11 ms·

It's a double edged sword. For a few reasons. Firstly it maintains an elite who are much better educated, and skilled, than those at home. Secondly, when ther

It's a double edged sword. For a few reasons. Firstly it maintains an elite who are much better educated, and skilled, than those at home. Secondly, when there's lots of foreign students from the same place, they just clique up. In my university there were a lot of Chinese students that hung around almost exclusively with other Chinese students. One year I represented the student common room, a sort of social club/support network for everyone living in one of the 20 odd accommodation halls. Despite trying, the 50-100 Chinese in our hall never mixed, keeping themselves extremely secluded from the rest of us. I remember chatting regularly with one person. To put that in context, I knew the name and would at least exchange greetings with virtually every one of the other 200 odd people in the hall. There were a lot of other foreign students because it was a self catering hall. They were better, though still ultimately formed their own, mixed nationality, foreign students clique within a few weeks. It was more accessible though as the shared language was English.

spunker540 7y ago
I think a lot of foreign students come to the US wanting to make friends with Americans and more-or-less “assimilate” but then quickly realize their English language skills aren’t as strong as they thought and that the cultural differences are larger than they thought and truthfully, that Americans aren’t as welcoming and tolerant of those differences as they thought. So they fallback to a much more comfortable situation by hanging out with other fellow transplants in what is still a very foreign and challenging situation. A much smaller scale example of this is when I studied for a semester in France. I thought my French was decent but it turned out to be barely comprehensible by native French-speakers which doesn’t make for easy or fun friendships.
- whoevercares 7y ago
  Totally, I think the knowledge about the culture is also very important in such blind social setting. Otherwise the conversation ends fairly quickly. I do think most Americans are quite welcoming but it’s quite awkward when it comes to mutual knowledge of the other’s culture
- cgriswald 7y ago
  My school has a decent population of both Chinese nationals and Chinese-Americans who speak the language at home. The Chinese nationals are either friendly with everyone (with varying degrees of skill in English) or completely cliquey - excluding even the Chinese Americans who speak their language.
- rasz 7y ago
  France is a very special case, so is Quebec. Your French was probably more than intelligible to natives, they scoffed you out of nationalistic pride, how dare you try speaking the holy language of culture and fine art.
  - aeontech 7y ago
    You seem to think you know better than the parent commenter what their experience was, despite the fact that they were there and you were not. Interestingly, what you imply is a more negative view of the experience rather than a more positive, which may make one think you hold a prejudiced view of the French specifically for some unstated reason.
    - rasz 7y ago
      Have you been abroad? and compared your experiences to France? Speaking broken Czech in Prague gets smiles, encouragement and comments about Slavic language similarities. Doing the same in France results in evil eye and being treated as an asshole.
      - pmyteh 7y ago
        Not uniform across France, either. If you try your broken French in out-of-the-way villages in Brittany, you will generally once again get your smiles and encouragement. In Paris, more of the evil eye. The Netherlands is interesting. It's nearly guaranteed that their English is better than your Dutch, so if you try anything more than "good morning" then they will generally rapidly switch to English. More politely than in France, but with a firmness that indicates no desire at all to waste time on communication problems when none are necessary.
        Phemist 7y ago
        You can even have it the other way around. An English colleague of mine tried to be polite and speak in (obviously non-native) Dutch to a Dutch lady in a super market once. The lady got offended by it and said "I _do_ speak English, you know". As if, rather than for practice, he tried to speak Dutch because he assumed she couldn't hold up her end of a conversation in English.
- qwerty9876 7y ago
  In Finland the Erasmus/foreign exchange students of universities also tend to hang out among themselves and the native Finns don't really care about them. One thing I've heard is that the Finns consider many of the exchange students to be a bit juvenile since in their home countries people often live with parents until their 30s. Whereas most Finnish students move out and become fully independent by age 20.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - veb 7y ago
    where on earth is it the norm to be living with your parents until you're in your 30s? Kiwi here, a lot of us move out and go flatting at the first possible chance we get - which is right after high school/first year of uni.
    - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
      > where on earth is it the norm to be living with your parents until you're in your 30s? The south of Europe. Spain is probably the most outstanding country in this regard.
      - rogy 7y ago
        And increasingly common in the UK
        wyclif 7y ago
        Yes. It's much more expensive now to get one's own flat or share it with roommates in, say, London than it has been in the recent past. And it's only going to get worse.
      - wyclif 7y ago
        Also southeast Asia! In the Philippines, for instance, it's quite common for both women and men to live with their parents until they get married.
- ajcodez 7y ago
  It’s true in cities as young professionals too. It’s often a group of friends where everyone moved to the city after school or a group of friends that grew up there.
turk73 7y ago
I remember touring Harvard around '91 when I was looking at colleges. I recall very clearly thinking: "Wow, I will never fit in here with these elites." I never even applied and probably couldn't have afforded it, anyways. Even back then it was very obvious what those schools represent. I don't really care if it is US elite or Saudi elite, the idea that we have an elite class such as it is is incredibly counterproductive to keeping and maintaining a free and open society. We're seeing the the fruits of that elitism right before our very eyes, those chosen to run companies and sit on boards of directors are not the regular people. They are the insiders, invited because of their status. They rotate in and out of government and academia. So not only is elitism bad for other countries, it is seriously bad for the US as well!
