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Why are rising fees not driving students towards cheaper universities rather than just no university? I understand that a US degree has more value than a foreig

by hiq 4y ago

Why are rising fees not driving students towards cheaper universities rather than just no university? I understand that a US degree has more value than a foreign one in the US, but given the number of foreigners with foreign degrees settling in the US each year, I would think that the gap is not necessarily that big, is it? Isn't a foreign degree better than no degree at all? The article mentions France as being way cheaper, and digging the source a bit further[0], there are many other European countries that also seem to charge negligible amounts. Granted, that's for nationals, and this is likely higher for non-nationals, but I expect it to still be low enough to be worth it for US and UK citizens who'd have to pay increasingly high fees otherwise. 0: the XLS in https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/annual-average-tuition-fees-charged-by-public-institutions-to-national-students-by-level-of-education-academic-year-2019-20_47412573-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/annual-average-tuiti...

polygamous_bat 4y ago
> Given the number of foreigners with foreign degrees settling in the US each year, I would think that the gap is not necessarily that big, is it? This is a strong case of survivorship bias. You will see the 1,000 Indian engineers every year (let's say) moving to the US, but not the other 499,000 that doesn't or cannot. A lot of those people with foreign degrees also entered US to get a higher degree (Masters or Ph.D.), which supersedes their undergraduate education from a relatively low-prestige institution when applying for a US job.
- hiq 4y ago
  > You will see the 1,000 Indian engineers every year (let's say) moving to the US, but not the other 499,000 that doesn't or cannot. But why can't they? Isn't that mostly a visa issue that wouldn't apply to an American who would study abroad then come back? > A lot of those people with foreign degrees also entered US to get a higher degree (Masters or Ph.D.) That does mean that their lower degree was recognized by the US university. Are you saying it would be less recognized by US companies?
yathaid 4y ago
>> Isn't a foreign degree better than no degree at all? It is. That is why the cost for international students was close to $10K per semester at my not so expensive university. Just for a master's, that is close to $40K over two years. This was ten years ago. The costs at a high prestige university are double or triple that.
- hiq 4y ago
  I can definitely believe that some good European universities charge international students high fees that make them less appealing. My point though, is that not all of them do. E.g. the Computer Science department of ETHZ is usually ranked in the top 10 worldwide but has low tuition fees[0]. I'm not sure what "high prestige university" means exactly, but that makes me confident that you can find a good number of universities in the top 30/40 worldwide with fees way more reasonable than that of US/UK universities. 0: https://ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html https://ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html mentions 730CHF/semester

by hiq 4y ago

polygamous_bat 4y ago

> Given the number of foreigners with foreign degrees settling in the US each year, I would think that the gap is not necessarily that big, is it? This is a strong case of survivorship bias. You will see the 1,000 Indian engineers every year (let's say) moving to the US, but not the other 499,000 that doesn't or cannot. A lot of those people with foreign degrees also entered US to get a higher degree (Masters or Ph.D.), which supersedes their undergraduate education from a relatively low-prestige institution when applying for a US job.

hiq 4y ago
> You will see the 1,000 Indian engineers every year (let's say) moving to the US, but not the other 499,000 that doesn't or cannot. But why can't they? Isn't that mostly a visa issue that wouldn't apply to an American who would study abroad then come back? > A lot of those people with foreign degrees also entered US to get a higher degree (Masters or Ph.D.) That does mean that their lower degree was recognized by the US university. Are you saying it would be less recognized by US companies?

yathaid 4y ago

>> Isn't a foreign degree better than no degree at all? It is. That is why the cost for international students was close to $10K per semester at my not so expensive university. Just for a master's, that is close to $40K over two years. This was ten years ago. The costs at a high prestige university are double or triple that.

hiq 4y ago
I can definitely believe that some good European universities charge international students high fees that make them less appealing. My point though, is that not all of them do. E.g. the Computer Science department of ETHZ is usually ranked in the top 10 worldwide but has low tuition fees[0]. I'm not sure what "high prestige university" means exactly, but that makes me confident that you can find a good number of universities in the top 30/40 worldwide with fees way more reasonable than that of US/UK universities. 0: https://ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html https://ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html mentions 730CHF/semester