I finally after all those years got my dream gig teaching at the university and it's all crashing down. Too bad foreign countries aren't courting teachers like they are researchers.
America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
51–60 of 72 posts
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you’re 90 and need someone to give you a sponge bath, cultural differences don’t matter much. You do get weird stories like Filipino nurses treating elderly WW2 era Japanese soldiers. I’m sure it’s only awkward for a moment. You could have said the same thing about any new immigrants anywhere. How will the Irish fit in Boston? How will Ukrainians make it in Chicago?
I think the Irish are a great example. We often think it was some huge migration because they had a really tough time integrating in spite of being near to completely culturally compatible. But the interesting thing is that that migration was negligible in size. The largest impact probably came after the Great Hunger in Ireland after which about a million migrants came to the US. [1] So that's a million migrants in a…
The idea is the immigrates start having kids and reverse the decline.
You'll see more multicultural marriages. This has already started.
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/trend/marriages-between-vietnam...
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people are, in general, in denial of what reduced fertility will bring. Consequences lag effect by decades so it's not exactly a secret what the future will hold. For instance most don't realize that Japan is still in the 'good ole days', relative to what awaits them in the future, even as places like Tokyo start to shrink today. I also think people don't realize how fast things start happening once they do…
South Korea probably already has immigration reform ready to go. They’ll just do everything else before letting people meaningfully immigrate. A “Korean” in 2100 might have Filipino, Indian, African ancestry. In fact the way things are going Africa will probably end up as the nursery of the world for a few decades. Then birth rates will collapse there too. The robots should be ready then
> South Korea probably already has immigration reform ready to
Nope. The population is still strenuously opposed [0]
> A “Korean” in 2100 might have Filipino, Indian, African ancestry
Other than Filipinos, highly unlikely. There's no pull factor for SK from India or Africa unlike in much of ASEAN.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#54When the Dutch government cut funding for universities they found a new cash cow: foreigners! But for Chinese students the Netherlands is exotic nobody wants to go to Missouri I guess. (Ironically the government is now complaining that there are too many foreigners and that everyone is speaking English).
> But for Chinese students the Netherlands is exotic nobody wants to go to Missouri I guess.
They used to go to these schools. There just aren't that many Chinese anymore either.
A decade ago, UIUC (mentioned in the article) was derisively called the "University of Indians and Chinese". Now, UIUC's Chinese admissions collapsed [0] - a trend that happened in every university.
The same thing will happen with Indian students within a decade, because Green Card waiting periods act as a quasi-thousands talents program, and you can demand an EU level tech salary in India with US (especially SV, Seattle, or NYC) work experience.
Already, a couple of my peers who worked at top ML labs in the Bay have begun transferring to the Indian branches of American R&D labs and/or taking faculty positions at top universites, when barely 15 years ago you would be hard pressed to find an American educated CS professor from a school like MIT, UIUC, or UW in India.
[0] - https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/29/university-il...
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#55Skimmed TFA. This might be an accurate summary: Less kids are enrolling in college due to several factors. A decline in birthrates (right around the 2008 recession), a decline in those who calculate that college provides a real return on investment and the cost of lost opportunity, and also a third strike in the form of federal funding cuts. There's a bunch of example case sob story, a lot of emotional focus. Yet I d…
We all need mechanics, electricians, and construction workers.
I know people whose kids skipped university and went to vocational school to become electricians or plumbers. Almost all of them have failed to land jobs, and every job they apply for they're competing with dozens of applicants. The one that got a job was forced to move halfway across the country to some rural town in the middle of nowhere to get that job.
We may all need mechanics and electricians but no one seems to want to hire an inexperienced mechanic or electrician.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the Irish are a great example. We often think it was some huge migration because they had a really tough time integrating in spite of being near to completely culturally compatible. But the interesting thing is that that migration was negligible in size. The largest impact probably came after the Great Hunger in Ireland after which about a million migrants came to the US. [1] So that's a million migrants in a…
The idea is the immigrates start having kids and reverse the decline. You'll see more multicultural marriages. This has already started. https://e.vnexpress.net/news/trend/marriages-between-vietnam...
Your article seems to be describing citizenship scams. Quoting it:
"In 2022, out of the 792 South Korean women who entered into marriage with Vietnamese men, 556 were remarriages. Among these, 482, or 86.7%, were women who originally came from Vietnam and had become naturalized South Korean citizens. They acquired South Korean nationality through their first marriage with local men, then divorced, and later remarried Vietnamese men."
