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It's incredibly unfair for the the administration to target international students like this. However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their inter

It's incredibly unfair for the the administration to target international students like this. However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate. The higher the % of international students the school takes in the more money they take in. If these schools had to replace international students with domestic ones (even if they could) they wouldn't be able to get away with selecting only the highest paying students. I'm from Boston, we have an incredibly high number of international students, and a lot of the interest in keeping them is about getting their money. The Boston Globe estimates they are worth $3.6 billion dollars to the area... lots of money, lots of tuition, lots of apartment rentals, lots of bar & restaurant revenue.

dekhn 6y ago
Beyond the economic value of international students, Harvard and MIT are completely dependent on these sources of cheap, intelligent labor. There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research. I have a hard time believing that when Harvard rejects 19 out of every 20 applicants.
  - krastanov 6y ago
    I think they are talking about graduate students (the ones actually doing research work) not undergraduates.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    I'm talking about graduate programs at world-class research universities.
- tryptophan 6y ago
  > There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research. Making native born people compete vs foreigners willing to work very hard for pennies just to get into the usa will make sure this is always true.
  - somurzakov 6y ago
    false argument. Highly educated immigrants leave even better educated kids in second generation. Not even mentioning all the companies, jobs, and research they create that benefit the whole country. Look up team USA roster in international olympiads on any STEM subject, or IOI/ACM-ICPC for example
    - booboolayla 6y ago
      I'd love to see an honest research into what happens with these STEM olympiad wunderkindern when they grow up. Something tells me a tiny percentage actually achieves something, most of them burn out very early due to incredible pressure their parents subject them to in their early age.
- sampo 6y ago
  > There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research. This is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Foreign grad students submit to modern academic slave labor, because the long term incentive is American citizenship. Also many don't have student loan debt from their undergrad degree in their home countries, so they can agree to work for low salary. Americans have no incentive to work hard in poorly paid grad student positions. And they need to start paying their undergrad student loan debt, so they have incentive to find a high-paid job instead of graduate studies. This especially applies to Americans who don't come from a wealthy family background, so often to American minorities.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. It’s okay to have multiple motivations. The fact that they have a monetary incentive doesn’t detract from the good of what they’re doing. In fact, that’s partially what enables these expensive lawsuits. We shouldn’t try to downplay good actions just because money is also involved.
- seamyb88 6y ago
  > We shouldn’t try to downplay good actions just because money is also involved. I disagree. When there are thousands upon thousands of innocent people in privately-run ICE detention centres, whose economic value is solely based on their being locked up, it doesn't go nearly far enough to say that THESE immigrants are worth fighting for because their economic value is based on their relative wealth. So you consider it downplaying, I consider it attempted betterment.
  - nsm 6y ago
    One can do some good (even for selfish reasons) and it can be commendable. One isn’t obliged to solve the entire problem. https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
- dominotw 6y ago
  Thats exactly how big pharma is usually defended. Access to elite society is controlled by these institutions so if they have money motive then they perpetuate rich-> rich cycle.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    >Thats exactly how big pharma is usually defended. And it is a legitimate defense. Big pharma, motivated by profit, has brought countless medicines to market and saved hundreds of millions of lives. Non-profit pharma does not have the same track record.
jidiculous 6y ago
> The higher the % of international students the school takes in the more money they take in. I thought that private institutions like MIT and Harvard charge the same rates for international and domestic students? For example, MIT's page on cost of attendance only lists one tuition rate[1]. It would be public institutions like the University of California that would stand to lose the most revenue percentage-wise from this policy, right? edit: see replies below that elaborate on finaid for internationals [1] https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-attendance/annual-student-budget/ https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-atten...
- jacobzoo 6y ago
  Domestic students get a lot of financial aid/merit scholarships/etc. not available to international students.
  - krastanov 6y ago
    As mentioned in sibling comments this is false.
- the_svd_doctor 6y ago
  Domestic students get a lot of financial aid of their parents don’t make a lot. There is no such aid for internationals. EDIT: Apparently that not really true.
  - KenoFischer 6y ago
    > There is no such aid for internationals. That's not completely accurate. Both Harvard and MIT claim parity in financial aid for international and domestic students. However, there is a bit of a discrepancy in the way that income is evaluated, higher taxes abroad leading to less post-tax money even for equivalent incomes, as well as non-institutional funding that domestic students are eligible for, but foreign students are not. The overall effect is more of a shift in the distribution of incomes between international and domestic students (i.e. if you're international you will be paying more at the same parental income level), but there is still a level where attendance is basically free.
