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Here is what I dont get. In the US we complain about higher education Academia yet millions of foreigners go to our schools. I saw a stat where the majority of

Here is what I dont get. In the US we complain about higher education Academia yet millions of foreigners go to our schools. I saw a stat where the majority of Engineer graduates are foreigners in the US. They are using the very system that we complain about to benefit them and their country.

patio11 16y ago
This is largely because people don't come from China to major in Women's Studies, Philosophy, or Anthropology. They come to major in things which will reward, with nearly 100% certainty, a career immediately after leaving school which pays excellent wages by Chinese standards. (A very minor portion of the whinging about US academia is about degrees which formerly lead to very well-paying careers but have been coming under pricing pressure, such that they now merely are comfortably middle class. This is the case in many of the hard sciences. Most of the whinging comes from holders of degrees which prepare them fabulously to whinge and not so fabulously to do anything else.) (Full disclosure: I have a degree in making things and another degree in making things up.)
- jacoblyles 16y ago
  That's a very unprogressive thing for you to say.
  - YuriNiyazov 16y ago
    I have a degree in both CS (making things) and Philosophy (making things up) and I completely agree with patio11's comment. Progressivism has nothing to do with it. Majoring in Art History (where there are 12 job openings a year) and then getting a job as a barista at the local coffee shop doesn't make you the bastion of progressivism.
    - jacoblyles 16y ago
      There are more valuable things to life than money. I challenge this reactionary view that the worth of a person's contribution to society can be measured by their salary. If a person chooses to enrich humanity's lot by providing value outside of the marketplace, it is the responsibility of society to support them. By refusing to do so, we all become poorer. Moreover, I note a trend in the fields of study that are being praised: they are all dominated by men. We praise male fields and dismiss female fields. I wonder if this doesn't reflect some deeper, troubling biases of our culture.
      - CWuestefeld 16y ago
        I challenge this reactionary view that the worth of a person's contribution to society can be measured by their salary. If their contribution is greater, then why isn't somebody willing to pay them more? If there was such a trove of hidden value, you would think that some greedy capitalist would snap it up and exploit it. If a person chooses to enrich humanity's lot by providing value outside of the marketplace, it is the responsibility of society to support them. This isn't a question of differing philosophies and values. This is just objectively wrong. In the degenerate case, if we all decide to become poets, then who is going to farm the food to feed us all? This should clue you in to the fallacy of your statement above. The marginal value of an additional poet is lower than the marginal value of another farmer, or another assembly line worker, or another programmer. Moreover, there is no such thing as "outside the marketplace". There is more to the market then just financial transactions. Everything we do: how we elect to use our time, the care we invest in a relationship, everything, is a decision about how we use our limited resources (time and attention in my two examples, but the potential list covers literally everything). And we necessarily make those decisions by weighing what we expect their costs to be versus what we expect to derive from them. And that is what the study of economics is about -- money is only the smallest part of it. I note a trend in the fields of study that are being praised: they are all dominated by men. We praise male fields... Holy mackerel, what a mouthful. You've got to be trolling, but I'll bite anyway. Let's start with the fact that YOU are the one that's characterizing things as "male" or "female"; I don't see anyone else doing so. Of the three cubicles bordering on mine, two of them are occupied by females; shall I call software development a "female" field? If not, then why would I ever praise it? But your statement is its own dis-proof. You (and the rest of the "progressives") are praising what you label "female fields", and implicitly condemning the "male" ones. Doesn't this show a priori that we don't universally favor one or the other, but rather have, as a society, a diverse set of opinions? Finally, I'd like to retell an old joke from my (engineering) college: Scientists learn to ask "why does that work?". Engineers are taught to ask "how does that work?". Accountants learn to ask "how much will it cost?". Liberal arts majors are trained to ask "do you want fries with that?" It's a little cruel, but still funny, I think.
  - patio11 16y ago
    Indeed, I almost sounded like a crotchety old Republican who voted for Dubya twice. Which is preposterous -- I'm only 28.
    - YuriNiyazov 16y ago
      My memory might be betraying me, but I believe I saw either a comment or a blog post from you at some point where you mentioned being Republican.
      - Poiesis 16y ago
        Psst! You missed the joke!
        YuriNiyazov 16y ago
        On an online forum? I don't doubt it.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    That may be the case, but is it also the truth?
- starkfist 16y ago
  International enrollment in all fields, including the humanities, is up. The Chinese may not be going to the Women's Studies department, but Venezuelans, Jordanians, Canadians, etc.. are. Art school these days must be 50% students from Japan and Korea.
  - dgabriel 16y ago
    My husband is a Korean citizen who came to the US and got an English PhD, and is now going for an MFA in creative writing. Both of his parents came to the US for graduate degrees, as well, before returning to Korea. His mother has an English PhD, and his father a Sociology PhD.