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You're guessing that these students are somehow federally subsidized, but if you're going to make that assumption, you need to actually substantiate it before c

You're guessing that these students are somehow federally subsidized, but if you're going to make that assumption, you need to actually substantiate it before composing an elaborate fiction of government malfeasance to explain it. For many US colleges, foreign students are a profit center, because they pay "full fare." Which is why a lot of schools purposely recruit overseas students to help subsidize US students: http://www.npr.org/2011/03/16/134585499/U-S-Schools-Hire-Companies-To-Court-Foreign-Students http://www.npr.org/2011/03/16/134585499/U-S-Schools-Hire-Com... http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-11-13/foreign-students-boost-usa-economy/51188560/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-11-... There are over a billion people in India. The fact that some tiny percentage of them can afford to go to school in the US should be entirely unsurprising, regardless of how low their median income is. Don't just assume that "Indians must be poor, because their country is poor."

graycat 14y ago
"You're guessing that these students are somehow federally subsidized, but if you're going to make that assumption, you need to actually substantiate it before composing an elaborate fiction of government malfeasance to explain it." Essentially every student in a well known US college or university is "heavily subsidized" in that they pay roughly only 1/3rd of the real cost with the rest from US citizens via gifts or taxes. Even paying full tuition of $50,000 a year or some such is not the full cost. This situation has held true in essentially all US colleges and universities for at least 50 years. Read what I wrote: The US NSF wanted to flood US labor markets with STEM majors, and one way they did that was to write into university research grants that students must be supported. Since there were so few US citizens that were good students and wanted to do graduate work in STEM fields, the universities got a huge fraction, roughly half, from India and Taiwan. So, a lot of TAs were good with Chinese but not English. And, whatever those students paid, still they had their educations paid for almost entirely by US citizens via gifts or taxes. A few students of wealthy families are a very different matter. This is difficult material to understand?
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  "Essentially every student in a well known US college or university is "heavily subsidized" in that they pay roughly only 1/3rd of the real cost with the rest from US citizens via gifts or taxes. Even paying full tuition of $50,000 a year or some such is not the full cost. This situation has held true in essentially all US colleges and universities for at least 50 years." First of all, you're conflating gifts and taxes, which is at best sloppy and at worst, deceptive. People _choose_ to give gifts. Unless you're saying they were deceived, how those gifts are used seems irrelevant to a discussion of US subsidies of foreign students. If I donate to UNICEF, does that count as "foreign aid"? Second, do you even have a citation or any kind of facts to back up that statement? Or is it just something you're parroting?
  - graycat 14y ago
    On your first point, it's super simple: My point is that any student who goes to a well known US college or university is having most of their education paid for by US citizens via gifts and/or taxes. So, when a foreign student gets such a US education, it was mostly paid for by US citizens. Simple. Why is this important? Because US citizens are hurting, and (1) the foreign students are taking educations paid for by US citizens when the children of those US citizens are struggling to pay their part of such an education and (2) the foreign students who stay in the US then are job market competition for US citizens. Did I mention that US citizens are hurting? The people pushing for foreign students to come to the US are powerful in the US economy and want the foreign students as STEM graduates for cheap labor. A related point is often another goal to create an identifiable lower class for STEM fields where US citizens of Western European descent are not welcome. I.e., one goal is to create STEM fields as a lower 'caste'. The people pushing worked through the NSF and the H1B program and various immigration rules. But these people pushing were not the tax payers Joe and Mary or usually the wealthy giving gifts. That is, the US has a university system paid for by US citizens, and some powerful people in the US have partly hijacked that system to their own ends of flooding the US labor market in STEM fields. For some years, a major result was that good US students looked at graduate study in STEM fields, saw something wrong, turned, walked out, and went to professional school instead -- law, medicine, business, maybe even agriculture. That's partly how the US got so many lawyers and MBAs. So, some of these guys got an undergraduate major in a STEM field, looked around, 'got wise', and jumped out for law, medicine, etc. Second, for a citation, get the annual reports of several well known colleges and universities and see where the money comes from. You will see that my statement that a student pays for about 1/3rd of the total is correct. In some cases, a student pays nothing -- as I recall, Rice long had that policy. At the wealthy schools, no one is turned away due to inability to pay. That is, the school decides whom to accept and then provides financial aid as needed. For the four year liberal arts college I went to, the students paid only about 1/3rd. Go look it up. Or I'll put it to you this way: Suppose you want to start a college or university. So, you have no gifts, endowment, or tax money. "Tax money"? Sure, all