vowelless 6y ago
Yea but they are also afraid of loosing out on a generation of professors, post docs, academics, value generators, “job creators”. It is very risky to cut out a generation of top students because the value is not just to the local Boston economy, but nationally. It’s not just cheap labor. It’s apprenticeship by the smartest in the world who will pay dividends for not only our lives but for generations. I came as a student. I pay 6 figures in taxes. Some of my intl friends pay 7 figures and employ hundreds. I’ll have kids here that will generate enough value to do that as well. Right now, there is a significant risk that a lot of economic value is going to be lost due to these immigration policies. That is not good for america. It’s like a sports team: you have the ability to draft the top players from around the world for cheap. Why would you decide to boycott the draft itself and let the competitors (India, China) take those players? Especially some players that you have already trained (graduated students, post docs)
- tomrod 6y ago
  We are of a like mind. To answer the "why" folks may think this, you and I are considering the general equilibrium impact of the policy, but the vast majority of folks think in terms of partial equilibrium/first order. And on a first order, the "jobs" that folks holding these student visas will be vacated and thus "available" for domestic students. Such nativist views typically fail to grasp that said jobs may simply not be available due to companies sending work to the talent, not just to the trained. Myopia is a terrible thing to live in denial with, but unfortunately such as things are.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Realistically the actual competitors of America here are Canada, the UK and Europe more generally. I suspect that a lot of this immigration is both the desire for high-paying jobs and to live in a (slightly) more stable country.
  - Tinyyy 6y ago
    There is a growing number of Chinese students who graduate from top Chinese universities or return to work in China after their US education. The US may hold a dominant position right now, but that lead is fading and the unwelcoming attitude towards immigrants is driving the best and brightest back home. This is especially true in engineering (vs academia where US still has a huge advantage), where there has been an explosion in Chinese tech companies who pay salaries competent to US tech companies when adjusting for CoL. It’s therefore not surprising that in the last decade we saw many rising Chinese companies like TikTok, Xiaomi, Tencent make waves even in American markets. In the next decade, if the US fails to capture the brightest minds of the world, we could see China start to become a viable alternative to the US, especially for tech workers.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
js2 6y ago
Sounds like incentives are aligned: foreign students get a good education and exposure to the U.S. (hopefully building goodwill). Local community benefits from exposure to foreign students (hopefully building good will). Local community gets foreign money. Only the students' home countries are potentially losing out, but even that depends on whether the student ends up sending money back home or returns home to contribute to their own local economy. This was an incredibly dumb decision by ICE.
balfirevic 6y ago
How do you call a situation where the morally correct course of action is aligned with one's own interest? "Fantastic"
- thrill 6y ago
  "convenient"
blue11 6y ago
> International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate. That might be true for other universities but not for Harvard and MIT, whose admissions are aid-blind and most international students there receive huge financial aid packages. There are lower-ranked universities that have programs (usually Masters's ones) that are targeted towards foreign students who can pay a lot of money.
- mennis16 6y ago
  According to QS only Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and Amherst do need blind admissions for international students (surprised to not see Stanford on that list). So while in this instance I do not think it is driven by any direct financial motivation, the majority of even "top" US schools do appear to select international students in part on their ability to pay.
  - blue11 6y ago
    Yes, most "top" schools do not have Harvard's endowment, so they have to work with a limited budget. Still, their motivation is quite different from GP's suggestion that they are admitting international students to boost they finances. Anyway, we were talking about Harvard and MIT. I'll add one more thing, some universities do care about the well being of their students.
    - mennis16 6y ago
      Plenty of schools have a higher endowment than Amherst. Stanford has a notably bigger endowment than MIT. In any case, I was not agreeing with GP, I just think "lower ranked schools" is a bit of a strong statement as that does not conjure images of e.g. Columbia for me, even if it is technically a couple spots lower I do agree the "universities don't give a shit about their students" sentiment is over the top these days though.
- speleding 6y ago
  MIT's admission is need-blind (which is good), but many aid programs have some requirement attached that is hard to qualify for as a foreigner. I don't know of many foreign student in my class that had financial aid packages, let alone huge ones, so I would be interested if you have information to back up this claim.
tsotnet 6y ago
> However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate As an international MIT alumni, I can confidently say that this is completely wrong. MIT and Harvard have need-based scholarships, meaning that students pay tuition depending on their financial circumstances. Most of the international students come from poorer countries & families compared to an average domestic student and therefore end up paying a lot less in tuition. Also, MIT's international undergraduate students are usually around 10% of the whole class. Even if you were right, they don't represent a big enough chunk of the whole class to have a significant impact on the money they're making.
