4 ms·

Foreign students are in fact a major "profit center" for a lot of universities, and do in fact subsidize domestic students.

stego-tech 1y ago
I will concede that I hear and see that narrative a lot, but short of compelling universities to disclose how that higher tuition is actually spent on subsidies for domestic students (what kinds of subsidies? How many benefitted? From what backgrounds? To what extent? Etc), I’m still hugely suspect on it.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  > what kinds of subsidies Resident tuition at state schools is below their average per-student expenditures. That's a subsidy from which they all benefit. It's enabled, in part, by the fact that foreign student tuition is above the schools' average per-student expenditures.
- ModernMech 1y ago
  As someone who is familiar with the budget for a large university, I'll tell you that yes, it is true that these foreign monies help keep tuition low for domestic students. It's not through any subsidies or formal program of any kind, just the fact that if that cashflow didn't exist we would have to raise our tuition prices to keep delivering the same level of service. I'll give you an example. I teach at a not well known school but it's got a nice enough reputation for undergrads. Our MS program is nothing to speak of though. Our MS class consists almost entirely of foreign students from Asia who pay full tuition just so they can get a stepping stone into America. They come to America, study at our program, then go to work in big tech firms around the country with a degree from a US university, which opens doors for them. For the university's part, that full tuition money is where any "profit" could possibly come from if the university were a business -- every other functional aspect we have from UG education to PhD education to research is break-even or operating at a loss. But because foreign students are so eager to come to America that they are willing to pay full tuition, the MS program actually makes money. And because the University is nonprofit, we use that money to keep costs lower and to fill in budget gaps in other areas. The upshot is if all that money dries up, because the US is no longer a desirable place for foreign students to want to live and learn and work, then that means the budget gaps will have to be filled in by raising tuition on... you guessed it: domestic students. So I don't know whether you believe any of that or not, but that's how it works at least in one instance.
  - JeksonFerguson 1y ago
    [dead]
  - stego-tech 1y ago
    I genuinely appreciate the shared perspective and information! This is, admittedly, an area I lack concrete data in because it’s not required to be public in many cases, and I have no way to effectively judge the accuracy or transparency of the data that is; your sharing helps fill in gaps, which I’m appreciative of. Alright then, let’s assume I am woefully mistaken in my understanding of how international student tuition affects domestic student tuition. There’s still the reality of college tuition grossly outstripping inflation and COLA, even accounting for the prior government subsidies on tuition older generations enjoyed. Yet despite the cost of tuition skyrocketing, the return on investment continues to dwindle - namely that credentials alone no longer guarantee even a middle class existence, nevermind a potential ticket into the upper classes. In that context, why does tuition remain so high, and how would you recommend we address the issues of tuition cost relative to ROI? Should we raise admission standards to deter enrollment and divert students to tradework? Should we eliminate credentials from non-specialized roles, thereby further depressing the ROI and thus future enrollment? Or is the answer just baking-in a college education into primary schooling, and making a Bachelor’s gratis via government subsidy at state/public schools? Genuinely curious where you’d recommend I focus my efforts or learning on, because you have a better grasp on this than I do.
    - ModernMech 1y ago