the state colleges and universities are heavily supported by state taxes, e.g., in NY, CA, MD, the Big Ten, Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, Arkansas, Washington state, Georgia, e.g., for Georgia Tech, Alabama, Mississippi, MA, etc. So, you are going to fund your institution with just tuition. But you still have to hire professors, erect buildings, set up a library, have fountains, athletic facilities, a student union, a concert hall, a string quartet series, a student health center, computing, administration, etc. And you have to compete for good students. So, Harvard has maybe $18 billion in endowment and lots of gifts and the buildings already in place. Ohio State has a campus in place and is heavily supported by tax money from citizens of Ohio and still has gifts. E.g., they have the Fisher School of Business. Why? No doubt some guy Fisher made a big gift. So how will you compete? Answer: You won't. So, you don't. So, there are no such US institutions. Clear enough? I can believe that most foreign students in US colleges and universities had to struggle financially to get through and guessed that they were paying for all their education and maybe also leaving a profit for the school. But the truth is, they were not paying for all their education; a larger part was being paid for by US citizens. So, why have US institutions long welcomed foreign students? Well, the institutions want to see themselves as helping the world, civilization. They don't see themselves as just creating proprietary, protected 'intellectual property' for the US. But did I mention, US citizens are hurting. China, South Korea, Singapore, etc. are booming. Some parts of India are getting going, e.g., in steel, autos, electric power, and more. Pakistan is doing well exporting textiles, very similar to what used to be made in the Carolinas in the US. A lot of this foreign growth has been seriously helped by the US opening its markets and making its educations available to the world. So, now the real unemployment rate in the US is about 20%, and US citizens in STEM fields are hurting. I'll end with a personal story: I'm starting a business. Why? One reason is, I am absolutely, positively, permanently unemployable at anything above minimum wage. And I have been since I was about 45. And I have an excellent background in STEM fields: Math SAT over 750 twice. Math GRE 800. BS with Honors in Mathematics. Also nearly a second major, in physics. Master's in Mathematical Sciences. Ph.D. in Engineering, really some applied math. Career in applied math and computing for business and US national security. The applied math and computing saved FedEx twice, saved it from going out of business, literally. I've published in high quality journals in applied math, computer science, and artificial intelligence. I've been a professor in one of the better MBA programs. I've taught computer science at two well known universities. Still, since age 45 or so, I've been totally unemployable. I'm healthy, never been arrested or charged with any violation of law beyond minor traffic violations, etc. Totally unemployable. Why? A major reason is that too many of the STEM jobs went to people in an identifiable, exploited lower class via the actions of the NSF and the H1B program. But, I still have a good background in pure and applied math, a lot in science, engineering, computing, technology, (right, all four STEM fields), and business. Did I mention I'm 100% unemployable? When I got to 45, it was finally about time to buy a house. Couldn't afford it. So, never bought a house. My wife died after a long illness, and I wanted to get married again; couldn't afford it; didn't do it. I'll spare you the rest of the details. And I know fantastically talented, beautifully trained Ph.D. pure and applied mathematician US citizens with great backgrounds in computing and business who are in the same situation. So, when I hear that the US has a shortage of expert STEM labor, I know that I'm hearing a flim-flam, fraud scam. Uh, for a comparison, early in my career, the company I was working for messed up, and I went looking for a job. In two weeks I sent some resume copies, went on seven interviews, and got five offers, all at more than I had been making. My wife was pursuing her Ph.D., and we were saving money rapidly. Really, it was such career successes that started the H1B program and the NSF interventions. Again, once STEM labor is about ready to buy a house, the powers that be get scared and act to destroy the careers of US citizens in STEM fields. For me this fight is just ancient history: If my business works, then I will do well. But I would not recommend that anyone try to have a career as an employee in a STEM field in the US because that field has a 'managed' labor supply, managed in a clumsy way that too easily can destroy careers. Some immigrants to the US have figured this out: I know two guys from Turkey. One is terrific at hardware computer architecture, e.g., VLIW. The other started a plant nursery. The guy with the nursery is doing better. Why? The plant nursery business is not of interest to the H1B or NSF manipulations. My business makes heavy use of computing, and there is some crucial core 'secret sauce' that makes crucial use of my Ph.D. and research abilities. But that is rare, so rare the US information technology venture capital community has no idea how to take it. Okay by me. It appears I can bootstrap my business, and venture capital will be slow to fund competitors. And nearly no one with my math background wants to do an information technology startup. Still, if go into a STEM field, f'get about a career as a non-academic salaried employee. Government actions tend to be clumsy, and often destroy what they seek to help. Well, the H1B and NSF efforts have essentially destroyed STEM careers in the US. Instead, start a lawn mowing service, a plant nursery, a red sauce Italian restaurant, etc.