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
>However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. Harvard has a ~$40bn endowment. Even if all 6,500 of its international students are affected, and all of them are paying $50,000 in tuition, and absolutely none of them are replaced, and no economies at all are generated by them not attending, then the university stands to lose slightly less than 1% of that endowment this year. My point here is that Harvard can amply afford not to raise this issue, and that I rather suspect the issue of principle is more important than you suggest.
- throwaway_1512 6y ago
  Yes but this is less about economy and more about Trump forcing Harvard to open in fall, which they don’t want to. It’s not about principle, it’s about the unions who don’t want to open.
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    Is there actually much evidence of academic unionization at private colleges? I have a family member who's a professor at an Ivy League school and that concern has never even really come up.
    - throwaway_1512 6y ago
      They are geo located with other institutions where the unions are prominent, and Trump is hitting them where it hurts the most, the local economy. In all this process, International students, who can’t vote are treated badly but this has always been the case, with Obama as well. Immigrants who can’t vote are the easiest barter trade.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    It isn't about unions. It is about humans. A lot of people rightly believe that in person teaching is unsafe. My wife is a professor and chose to teach online for safety concerns. No evil union here. Just reasonable humans trying to do their best in a hard situation and a blowhard at the top trampling over their careful planning for his own satisfaction.
screye 6y ago
The thing about American universities, is that this transactional treatment of international students is well understood by the students themselves. However, it is also well known, that these same universities are insane career fast tracks for them in the US, their home country and elsewhere. There was a reliability to reputed US universities. Pay us all of your family assets + more, but you will make it back soon with a high level of confidence.(esp. in STEM) Similarly, we understand that the tedious immigration system of US does a great job of capturing the best international students in golden handcuffs, where they get to tax you like a resident, without providing any of the amenities or rights a resident has. But, life in the US is much better than that in an underdeveloped country, and even the circus hoops we have to jump through aren't sufficient discouragement to choose one over the other. As long as life is less shit than my home nation, I can deal with some abuse. As Hasan Minhaj puts it, it's the "immigrant tax". We have no delusions of being treated equally to American citizens/residents. If you can pick a certain amount of cotton, then you are a free man. (/s...but only kinda) Where this rubs international students the wrong way, is just like the slave analogy, there is no formal agreement and the slave owner is free do what he likes, since ofc, like America he owns the slave. But, most communication happens is not verbal. There was a long understood, quiet honor system. Trump is violating that. Many of these student's parents have sold off last of their clothes to send their children to the US. Many of these PhD students have been worked down to their bones on minimum wage, just for an American doctorate. Don't change the deal now. Not when these people have already (metaphorically) signed the deal. I completely support the choice of any American to want stringent borders. That's your prerogative. No one complains about Japan not opening up their doors to the world. Parents won't bankrupt themselves filling the coffers of American colleges and co-located businesses. Students won't destroy their health doing RA/TA jobs that pay far under what they deserve. There is an unspoken deal an international student signs when they commit $100k+ to the a US institute. In some sense, it is codified in the OPT system. Here, have 3 years to make back some of the money and fuck off. America, please reject these people at the door. Don't take their money, sweat & blood and then kick them out. That's just cruel. We go out of our way to pick more cotton than the other slaves. Free us, or never make that promise in the 1st place. It was not illegal in 18th century US, but it sure as hell was dick move.
- deleted 6y ago
kaik 6y ago
The vast majority of international MIT students are graduate students. Except for business students (i.e. MBA, executive MBA and similar), graduate students in research programs do not pay a dime to MIT. Their tuition + stipend for living expenses is paid by research or TA fellowships. I.e. they either work as either research or teaching assistants to receive this money. MIT receives part of the fellowship money as an "overhead" tax, but this is exactly what happens for domestic graduate students. Notably, in the case of MIT these fellowships are provided to both M.S. and PhD students. I believe that Stanford M.S. students do not get such fellowships and hence need to pay for their tuition. Source: got my PhD at MIT as an international F1 student.
- montereynack 6y ago
  That’s just direct economic analysis. Graduate students are incredibly valuable to the universities because they generate research which can be used to either directly apply for grants and federal/commercial awards, or which can be used to just add to the university’s reputation (which, in turn, affects their chances of getting a grant or money award, as they have a reputation of expertise). Even if the direct money being paid by these students is zero, I’m sure all universities (not just MIT and Harvard) care deeply about where their graduate students go; that’s a lot of good grey matter going to waste, and universities are in the business of converting grey matter directly into money!
xxpor 6y ago
> They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. This is also a solid reason why they have standing to sue in the first place, so it's actually a good thing.
Ar-Curunir 6y ago
Yup, you can see this from the non-action when ICE was abducting undocumented immigrants