      > There’s still the reality of college tuition grossly outstripping inflation and COLA, even accounting for the prior government subsidies on tuition older generations enjoyed. I talked about this a little in my reply to your comment's sibling, but I'll say more here. Yes this is a reality, but it's also vastly more complicated than that because the cost one actually pays to attend an institution can vary between sticker price and them actually being paid to attend (through tuition remission and stipends). There are still free community college, elite institutions offer free tuition to low income students, there are merit programs at state colleges that are free, you can get into PhD programs without having to pay tuition... But yes, we can broadly say college is getting more expensive to attend. But it's also true that colleges are expected to teach more. 50 years ago there were hardly any Computer Science departments. Today, every school has a CS program, and now they are starting to have AI programs. Schools that started serving small towns have now grown to eclipse the size of those towns, becoming cities of their own. This kind of growth is nonlinear -- once you reach a certain size the security office becomes a police department, the nurse's office becomes a full health clinic, the cafeteria becomes a food distribution network, the IT department becomes an ISP. Tuition at these schools is less about credits for classes and more like a membership fee for a private city. But then there's the question of ROI. The ROI for attending college is twofold: 1) education. For some reason, this is never really included when people talk about ROI of college because maybe it's implicit, or maybe it's not actually part of what they value, but that is the whole point. 2) the network. Even if you don't value the education per se, the network is probably more economically valuable to you. But also it's socially valuable, as you'll meet a lot of friends and lovers in college. As they say the real value was the friends made along the way. That brings me to the value of the credential. It's true, for most of my life at least, this has been the selling point of attending college: you go to college to earn more money. But the problem with this selling point is it's self-defeating -- the only reason the credential was ever valuable in the first place was because corporations were willing to pay more for degree holders if it absolved them of having to train them. But of course as it became normalized to hold a degree, they now simply expect it as a given, and won't pay more for it. So the value of the credential has dwindled, and maybe that makes going to college less appealing to the middle class given the tuition. I feel that, which is why they should have more affordable options. I don't think the value of the credential is coming back. -- Anyway I've talked a lot about problems, and I don't have any solutions. But I think the pathway forward is to stop treating every school the same in these discussions. Some schools are mini cities and should be treated differently from a school that's a couple departments and a handful of students and faculty. To a large extent, small schools are just existing in a marketplace that's set by larger institutions. They also have difficulty operating as nonprofits in a capitalist system, where the product they deliver (education) is regarded has not being a return for what they pay. It's very frustrating delivering a quality education to someone, for them to turn around and say "Yeah, but corporations won't pay me more, so you haven't done anything for me". What they're really saying is "it wasn't worth it" and I feel that, education should be cheaper and accessible to anyone. To that end, I think if we want to go back to the tuition of the 80s we should start by going back to a 46% corporate tax rate. Maybe that means fewer people are able to pay that sticker price. But in a world where the rich pay $100k for a car and $150K for a country club dues, I don't see a $70k tuition bill at Stanford coming down anytime soon.