whoevercares 7y ago
Admittedly social event/club is one of the most awkward activities one could host for native Chineses. Similar event only happens when people are pushed (by their parents) to arranged group dating event. Interactive games of small group works the best.
thatcat 7y ago
I've seen this with happen with students from the same us high school as well.
sametmax 7y ago
Short term yes, but long term, it's our best chance to share values, learn about each others, and grow out of the bubble of our society. Short travel is a mind opener. But living abroad dye your soul forever.
lambdasquirrel 7y ago
As an Asian-American, I have to say that I envied the Chinese who could stay amongst themselves. Just saying.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Can you expand and explain what you mean?
  - lambdasquirrel 7y ago
    given the downvotes I just got, the nationalism on HN lately, and the narcissism in US-centric discourse in general, no, I do not wish to explain or expand on this it is to the US-centric benefit that I should mention it, or expend the energy to explain myself, not the other way around
    - p1esk 7y ago
      FYI, I upvoted your initial comment, but downvoted this one.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      Why did you even add your cryptic two cents on this forum if you refuse to explain what you even meant? How is that not just pure, masturbatory noise? Holding your point hostage because you got a downvote is especially ridiculous.
      - dang 7y ago
        Please don't cross into being personally aggressive no matter how annoying another comment is or feels.
    - dang 7y ago
      I think I partly recognize the feeling and the situation you're alluding to, but still: if you're not willing to post substantive information, it's best not to comment. Posting a vague and provocative allusion and then refusing to answer normal requests for clarification doesn't help the discussion here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
gok 7y ago
China is a bit of an exceptional case. Student exit visas require classes from the party strongly discouraging making too many local friends.
- confusedhnguy 7y ago
  Source please? Edit: I can't even ask for a reference without getting downvoted again and again. Nice.
  - gok 7y ago
    Are you asking for a source that confirms that China requires students (and every other national) to have an exit visa to leave the country?
- powerapple 7y ago
  What? Do you mean the state sponsored student or student in general? There is no exit visa. And there is no classes.
Stratoscope 7y ago
> the 20 odd accommodation halls > the other 200 odd people in the hall For anyone unfamiliar with this somewhat uncommon usage, Matt is not saying that these are odd accommodation halls or odd people (strange or unusual). The "odd" here means that the preceding number is approximate - there are about 200 people in this hall, and about 20 halls in total. It's usually written with a hyphen to make this more clear: "the 20-odd accommodation halls" or "the other 200-odd people in the hall."
brightball 7y ago
This was one of the big complaints when there was a push for a diversity center at Clemson a couple of years ago. It was pitched exclusively as a place for people of other cultures to use as a hang out, separated from the rest of the university students...which seemed like exactly the opposite of what increasing diversity should be aiming for.
dmix 7y ago
They also discover they don't need to assimilate since every western city, at least in North America, has enough Chinese citizens and community resources where you can easily survive with just Mandarin/Cantonese and minimal English. There are plenty of Chinese people here in Toronto who have been here for two plus decades and still have very poor English (or feign as much). Because they live in Chinese communities, shop at Chinese grocery stores, and eat at Chinese restaurants. It's their kids who learn English or the ones entering a work environment where English is used.
houqp 7y ago
I saw the same behavior for foreign students studying in China, they only hangout with their own group due to language and culture barriers. My university has lots of foreign students but i have never meet any of them in social settings except one for like 10 minutes during my 4 years undergrad. Even within Chinese in China, people from the same region tend to hangout much more due to language and culture differences. I grew up speaking both mandarin and cantonese natively so i made friends with both sides and saw the same pattern. I would say this is just human nature. It is amplified for Chinese students in the west because there are more of them ;) Believe me, they really want to hangout with native students as well, but it’s not easy. It’s like you know going to gym is good for you, but because it requires extra hard work every day, you ended up skipping it.
seventhtiger 7y ago
The Saudi students are not from an elite class. They had huge abroad scholarship programs open to every high school graduate that includes full tuition, travel, and living expense. Every year grade cutoffs are announced and applicants are awarded scholarships. Most Saudis in US universities are actually low to middle class students who graduated highschool with good grades. This is one of the strongest forces of social mobility I have seen in any country. In terms of liberalization, Saudis who studied abroad are the leaders of the liberal movements within the country. They don't transform into liberal Americans, but they do shift into liberal Saudis. Liberal Saudis are still on average more conservative than their American classmates, but back home they create the shift we are seeing today in a progressive direction. Both effects are intended by the government. The social mobility aspect is part of the Saudi welfare state, and it adds great economic value through knowledge transfer. The liberalization is part of a long campaign to loosen the grip of religious leaders on the community and consolidate power. Source: I went to university abroad on the King Abdullah scholarship program.