dekhn 6y ago

Beyond the economic value of international students, Harvard and MIT are completely dependent on these sources of cheap, intelligent labor. There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research. I have a hard time believing that when Harvard rejects 19 out of every 20 applicants.
- krastanov 6y ago
  I think they are talking about graduate students (the ones actually doing research work) not undergraduates.
- dekhn 6y ago
  I'm talking about graduate programs at world-class research universities.
tryptophan 6y ago
> There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research. Making native born people compete vs foreigners willing to work very hard for pennies just to get into the usa will make sure this is always true.
- somurzakov 6y ago
  false argument. Highly educated immigrants leave even better educated kids in second generation. Not even mentioning all the companies, jobs, and research they create that benefit the whole country. Look up team USA roster in international olympiads on any STEM subject, or IOI/ACM-ICPC for example
  - booboolayla 6y ago
    I'd love to see an honest research into what happens with these STEM olympiad wunderkindern when they grow up. Something tells me a tiny percentage actually achieves something, most of them burn out very early due to incredible pressure their parents subject them to in their early age.
sampo 6y ago
> There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research. This is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Foreign grad students submit to modern academic slave labor, because the long term incentive is American citizenship. Also many don't have student loan debt from their undergrad degree in their home countries, so they can agree to work for low salary. Americans have no incentive to work hard in poorly paid grad student positions. And they need to start paying their undergrad student loan debt, so they have incentive to find a high-paid job instead of graduate studies. This especially applies to Americans who don't come from a wealthy family background, so often to American minorities.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. It’s okay to have multiple motivations. The fact that they have a monetary incentive doesn’t detract from the good of what they’re doing. In fact, that’s partially what enables these expensive lawsuits. We shouldn’t try to downplay good actions just because money is also involved.