stego-tech 1y ago

I will concede that I hear and see that narrative a lot, but short of compelling universities to disclose how that higher tuition is actually spent on subsidies for domestic students (what kinds of subsidies? How many benefitted? From what backgrounds? To what extent? Etc), I’m still hugely suspect on it.

Hizonner 1y ago
> what kinds of subsidies Resident tuition at state schools is below their average per-student expenditures. That's a subsidy from which they all benefit. It's enabled, in part, by the fact that foreign student tuition is above the schools' average per-student expenditures.
ModernMech 1y ago
As someone who is familiar with the budget for a large university, I'll tell you that yes, it is true that these foreign monies help keep tuition low for domestic students. It's not through any subsidies or formal program of any kind, just the fact that if that cashflow didn't exist we would have to raise our tuition prices to keep delivering the same level of service. I'll give you an example. I teach at a not well known school but it's got a nice enough reputation for undergrads. Our MS program is nothing to speak of though. Our MS class consists almost entirely of foreign students from Asia who pay full tuition just so they can get a stepping stone into America. They come to America, study at our program, then go to work in big tech firms around the country with a degree from a US university, which opens doors for them. For the university's part, that full tuition money is where any "profit" could possibly come from if the university were a business -- every other functional aspect we have from UG education to PhD education to research is break-even or operating at a loss. But because foreign students are so eager to come to America that they are willing to pay full tuition, the MS program actually makes money. And because the University is nonprofit, we use that money to keep costs lower and to fill in budget gaps in other areas. The upshot is if all that money dries up, because the US is no longer a desirable place for foreign students to want to live and learn and work, then that means the budget gaps will have to be filled in by raising tuition on... you guessed it: domestic students. So I don't know whether you believe any of that or not, but that's how it works at least in one instance.
- JeksonFerguson 1y ago
  [dead]
- stego-tech 1y ago
  I genuinely appreciate the shared perspective and information! This is, admittedly, an area I lack concrete data in because it’s not required to be public in many cases, and I have no way to effectively judge the accuracy or transparency of the data that is; your sharing helps fill in gaps, which I’m appreciative of. Alright then, let’s assume I am woefully mistaken in my understanding of how international student tuition affects domestic student tuition. There’s still the reality of college tuition grossly outstripping inflation and COLA, even accounting for the prior government subsidies on tuition older generations enjoyed. Yet despite the cost of tuition skyrocketing, the return on investment continues to dwindle - namely that credentials alone no longer guarantee even a middle class existence, nevermind a potential ticket into the upper classes. In that context, why does tuition remain so high, and how would you recommend we address the issues of tuition cost relative to ROI? Should we raise admission standards to deter enrollment and divert students to tradework? Should we eliminate credentials from non-specialized roles, thereby further depressing the ROI and thus future enrollment? Or is the answer just baking-in a college education into primary schooling, and making a Bachelor’s gratis via government subsidy at state/public schools? Genuinely curious where you’d recommend I focus my efforts or learning on, because you have a better grasp on this than I do.
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    > There’s still the reality of college tuition grossly outstripping inflation and COLA, even accounting for the prior government subsidies on tuition older generations enjoyed. I talked about this a little in my reply to your comment's sibling, but I'll say more here. Yes this is a reality, but it's also vastly more complicated than that because the cost one actually pays to attend an institution can vary between sticker price and them actually being paid to attend (through tuition remission and stipends). There are still free community college, elite institutions offer free tuition to low income students, there are merit programs at state colleges that are free, you can get into PhD programs without having to pay tuition... But yes, we can broadly say college is getting more expensive to attend. But it's also true that colleges are expected to teach more. 50 years ago there were hardly any Computer Science departments. Today, every school has a CS program, and now they are starting to have AI programs. Schools that started serving small towns have now grown to eclipse the size of those towns, becoming cities of their own. This kind of growth is nonlinear -- once you reach a certain size the security office becomes a police department, the nurse's office becomes a full health clinic, the cafeteria becomes a food distribution network, the IT department becomes an ISP. Tuition at these schools is less about credits for classes and more like a membership fee for a private city. But then there's the question of ROI. The ROI for attending college is twofold: 1) education. For some reason, this is never really included when people talk about ROI of college because maybe it's implicit, or maybe it's not actually part of what they value, but that is the whole point. 2) the network. Even if you don't value the education per se, the network is probably more economically valuable to you. But also it's socially valuable, as you'll meet a lot of friends and lovers in college. As they say the real value was the friends made along the way. That brings me to the value of the credential. It's true, for most of my life at least, this has been the selling point of attending college: you go to college to earn more money. But the problem with this selling point is it's self-defeating -- the only reason the credential was ever valuable in the first place was because corporations were willing to pay more for degree holders if it absolved them of having to train them. But of course as it became normalized to hold a degree, they now simply expect it as a given, and won't pay more for it. So the value of the credential has dwindled, and maybe that makes going to college less appealing to the middle class given the tuition. I feel that, which is why they should have more affordable options. I don't think the value of the credential is coming back. -- Anyway I've talked a lot about problems, and I don't have any solutions. But I think the pathway forward is to stop treating every school the same in these discussions. Some schools are mini cities and should be treated differently from a school that's a couple departments and a handful of students and faculty. To a large extent, small schools are just existing in a marketplace that's set by larger institutions. They also have difficulty operating as nonprofits in a capitalist system, where the product they deliver (education) is regarded has not being a return for what they pay. It's very frustrating delivering a quality education to someone, for them to turn around and say "Yeah, but corporations won't pay me more, so you haven't done anything for me". What they're really saying is "it wasn't worth it" and I feel that, education should be cheaper and accessible to anyone. To that end, I think if we want to go back to the tuition of the 80s we should start by going back to a 46% corporate tax rate. Maybe that means fewer people are able to pay that sticker price. But in a world where the rich pay $100k for a car and $150K for a country club dues, I don't see a $70k tuition bill at Stanford coming down anytime soon.