Beyond this, many/most places in Asia have a culture that views previously married women, or single women over a certain age, very negatively. In China the term is 'leftover women.' That can make it difficult for these women to marry a local, and make it very easy for a foreigner to find a wife that may be more desirable than one he might be able to find in his own country. But it's not doing much of anything for fertility.
---
But more generally, what you're implying here is that fertility is a cultural problem and not necessarily an e.g. economic one. And I completely agree with you on that. But you're essentially aiming to change the culture by simply bringing in an inconceivably large bunch of new people (relative to previous migrations) and assuming things will turn out okay. But wouldn't it be rather less extreme to simply push for sustainable cultural values to begin with? Most Western nations are still fairly close to sustainable levels.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea is the immigrates start having kids and reverse the decline. You'll see more multicultural marriages. This has already started. https://e.vnexpress.net/news/trend/marriages-between-vietnam...
Your article seems to be describing citizenship scams. Quoting it: "In 2022, out of the 792 South Korean women who entered into marriage with Vietnamese men, 556 were remarriages. Among these, 482, or 86.7%, were women who originally came from Vietnam and had become naturalized South Korean citizens. They acquired South Korean nationality through their first marriage with local men, then divorced, and later remarried…
>But wouldn't it be rather less extreme to simply push for sustainable cultural values to begin with?
Completely change a culture that's developed over hundreds of years to make life too stressful to raise a family ? The moment people(women) had the agency to opt out they did.
>Most Western nations are still fairly close to sustainable levels.
>Summary: U.S. population growth is projected to decline, and the population will become much older over time. Preventing these outcomes will require faster immigration by several multiples of its current rate.
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2024/3/22/us-de...
Immigration is holding up the populations of many western nations.
Honestly it might just be time for a economic system that doesn't demand infinite growth. Who are we to tell a 25 year old to settle down and have 2.1 kids.
This is really a triumph of individual freedom over anything else. 100 years ago you'd be 20, pressured to marry someone you don't really like, and expected to have kids even if you'd rather do something else.
The current generation is largely saying no. It's not just an economic issue, most negative population growth countries are relatively wealthy.
It's a matter of individual autonomy.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#58Anyone who looked at demographic trends 10+ years ago knew that this was coming. As far back as the late 90s, it was clear that universities were overinvesting into the one of the last echos of the baby boom.
And the crack down on immigration is making the problem worse.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#59When the Dutch government cut funding for universities they found a new cash cow: foreigners! But for Chinese students the Netherlands is exotic nobody wants to go to Missouri I guess. (Ironically the government is now complaining that there are too many foreigners and that everyone is speaking English).
> But for Chinese students the Netherlands is exotic nobody wants to go to Missouri I guess. They used to go to these schools. There just aren't that many Chinese anymore either. A decade ago, UIUC (mentioned in the article) was derisively called the "University of Indians and Chinese". Now, UIUC's Chinese admissions collapsed [0] - a trend that happened in every university. The same thing will happen with Indian stu…
> UIUC's Chinese admissions collapsed [0] - a trend that happened in every university.
Is this a new trend that started in COVID? Because I was very plugged into the Chinese-studying-in-the-US trend from the China side, and I can tell you that it was still booming as of 2017.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But for Chinese students the Netherlands is exotic nobody wants to go to Missouri I guess. They used to go to these schools. There just aren't that many Chinese anymore either. A decade ago, UIUC (mentioned in the article) was derisively called the "University of Indians and Chinese". Now, UIUC's Chinese admissions collapsed [0] - a trend that happened in every university. The same thing will happen with Indian stu…
> UIUC's Chinese admissions collapsed [0] - a trend that happened in every university. Is this a new trend that started in COVID? Because I was very plugged into the Chinese-studying-in-the-US trend from the China side, and I can tell you that it was still booming as of 2017.
> as of 2017
That's when the change began.
China began limiting foreign withdrawals to $50,000 a year [0], which made it hard for Chinese international students at the undergrad level to join.
At the same time, the US began cracking down on Chinese nationals at American programs due to economic espionage attempts and monitoring Chinese nationals at American universities [1]
On top of that, the material condition did become better for Chinese scholars in high priority fields, so you did see a significant number of Chinese nationals who did research graduate programs return to China to either get tenure track or start a business in that space.
Finally, during Zero COVID (2020-2023), China placed extremely harsh exit and entry controls that basically cut Mainland China off from much of the world, and the subsequent economic slowdown made the cost proposition of studying in the US prohibitive if it wasn't a top tier program.
At this point, it has become a headache for Chinese students to go abroad, but nowadays, those that do try are doing so with the intention of staying abroad.
[0] - https://www.safe.gov.cn/en/2017/1230/1397.html
[1] - https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/18/the-chinese-communist-p...