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  The rest of your post is really good Patrick, but I think the domains you chose for illustrative purposes is kind of unfortunate: > This is largely because people don't come from China to major in Women's Studies, Philosophy, or Anthropology. These are extremely different disciplines. First, anthropology has actually a lot of practical value, skilled anthropologists are decent at making predictions, or at the very least, raising interesting questions. The CIA's precusor, the Office of War Information had a lot of anthropologists on its staff and has roots in that sort of study, surveying, and analysis from different objective and subjective sources. Philosophy is more of an an art, but a bit of training in philosophy can help a person resolve some important practical questions, and can help build character. So those two are fields valid for different reasons. Anthropology can be watered down and yucky due to its subjective nature at times, but can be very valuable when trying to draw conclusions from a mix of objective and subjective data. For instance, trying to synergize census data and diary accounts to figure out what the quality of life was like in 1850's Prussia. And then making predictions about how a change in water supply, or military conscription could have ripple effects in a modern society based on Prussian data from 1850, Greek data from way back when, and so on. Philosophy is what it is, and it's a legitimate field. People who are only philosophers and don't have training in other fields can sometimes ignore obvious practical considerations, but I think it's an incredibly good second or third field of study in concurrence with something else. Which brings us to women's studies - which, from all of my experience, seems to be formalized, institutionalized political activism and not a legitimate field of study. They don't submit their views to review or analysis from anyone outside their field, and intentionally create so much lingo and jargon that it becomes very hard to discuss in practical language. It's kind of the opposite of physics - physicists are always trying to explain very complex systems as straightforwardly as possible, are open to hearing anyone's view who can provide falsifiable evidence, and it's a cause for celebration when the old view of physics is falsified and a new paradigm takes over. Women's studies is the opposite - they're trying to take fairly common situations and give them complex and obfuscating terminology, they're insulated and very poorly receive anyone's opinion that doesn't support their current worldview, and fight tooth and nail against anything that disputes their canon. So, I fully agree with your comment, except that I think the three fields you chose were a little unfortunate. Philosophy can be valuable for people even when not directly relevant to careers. Anthropology has some bullshit involved with it at times, but can definitely be a solid field of study. Women's studies, though... I don't know, I don't want to see philosophy or anthropology get associated with that at all. Maybe the most damning thing is that women's studies directly contradicts itself frequently and gets indignant when someone tries to reconcile it. Most egregiously - one of the major justifications and arguments for sexual reassignment surgery is that transgendered people have "the other gender's brain pattern" - something like that, you can look it up in greater detail. So that's taught in Gender Studies 317 or whatever, but in Gender Studies 201 they're saying gender is all a social construct and all gender roles are created by the media. They don't want to get at correct worldviews, they want political power. If innate gender differences lends them political power - funding, access to services, favorable laws, new members of their political voting bloc - then there's innate gender differences. If "gender is a social construct" is good for political power - because it demonstrates oppression, justifies favorable laws, funding, and attracts new members to their political voting bloc - then gender is a social construct. And they let these two irreconcilable points of view live in the same building, and use whichever is convenient for the current argument! So, I guess you could say "one of these three is not like the other" - Anthropology has some practical career applications even though it can be abstract. Philosophy is definitely a legitimate field of study, and can be very good for developing a person's character even if there isn't immediate career opportunities involved. Women's studies? Well, it's not politically correct to say, but a thorough examination makes it look like it's not particularly a valid or good field of study, that's shameful that universities allow it into the same halls where legitimate disciplines are taught and learned.
tokenadult 16y ago
Thomas Sowell had a good comment years ago about why international students come to colleges in America. It's not just because they like the colleges, but also because they like being in America. For most students in the countries that send the most students to the United States, simply being in the United States is an immediate step up in several aspects of lifestyle, not least of which is more freedom of speech.
- patio11 16y ago
  While I yield to no one in the "living in America rocks for non-economic reasons too" category, I think a larger factor is that emigrating to the US pretty much quadruples your standard of living after a few years of work, and the US will only give you permission to emigrate if a) you're seeking a degree or b) you happen to find the love of your life, she is American, you get married, and you put up with a lot of BS from the immigration authorities. There are not that many single American women in Shandong, but there are a lot of people who don't think studying for four years is that bad of a price to pay to see their incomes quintuple. I mean, most of the employed programmers on HN make, what, $80 ~ $100k? Imagine there was a country where programmers routinely made $500k for writing routine CRUD apps. Fancy a spin there for a few years? That is roughly the scale of the economic opportunity gap (though it will, inevitably, close).
  - dgabriel 16y ago
    So you're specifically speaking of China, then? Lots of students from the developed world come to the US for schooling, as well, and see virtually no change in their lifestyle.
  - c1sc0 16y ago
    "emigrating to the US pretty much quadruples your standard of living after a few years of work" ... to which I counter that right now a good Chinese CS graduate from a major university can have a way better quality of life back in Shanghai than in the US. That is, if you're into the whole join-a-big-company-and-get-a-career-and-family thing, which most Chinese I know seem to be into.
jseliger 16y ago
Philip Greenspun explains this pretty well in "Women in Science:" http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science . Ignore the borderline sexist comments about women and pay attention to his explanation of the structure of academia. The big problem is opportunity cost: if you're a top-nerd American, you can probably make a relatively large amount of money right out of school as a hacker, engineer, consultant, and so forth. Why, then, go to grad school, get paid relatively little, toil for a job that might not exist, and deal with the uncertainties of academia? On the other hand, if you come from a developing country, grad school stipends can seem relatively large, your home labor market for advanced grads might be saturated, and an American PhD might be the key to advancement.
pw0ncakes 16y ago
Our individual professors are excellent. Our university system itself is poor-to-mediocre, and academia as a society and culture is, indeed, broken. "The universities" are great in the US because the professors and researchers are (mostly) awesome.