spunker540 7y ago

I think a lot of foreign students come to the US wanting to make friends with Americans and more-or-less “assimilate” but then quickly realize their English language skills aren’t as strong as they thought and that the cultural differences are larger than they thought and truthfully, that Americans aren’t as welcoming and tolerant of those differences as they thought. So they fallback to a much more comfortable situation by hanging out with other fellow transplants in what is still a very foreign and challenging situation. A much smaller scale example of this is when I studied for a semester in France. I thought my French was decent but it turned out to be barely comprehensible by native French-speakers which doesn’t make for easy or fun friendships.

whoevercares 7y ago
Totally, I think the knowledge about the culture is also very important in such blind social setting. Otherwise the conversation ends fairly quickly. I do think most Americans are quite welcoming but it’s quite awkward when it comes to mutual knowledge of the other’s culture
cgriswald 7y ago
My school has a decent population of both Chinese nationals and Chinese-Americans who speak the language at home. The Chinese nationals are either friendly with everyone (with varying degrees of skill in English) or completely cliquey - excluding even the Chinese Americans who speak their language.
rasz 7y ago
France is a very special case, so is Quebec. Your French was probably more than intelligible to natives, they scoffed you out of nationalistic pride, how dare you try speaking the holy language of culture and fine art.
- aeontech 7y ago
  You seem to think you know better than the parent commenter what their experience was, despite the fact that they were there and you were not. Interestingly, what you imply is a more negative view of the experience rather than a more positive, which may make one think you hold a prejudiced view of the French specifically for some unstated reason.
  - rasz 7y ago
    Have you been abroad? and compared your experiences to France? Speaking broken Czech in Prague gets smiles, encouragement and comments about Slavic language similarities. Doing the same in France results in evil eye and being treated as an asshole.
    - pmyteh 7y ago
      Not uniform across France, either. If you try your broken French in out-of-the-way villages in Brittany, you will generally once again get your smiles and encouragement. In Paris, more of the evil eye. The Netherlands is interesting. It's nearly guaranteed that their English is better than your Dutch, so if you try anything more than "good morning" then they will generally rapidly switch to English. More politely than in France, but with a firmness that indicates no desire at all to waste time on communication problems when none are necessary.
      - Phemist 7y ago
        You can even have it the other way around. An English colleague of mine tried to be polite and speak in (obviously non-native) Dutch to a Dutch lady in a super market once. The lady got offended by it and said "I _do_ speak English, you know". As if, rather than for practice, he tried to speak Dutch because he assumed she couldn't hold up her end of a conversation in English.
qwerty9876 7y ago
In Finland the Erasmus/foreign exchange students of universities also tend to hang out among themselves and the native Finns don't really care about them. One thing I've heard is that the Finns consider many of the exchange students to be a bit juvenile since in their home countries people often live with parents until their 30s. Whereas most Finnish students move out and become fully independent by age 20.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- veb 7y ago
  where on earth is it the norm to be living with your parents until you're in your 30s? Kiwi here, a lot of us move out and go flatting at the first possible chance we get - which is right after high school/first year of uni.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    > where on earth is it the norm to be living with your parents until you're in your 30s? The south of Europe. Spain is probably the most outstanding country in this regard.
    - rogy 7y ago
      And increasingly common in the UK
      - wyclif 7y ago
        Yes. It's much more expensive now to get one's own flat or share it with roommates in, say, London than it has been in the recent past. And it's only going to get worse.
    - wyclif 7y ago
      Also southeast Asia! In the Philippines, for instance, it's quite common for both women and men to live with their parents until they get married.
ajcodez 7y ago
It’s true in cities as young professionals too. It’s often a group of friends where everyone moved to the city after school or a group of friends that grew up there.

turk73 7y ago

I remember touring Harvard around '91 when I was looking at colleges. I recall very clearly thinking: "Wow, I will never fit in here with these elites." I never even applied and probably couldn't have afforded it, anyways. Even back then it was very obvious what those schools represent. I don't really care if it is US elite or Saudi elite, the idea that we have an elite class such as it is is incredibly counterproductive to keeping and maintaining a free and open society. We're seeing the the fruits of that elitism right before our very eyes, those chosen to run companies and sit on boards of directors are not the regular people. They are the insiders, invited because of their status. They rotate in and out of government and academia. So not only is elitism bad for other countries, it is seriously bad for the US as well!