seamyb88 6y ago
> We shouldn’t try to downplay good actions just because money is also involved. I disagree. When there are thousands upon thousands of innocent people in privately-run ICE detention centres, whose economic value is solely based on their being locked up, it doesn't go nearly far enough to say that THESE immigrants are worth fighting for because their economic value is based on their relative wealth. So you consider it downplaying, I consider it attempted betterment.
- nsm 6y ago
  One can do some good (even for selfish reasons) and it can be commendable. One isn’t obliged to solve the entire problem. https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
dominotw 6y ago
Thats exactly how big pharma is usually defended. Access to elite society is controlled by these institutions so if they have money motive then they perpetuate rich-> rich cycle.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  >Thats exactly how big pharma is usually defended. And it is a legitimate defense. Big pharma, motivated by profit, has brought countless medicines to market and saved hundreds of millions of lives. Non-profit pharma does not have the same track record.

jidiculous 6y ago

> The higher the % of international students the school takes in the more money they take in. I thought that private institutions like MIT and Harvard charge the same rates for international and domestic students? For example, MIT's page on cost of attendance only lists one tuition rate[1]. It would be public institutions like the University of California that would stand to lose the most revenue percentage-wise from this policy, right? edit: see replies below that elaborate on finaid for internationals [1] https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-attendance/annual-student-budget/ https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-atten...

jacobzoo 6y ago
Domestic students get a lot of financial aid/merit scholarships/etc. not available to international students.
- krastanov 6y ago
  As mentioned in sibling comments this is false.
the_svd_doctor 6y ago
Domestic students get a lot of financial aid of their parents don’t make a lot. There is no such aid for internationals. EDIT: Apparently that not really true.
- KenoFischer 6y ago
  > There is no such aid for internationals. That's not completely accurate. Both Harvard and MIT claim parity in financial aid for international and domestic students. However, there is a bit of a discrepancy in the way that income is evaluated, higher taxes abroad leading to less post-tax money even for equivalent incomes, as well as non-institutional funding that domestic students are eligible for, but foreign students are not. The overall effect is more of a shift in the distribution of incomes between international and domestic students (i.e. if you're international you will be paying more at the same parental income level), but there is still a level where attendance is basically free.

vowelless 6y ago

Yea but they are also afraid of loosing out on a generation of professors, post docs, academics, value generators, “job creators”. It is very risky to cut out a generation of top students because the value is not just to the local Boston economy, but nationally. It’s not just cheap labor. It’s apprenticeship by the smartest in the world who will pay dividends for not only our lives but for generations. I came as a student. I pay 6 figures in taxes. Some of my intl friends pay 7 figures and employ hundreds. I’ll have kids here that will generate enough value to do that as well. Right now, there is a significant risk that a lot of economic value is going to be lost due to these immigration policies. That is not good for america. It’s like a sports team: you have the ability to draft the top players from around the world for cheap. Why would you decide to boycott the draft itself and let the competitors (India, China) take those players? Especially some players that you have already trained (graduated students, post docs)

tomrod 6y ago
We are of a like mind. To answer the "why" folks may think this, you and I are considering the general equilibrium impact of the policy, but the vast majority of folks think in terms of partial equilibrium/first order. And on a first order, the "jobs" that folks holding these student visas will be vacated and thus "available" for domestic students. Such nativist views typically fail to grasp that said jobs may simply not be available due to companies sending work to the talent, not just to the trained. Myopia is a terrible thing to live in denial with, but unfortunately such as things are.
disgruntledphd2 6y ago
Realistically the actual competitors of America here are Canada, the UK and Europe more generally. I suspect that a lot of this immigration is both the desire for high-paying jobs and to live in a (slightly) more stable country.
- Tinyyy 6y ago
  There is a growing number of Chinese students who graduate from top Chinese universities or return to work in China after their US education. The US may hold a dominant position right now, but that lead is fading and the unwelcoming attitude towards immigrants is driving the best and brightest back home. This is especially true in engineering (vs academia where US still has a huge advantage), where there has been an explosion in Chinese tech companies who pay salaries competent to US tech companies when adjusting for CoL. It’s therefore not surprising that in the last decade we saw many rising Chinese companies like TikTok, Xiaomi, Tencent make waves even in American markets. In the next decade, if the US fails to capture the brightest minds of the world, we could see China start to become a viable alternative to the US, especially for tech workers.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