patio11 16y ago

This is largely because people don't come from China to major in Women's Studies, Philosophy, or Anthropology. They come to major in things which will reward, with nearly 100% certainty, a career immediately after leaving school which pays excellent wages by Chinese standards. (A very minor portion of the whinging about US academia is about degrees which formerly lead to very well-paying careers but have been coming under pricing pressure, such that they now merely are comfortably middle class. This is the case in many of the hard sciences. Most of the whinging comes from holders of degrees which prepare them fabulously to whinge and not so fabulously to do anything else.) (Full disclosure: I have a degree in making things and another degree in making things up.)

jacoblyles 16y ago
That's a very unprogressive thing for you to say.
- YuriNiyazov 16y ago
  I have a degree in both CS (making things) and Philosophy (making things up) and I completely agree with patio11's comment. Progressivism has nothing to do with it. Majoring in Art History (where there are 12 job openings a year) and then getting a job as a barista at the local coffee shop doesn't make you the bastion of progressivism.
  - jacoblyles 16y ago
    There are more valuable things to life than money. I challenge this reactionary view that the worth of a person's contribution to society can be measured by their salary. If a person chooses to enrich humanity's lot by providing value outside of the marketplace, it is the responsibility of society to support them. By refusing to do so, we all become poorer. Moreover, I note a trend in the fields of study that are being praised: they are all dominated by men. We praise male fields and dismiss female fields. I wonder if this doesn't reflect some deeper, troubling biases of our culture.
    - CWuestefeld 16y ago
      I challenge this reactionary view that the worth of a person's contribution to society can be measured by their salary. If their contribution is greater, then why isn't somebody willing to pay them more? If there was such a trove of hidden value, you would think that some greedy capitalist would snap it up and exploit it. If a person chooses to enrich humanity's lot by providing value outside of the marketplace, it is the responsibility of society to support them. This isn't a question of differing philosophies and values. This is just objectively wrong. In the degenerate case, if we all decide to become poets, then who is going to farm the food to feed us all? This should clue you in to the fallacy of your statement above. The marginal value of an additional poet is lower than the marginal value of another farmer, or another assembly line worker, or another programmer. Moreover, there is no such thing as "outside the marketplace". There is more to the market then just financial transactions. Everything we do: how we elect to use our time, the care we invest in a relationship, everything, is a decision about how we use our limited resources (time and attention in my two examples, but the potential list covers literally everything). And we necessarily make those decisions by weighing what we expect their costs to be versus what we expect to derive from them. And that is what the study of economics is about -- money is only the smallest part of it. I note a trend in the fields of study that are being praised: they are all dominated by men. We praise male fields... Holy mackerel, what a mouthful. You've got to be trolling, but I'll bite anyway. Let's start with the fact that YOU are the one that's characterizing things as "male" or "female"; I don't see anyone else doing so. Of the three cubicles bordering on mine, two of them are occupied by females; shall I call software development a "female" field? If not, then why would I ever praise it? But your statement is its own dis-proof. You (and the rest of the "progressives") are praising what you label "female fields", and implicitly condemning the "male" ones. Doesn't this show a priori that we don't universally favor one or the other, but rather have, as a society, a diverse set of opinions? Finally, I'd like to retell an old joke from my (engineering) college: Scientists learn to ask "why does that work?". Engineers are taught to ask "how does that work?". Accountants learn to ask "how much will it cost?". Liberal arts majors are trained to ask "do you want fries with that?" It's a little cruel, but still funny, I think.
- patio11 16y ago
  Indeed, I almost sounded like a crotchety old Republican who voted for Dubya twice. Which is preposterous -- I'm only 28.
  - YuriNiyazov 16y ago
    My memory might be betraying me, but I believe I saw either a comment or a blog post from you at some point where you mentioned being Republican.
    - Poiesis 16y ago
      Psst! You missed the joke!
      - YuriNiyazov 16y ago
        On an online forum? I don't doubt it.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  That may be the case, but is it also the truth?
starkfist 16y ago
International enrollment in all fields, including the humanities, is up. The Chinese may not be going to the Women's Studies department, but Venezuelans, Jordanians, Canadians, etc.. are. Art school these days must be 50% students from Japan and Korea.
