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I generally would like to see a more patriotic (real patriotism: none of this flags and hoo-rah silliness) approach to student recruitment and scholarships on c
by pnathan 11y ago
I generally would like to see a more patriotic (real patriotism: none of this flags and hoo-rah silliness) approach to student recruitment and scholarships on campuses. I believe American schools can produce excellent students. I think the US has some very high-class aspirations and values, and care should be taken to preserve them and to grow practices such as tenure and free speech which let the best of US values flourish.
Having a heavy mix of people from places with other aspirations and values will dilute this system.
Of course: the language issue is a big deal. I've had fellow-students that couldn't speak or understand a word of verbal English - in graduate school!!! But their written was adequate. I don't believe they should have been accepted - they should have been kindly redirected to their national universities. Most international students don't have this issue, of course! Most are very fluent in English, even if they have an accent.
One very tangible aspect of the situation is that international students often pay cash and are charged out the ying-yang to attend. Perhaps if our fine federal government mandated public universities have equal costs for national and international students, universities wouldn't feel quite so incentivized to attract the (often extremely talented!) international students.
- vkou 11y agoThis sounds like a good idea - perhaps it could be pushed even further - why can't we do more to discourage students from attaining out-of-state universities? Admitting a heavy mix of people from places like Missouri and Alabama will dilute the wonderful high-class aspirations and values that you see in a place like California, New York, or Washington.
- alphydan 11y agoWell, there are terrible neighbourhoods in California. And for Texan universities, some of the locals have accents. I would restrict it good neighbourhoods and well spoken gentlemen/women. This should avoid all the dilution. /s
- bilbo0s 11y agoI think you missed his point. In places like Alabama, nearly everyone will have an accent. The implication being that anyone with a southern accent, which can be difficult to understand, would cause what you are terming "dilution". I don't know? My own belief is that making New Yorkers go to school with people from Alabama provides an additional dimension to the education for all concerned. I believe there is value in it. Reasonable people are free to disagree of course.
- saint_fiasco 11y agoNote to self: If you ever go to study something at an American university, pretend to be one of those deaf-mutes.
- fghfghgfhfg 11y agoI've had classmates (also in graduate school) that didn't even have adequate writing skills. Attempts to communicate via writing required a lot of guessing and hoping. They did have some small verbal ability, but it was extremely limited. Any sort of complex communication with them was essentially impossible.
- clevernickname 11y agoPatriotism died under the past few decades of left-leaning culture. Entire generations seem to believe that America has the worst culture on Earth and is singlehandedly responsible for all of the evil in the world. You can't assimilate foreigners when you don't have any respect for your own culture. You can't assimilate foreigners when you view assimilation as a negative goal. On another note, if universities can't assimilate wealthy, educated Chinese, no wonder Europe is having a refugee crisis.
- bo1024 11y agoThe trend in the article sounds like it is a bit parochial or patriotic in a bad way: Exploiting foreign students' wealth to subsidize the domestic students' experiences, without necessarily giving the foreigners an experience that matches what they're paying. It seems to me that these international populations are being used as tools in the financial arms race of colleges. That doesn't mean to say that this international population is all or even most concerned with entering US schools genuinely for the experience, values, and education (as opposed to the diploma or prestige or so on). Exploitation can go both ways, I guess.