whoevercares 7y ago

Admittedly social event/club is one of the most awkward activities one could host for native Chineses. Similar event only happens when people are pushed (by their parents) to arranged group dating event. Interactive games of small group works the best.

thatcat 7y ago

I've seen this with happen with students from the same us high school as well.

sametmax 7y ago

Short term yes, but long term, it's our best chance to share values, learn about each others, and grow out of the bubble of our society. Short travel is a mind opener. But living abroad dye your soul forever.

lambdasquirrel 7y ago

As an Asian-American, I have to say that I envied the Chinese who could stay amongst themselves. Just saying.

lonelappde 7y ago
Can you expand and explain what you mean?
- lambdasquirrel 7y ago
  given the downvotes I just got, the nationalism on HN lately, and the narcissism in US-centric discourse in general, no, I do not wish to explain or expand on this it is to the US-centric benefit that I should mention it, or expend the energy to explain myself, not the other way around
  - p1esk 7y ago
    FYI, I upvoted your initial comment, but downvoted this one.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Why did you even add your cryptic two cents on this forum if you refuse to explain what you even meant? How is that not just pure, masturbatory noise? Holding your point hostage because you got a downvote is especially ridiculous.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't cross into being personally aggressive no matter how annoying another comment is or feels.
  - dang 7y ago
    I think I partly recognize the feeling and the situation you're alluding to, but still: if you're not willing to post substantive information, it's best not to comment. Posting a vague and provocative allusion and then refusing to answer normal requests for clarification doesn't help the discussion here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

gok 7y ago

China is a bit of an exceptional case. Student exit visas require classes from the party strongly discouraging making too many local friends.

confusedhnguy 7y ago
Source please? Edit: I can't even ask for a reference without getting downvoted again and again. Nice.
- gok 7y ago
  Are you asking for a source that confirms that China requires students (and every other national) to have an exit visa to leave the country?
powerapple 7y ago
What? Do you mean the state sponsored student or student in general? There is no exit visa. And there is no classes.

Stratoscope 7y ago

> the 20 odd accommodation halls > the other 200 odd people in the hall For anyone unfamiliar with this somewhat uncommon usage, Matt is not saying that these are odd accommodation halls or odd people (strange or unusual). The "odd" here means that the preceding number is approximate - there are about 200 people in this hall, and about 20 halls in total. It's usually written with a hyphen to make this more clear: "the 20-odd accommodation halls" or "the other 200-odd people in the hall."

brightball 7y ago

This was one of the big complaints when there was a push for a diversity center at Clemson a couple of years ago. It was pitched exclusively as a place for people of other cultures to use as a hang out, separated from the rest of the university students...which seemed like exactly the opposite of what increasing diversity should be aiming for.

dmix 7y ago

They also discover they don't need to assimilate since every western city, at least in North America, has enough Chinese citizens and community resources where you can easily survive with just Mandarin/Cantonese and minimal English. There are plenty of Chinese people here in Toronto who have been here for two plus decades and still have very poor English (or feign as much). Because they live in Chinese communities, shop at Chinese grocery stores, and eat at Chinese restaurants. It's their kids who learn English or the ones entering a work environment where English is used.

houqp 7y ago

I saw the same behavior for foreign students studying in China, they only hangout with their own group due to language and culture barriers. My university has lots of foreign students but i have never meet any of them in social settings except one for like 10 minutes during my 4 years undergrad. Even within Chinese in China, people from the same region tend to hangout much more due to language and culture differences. I grew up speaking both mandarin and cantonese natively so i made friends with both sides and saw the same pattern. I would say this is just human nature. It is amplified for Chinese students in the west because there are more of them ;) Believe me, they really want to hangout with native students as well, but it’s not easy. It’s like you know going to gym is good for you, but because it requires extra hard work every day, you ended up skipping it.

seventhtiger 7y ago

The Saudi students are not from an elite class. They had huge abroad scholarship programs open to every high school graduate that includes full tuition, travel, and living expense. Every year grade cutoffs are announced and applicants are awarded scholarships. Most Saudis in US universities are actually low to middle class students who graduated highschool with good grades. This is one of the strongest forces of social mobility I have seen in any country. In terms of liberalization, Saudis who studied abroad are the leaders of the liberal movements within the country. They don't transform into liberal Americans, but they do shift into liberal Saudis. Liberal Saudis are still on average more conservative than their American classmates, but back home they create the shift we are seeing today in a progressive direction. Both effects are intended by the government. The social mobility aspect is part of the Saudi welfare state, and it adds great economic value through knowledge transfer. The liberalization is part of a long campaign to loosen the grip of religious leaders on the community and consolidate power. Source: I went to university abroad on the King Abdullah scholarship program.