- dgabriel 16y ago
  My husband is a Korean citizen who came to the US and got an English PhD, and is now going for an MFA in creative writing. Both of his parents came to the US for graduate degrees, as well, before returning to Korea. His mother has an English PhD, and his father a Sociology PhD.
lionhearted 16y ago
The rest of your post is really good Patrick, but I think the domains you chose for illustrative purposes is kind of unfortunate: > This is largely because people don't come from China to major in Women's Studies, Philosophy, or Anthropology. These are extremely different disciplines. First, anthropology has actually a lot of practical value, skilled anthropologists are decent at making predictions, or at the very least, raising interesting questions. The CIA's precusor, the Office of War Information had a lot of anthropologists on its staff and has roots in that sort of study, surveying, and analysis from different objective and subjective sources. Philosophy is more of an an art, but a bit of training in philosophy can help a person resolve some important practical questions, and can help build character. So those two are fields valid for different reasons. Anthropology can be watered down and yucky due to its subjective nature at times, but can be very valuable when trying to draw conclusions from a mix of objective and subjective data. For instance, trying to synergize census data and diary accounts to figure out what the quality of life was like in 1850's Prussia. And then making predictions about how a change in water supply, or military conscription could have ripple effects in a modern society based on Prussian data from 1850, Greek data from way back when, and so on. Philosophy is what it is, and it's a legitimate field. People who are only philosophers and don't have training in other fields can sometimes ignore obvious practical considerations, but I think it's an incredibly good second or third field of study in concurrence with something else. Which brings us to women's studies - which, from all of my experience, seems to be formalized, institutionalized political activism and not a legitimate field of study. They don't submit their views to review or analysis from anyone outside their field, and intentionally create so much lingo and jargon that it becomes very hard to discuss in practical language. It's kind of the opposite of physics - physicists are always trying to explain very complex systems as straightforwardly as possible, are open to hearing anyone's view who can provide falsifiable evidence, and it's a cause for celebration when the old view of physics is falsified and a new paradigm takes over. Women's studies is the opposite - they're trying to take fairly common situations and give them complex and obfuscating terminology, they're insulated and very poorly receive anyone's opinion that doesn't support their current worldview, and fight tooth and nail against anything that disputes their canon. So, I fully agree with your comment, except that I think the three fields you chose were a little unfortunate. Philosophy can be valuable for people even when not directly relevant to careers. Anthropology has some bullshit involved with it at times, but can definitely be a solid field of study. Women's studies, though... I don't know, I don't want to see philosophy or anthropology get associated with that at all. Maybe the most damning thing is that women's studies directly contradicts itself frequently and gets indignant when someone tries to reconcile it. Most egregiously - one of the major justifications and arguments for sexual reassignment surgery is that transgendered people have "the other gender's brain pattern" - something like that, you can look it up in greater detail. So that's taught in Gender Studies 317 or whatever, but in Gender Studies 201 they're saying gender is all a social construct and all gender roles are created by the media. They don't want to get at correct worldviews, they want political power. If innate gender differences lends them political power - funding, access to services, favorable laws, new members of their political voting bloc - then there's innate gender differences. If "gender is a social construct" is good for political power - because it demonstrates oppression, justifies favorable laws, funding, and attracts new members to their political voting bloc - then gender is a social construct. And they let these two irreconcilable points of view live in the same building, and use whichever is convenient for the current argument! So, I guess you could say "one of these three is not like the other" - Anthropology has some practical career applications even though it can be abstract. Philosophy is definitely a legitimate field of study, and can be very good for developing a person's character even if there isn't immediate career opportunities involved. Women's studies? Well, it's not politically correct to say, but a thorough examination makes it look like it's not particularly a valid or good field of study, that's shameful that universities allow it into the same halls where legitimate disciplines are taught and learned.

