being in the country taking online classes?

I'll bite despite your total lack of empathy.

The rule change was brought in by ICE, an administrative arm of DHS, on its own accord with a desire to use humans as bargaining chip to help Trump's inhuman agenda. Not by congress, not by Trump.

Since the problem was created by ICE in the first place, the onus is on them to fix it.

Now if you would've said the same thing last week when ICE actually brought this rule change abruptly, I would've agreed with you. Why bring unnecessary nonsense rules in the middle of a pandemic?

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#235

Show of hands, who looks around today at the biggest challenges and problems we face, the ones that affect the greatest numbers of people the most perniciously, and that need swift & decisive solutions at almost any cost, and concludes that they're the ones having to do with foreign students being in the country taking online classes?

> Show of hands, who looks around today at the biggest challenges and problems we face, the ones that affect the greatest numbers of people the most perniciously, and that need swift & decisive solutions at almost any cost, and concludes that they're the ones having to do with foreign students being in the country taking online classes? I'll bite despite your total lack of empathy. The rule change was brought in by I…

I think you read him backwards. He was saying that threatening to kick them out was stupid.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard and MIT don’t come to mind? (Mass. Gov Charlie Baker is a Republican)

I think those count as "blue states with moderate Republican governors," in quadrifoliate's mind. Very recently, Illinois the state trumped Chicago the city and successfully elected Bruce Rauner (Republican businessman) as governor in 2015. The result was the Illinois Budget Impasse. [1] Rauner was swiftly succeeded by a blue Governor in the next election. I think the above poster's point is states like Massachusetts…

> I think those count as "blue states with moderate Republican governors," in quadrifoliate's mind.

Yeah, that's dead on, clearly I have a lot to learn about US politics :) I didn't even think of checking, how does Massachusetts elect a Republican Governor?

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad populist has become a dirty word, because in theory it sounds great - i.e. democracy.

demagoguery is just beyond the fine line...

When right-thinking people despise populism, who will be left as populists? I'm more worried about a Congress that unanimously passes trillions in handouts to rich people during a health emergency (and the feckless orange moron who didn't veto such public theft) than I am about "demagogues".

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those count as "blue states with moderate Republican governors," in quadrifoliate's mind. Very recently, Illinois the state trumped Chicago the city and successfully elected Bruce Rauner (Republican businessman) as governor in 2015. The result was the Illinois Budget Impasse. [1] Rauner was swiftly succeeded by a blue Governor in the next election. I think the above poster's point is states like Massachusetts…

> I think those count as "blue states with moderate Republican governors," in quadrifoliate's mind. Yeah, that's dead on, clearly I have a lot to learn about US politics :) I didn't even think of checking, how does Massachusetts elect a Republican Governor?

Because there's more to the state than Boston.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this should never have been an issue to begin with, think of all the unnecessary stress and anxiety this has caused for the hundreds of thousands of international students impacted by this. More importantly, the long term damage is done. The noise was heard loud and clear that America is only as competent as its leader. Prospective future students are likely going to be ultra careful before choosing this countr…

> The noise was heard loud and clear that America is only as competent as its leader. Honest question because I'm not a student of world politics: what countries have had consistently better governance over the last 20 years? Every time some possibility comes to mind, I quickly recall a reason to cross it off the list.

Off the top of my head, I think of nations who have dealt effectively with the current health challenge: New Zealand, South Korea, Germany, etc.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more a case of the Trump administration momentarily forgetting the Harvard is basically a hedge fund that runs a college and that their revenue stream is not to be messed with. If they added a clause that the rule only applied to colleges with an endowment of less than $1 billion it would continue along just fine.

Actually, in the case of Harvard it affected far more PhD students than tuition-paying undergrads. Also, dozens of universities, cities, and states signed on to this lawsuit. It has little to do with Harvard's bottom-line.

Harvard's endowment was not built from undergraduate tuition. 20% of undergrads don't pay tuition, and half pay reduced tuition, anyway. [0] You're correct, though, that Harvard's actions in this situation have nothing to do with a "revenue stream". Occasionally Harvard does the right thing, simply because it's the right thing to do.

[0] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid

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