js2 6y ago

Sounds like incentives are aligned: foreign students get a good education and exposure to the U.S. (hopefully building goodwill). Local community benefits from exposure to foreign students (hopefully building good will). Local community gets foreign money. Only the students' home countries are potentially losing out, but even that depends on whether the student ends up sending money back home or returns home to contribute to their own local economy. This was an incredibly dumb decision by ICE.

balfirevic 6y ago

How do you call a situation where the morally correct course of action is aligned with one's own interest? "Fantastic"

thrill 6y ago
"convenient"

blue11 6y ago

> International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate. That might be true for other universities but not for Harvard and MIT, whose admissions are aid-blind and most international students there receive huge financial aid packages. There are lower-ranked universities that have programs (usually Masters's ones) that are targeted towards foreign students who can pay a lot of money.

mennis16 6y ago
According to QS only Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and Amherst do need blind admissions for international students (surprised to not see Stanford on that list). So while in this instance I do not think it is driven by any direct financial motivation, the majority of even "top" US schools do appear to select international students in part on their ability to pay.
- blue11 6y ago
  Yes, most "top" schools do not have Harvard's endowment, so they have to work with a limited budget. Still, their motivation is quite different from GP's suggestion that they are admitting international students to boost they finances. Anyway, we were talking about Harvard and MIT. I'll add one more thing, some universities do care about the well being of their students.
  - mennis16 6y ago
    Plenty of schools have a higher endowment than Amherst. Stanford has a notably bigger endowment than MIT. In any case, I was not agreeing with GP, I just think "lower ranked schools" is a bit of a strong statement as that does not conjure images of e.g. Columbia for me, even if it is technically a couple spots lower I do agree the "universities don't give a shit about their students" sentiment is over the top these days though.
speleding 6y ago
MIT's admission is need-blind (which is good), but many aid programs have some requirement attached that is hard to qualify for as a foreigner. I don't know of many foreign student in my class that had financial aid packages, let alone huge ones, so I would be interested if you have information to back up this claim.

tsotnet 6y ago

> However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate As an international MIT alumni, I can confidently say that this is completely wrong. MIT and Harvard have need-based scholarships, meaning that students pay tuition depending on their financial circumstances. Most of the international students come from poorer countries & families compared to an average domestic student and therefore end up paying a lot less in tuition. Also, MIT's international undergraduate students are usually around 10% of the whole class. Even if you were right, they don't represent a big enough chunk of the whole class to have a significant impact on the money they're making.

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago

>However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. Harvard has a ~$40bn endowment. Even if all 6,500 of its international students are affected, and all of them are paying $50,000 in tuition, and absolutely none of them are replaced, and no economies at all are generated by them not attending, then the university stands to lose slightly less than 1% of that endowment this year. My point here is that Harvard can amply afford not to raise this issue, and that I rather suspect the issue of principle is more important than you suggest.