tokenadult 16y ago

Thomas Sowell had a good comment years ago about why international students come to colleges in America. It's not just because they like the colleges, but also because they like being in America. For most students in the countries that send the most students to the United States, simply being in the United States is an immediate step up in several aspects of lifestyle, not least of which is more freedom of speech.

patio11 16y ago
While I yield to no one in the "living in America rocks for non-economic reasons too" category, I think a larger factor is that emigrating to the US pretty much quadruples your standard of living after a few years of work, and the US will only give you permission to emigrate if a) you're seeking a degree or b) you happen to find the love of your life, she is American, you get married, and you put up with a lot of BS from the immigration authorities. There are not that many single American women in Shandong, but there are a lot of people who don't think studying for four years is that bad of a price to pay to see their incomes quintuple. I mean, most of the employed programmers on HN make, what, $80 ~ $100k? Imagine there was a country where programmers routinely made $500k for writing routine CRUD apps. Fancy a spin there for a few years? That is roughly the scale of the economic opportunity gap (though it will, inevitably, close).
- dgabriel 16y ago
  So you're specifically speaking of China, then? Lots of students from the developed world come to the US for schooling, as well, and see virtually no change in their lifestyle.
- c1sc0 16y ago
  "emigrating to the US pretty much quadruples your standard of living after a few years of work" ... to which I counter that right now a good Chinese CS graduate from a major university can have a way better quality of life back in Shanghai than in the US. That is, if you're into the whole join-a-big-company-and-get-a-career-and-family thing, which most Chinese I know seem to be into.

jseliger 16y ago

Philip Greenspun explains this pretty well in "Women in Science:" http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science . Ignore the borderline sexist comments about women and pay attention to his explanation of the structure of academia. The big problem is opportunity cost: if you're a top-nerd American, you can probably make a relatively large amount of money right out of school as a hacker, engineer, consultant, and so forth. Why, then, go to grad school, get paid relatively little, toil for a job that might not exist, and deal with the uncertainties of academia? On the other hand, if you come from a developing country, grad school stipends can seem relatively large, your home labor market for advanced grads might be saturated, and an American PhD might be the key to advancement.

pw0ncakes 16y ago

Our individual professors are excellent. Our university system itself is poor-to-mediocre, and academia as a society and culture is, indeed, broken. "The universities" are great in the US because the professors and researchers are (mostly) awesome.