throwaway_1512 6y ago
Yes but this is less about economy and more about Trump forcing Harvard to open in fall, which they don’t want to. It’s not about principle, it’s about the unions who don’t want to open.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  Is there actually much evidence of academic unionization at private colleges? I have a family member who's a professor at an Ivy League school and that concern has never even really come up.
  - throwaway_1512 6y ago
    They are geo located with other institutions where the unions are prominent, and Trump is hitting them where it hurts the most, the local economy. In all this process, International students, who can’t vote are treated badly but this has always been the case, with Obama as well. Immigrants who can’t vote are the easiest barter trade.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  It isn't about unions. It is about humans. A lot of people rightly believe that in person teaching is unsafe. My wife is a professor and chose to teach online for safety concerns. No evil union here. Just reasonable humans trying to do their best in a hard situation and a blowhard at the top trampling over their careful planning for his own satisfaction.

screye 6y ago

The thing about American universities, is that this transactional treatment of international students is well understood by the students themselves. However, it is also well known, that these same universities are insane career fast tracks for them in the US, their home country and elsewhere. There was a reliability to reputed US universities. Pay us all of your family assets + more, but you will make it back soon with a high level of confidence.(esp. in STEM) Similarly, we understand that the tedious immigration system of US does a great job of capturing the best international students in golden handcuffs, where they get to tax you like a resident, without providing any of the amenities or rights a resident has. But, life in the US is much better than that in an underdeveloped country, and even the circus hoops we have to jump through aren't sufficient discouragement to choose one over the other. As long as life is less shit than my home nation, I can deal with some abuse. As Hasan Minhaj puts it, it's the "immigrant tax". We have no delusions of being treated equally to American citizens/residents. If you can pick a certain amount of cotton, then you are a free man. (/s...but only kinda) Where this rubs international students the wrong way, is just like the slave analogy, there is no formal agreement and the slave owner is free do what he likes, since ofc, like America he owns the slave. But, most communication happens is not verbal. There was a long understood, quiet honor system. Trump is violating that. Many of these student's parents have sold off last of their clothes to send their children to the US. Many of these PhD students have been worked down to their bones on minimum wage, just for an American doctorate. Don't change the deal now. Not when these people have already (metaphorically) signed the deal. I completely support the choice of any American to want stringent borders. That's your prerogative. No one complains about Japan not opening up their doors to the world. Parents won't bankrupt themselves filling the coffers of American colleges and co-located businesses. Students won't destroy their health doing RA/TA jobs that pay far under what they deserve. There is an unspoken deal an international student signs when they commit $100k+ to the a US institute. In some sense, it is codified in the OPT system. Here, have 3 years to make back some of the money and fuck off. America, please reject these people at the door. Don't take their money, sweat & blood and then kick them out. That's just cruel. We go out of our way to pick more cotton than the other slaves. Free us, or never make that promise in the 1st place. It was not illegal in 18th century US, but it sure as hell was dick move.

deleted 6y ago

kaik 6y ago

The vast majority of international MIT students are graduate students. Except for business students (i.e. MBA, executive MBA and similar), graduate students in research programs do not pay a dime to MIT. Their tuition + stipend for living expenses is paid by research or TA fellowships. I.e. they either work as either research or teaching assistants to receive this money. MIT receives part of the fellowship money as an "overhead" tax, but this is exactly what happens for domestic graduate students. Notably, in the case of MIT these fellowships are provided to both M.S. and PhD students. I believe that Stanford M.S. students do not get such fellowships and hence need to pay for their tuition. Source: got my PhD at MIT as an international F1 student.

montereynack 6y ago
That’s just direct economic analysis. Graduate students are incredibly valuable to the universities because they generate research which can be used to either directly apply for grants and federal/commercial awards, or which can be used to just add to the university’s reputation (which, in turn, affects their chances of getting a grant or money award, as they have a reputation of expertise). Even if the direct money being paid by these students is zero, I’m sure all universities (not just MIT and Harvard) care deeply about where their graduate students go; that’s a lot of good grey matter going to waste, and universities are in the business of converting grey matter directly into money!

xxpor 6y ago

> They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. This is also a solid reason why they have standing to sue in the first place, so it's actually a good thing.

Ar-Curunir 6y ago

Yup, you can see this from the non-action when ICE was abducting undocumented immigrants