graycat 14y ago

"You're guessing that these students are somehow federally subsidized, but if you're going to make that assumption, you need to actually substantiate it before composing an elaborate fiction of government malfeasance to explain it." Essentially every student in a well known US college or university is "heavily subsidized" in that they pay roughly only 1/3rd of the real cost with the rest from US citizens via gifts or taxes. Even paying full tuition of $50,000 a year or some such is not the full cost. This situation has held true in essentially all US colleges and universities for at least 50 years. Read what I wrote: The US NSF wanted to flood US labor markets with STEM majors, and one way they did that was to write into university research grants that students must be supported. Since there were so few US citizens that were good students and wanted to do graduate work in STEM fields, the universities got a huge fraction, roughly half, from India and Taiwan. So, a lot of TAs were good with Chinese but not English. And, whatever those students paid, still they had their educations paid for almost entirely by US citizens via gifts or taxes. A few students of wealthy families are a very different matter. This is difficult material to understand?

tomkarlo 14y ago
"Essentially every student in a well known US college or university is "heavily subsidized" in that they pay roughly only 1/3rd of the real cost with the rest from US citizens via gifts or taxes. Even paying full tuition of $50,000 a year or some such is not the full cost. This situation has held true in essentially all US colleges and universities for at least 50 years." First of all, you're conflating gifts and taxes, which is at best sloppy and at worst, deceptive. People _choose_ to give gifts. Unless you're saying they were deceived, how those gifts are used seems irrelevant to a discussion of US subsidies of foreign students. If I donate to UNICEF, does that count as "foreign aid"? Second, do you even have a citation or any kind of facts to back up that statement? Or is it just something you're parroting?
- graycat 14y ago
  On your first point, it's super simple: My point is that any student who goes to a well known US college or university is having most of their education paid for by US citizens via gifts and/or taxes. So, when a foreign student gets such a US education, it was mostly paid for by US citizens. Simple. Why is this important? Because US citizens are hurting, and (1) the foreign students are taking educations paid for by US citizens when the children of those US citizens are struggling to pay their part of such an education and (2) the foreign students who stay in the US then are job market competition for US citizens. Did I mention that US citizens are hurting? The people pushing for foreign students to come to the US are powerful in the US economy and want the foreign students as STEM graduates for cheap labor. A related point is often another goal to create an identifiable lower class for STEM fields where US citizens of Western European descent are not welcome. I.e., one goal is to create STEM fields as a lower 'caste'. The people pushing worked through the NSF and the H1B program and various immigration rules. But these people pushing were not the tax payers Joe and Mary or usually the wealthy giving gifts. That is, the US has a university system paid for by US citizens, and some powerful people in the US have partly hijacked that system to their own ends of flooding the US labor market in STEM fields. For some years, a major result was that good US students looked at graduate study in STEM fields, saw something wrong, turned, walked out, and went to professional school instead -- law, medicine, business, maybe even agriculture. That's partly how the US got so many lawyers and MBAs. So, some of these guys got an undergraduate major in a STEM field, looked around, 'got wise', and jumped out for law, medicine, etc. Second, for a citation, get the annual reports of several well known colleges and universities and see where the money comes from. You will see that my statement that a student pays for about 1/3rd of the total is correct. In some cases, a student pays nothing -- as I recall, Rice long had that policy. At the wealthy schools, no one is turned away due to inability to pay. That is, the school decides whom to accept and then provides financial aid as needed. For the four year liberal arts college I went to, the students paid only about 1/3rd. Go look it up. Or I'll put it to you this way: Suppose you want to start a college or university. So, you have no gifts, endowment, or tax money. "Tax money"? Sure, all the state colleges and universities are heavily supported by state taxes, e.g., in NY, CA, MD, the Big Ten, Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, Arkansas, Washington state, Georgia, e.g., for Georgia Tech, Alabama, Mississippi, MA, etc. So, you are going to fund your institution with just tuition. But you still have to hire professors, erect buildings, set up a library, have fountains, athletic facilities, a student union, a concert hall, a string quartet series, a student health center, computing, administration, etc. And you have to compete for good students. So, Harvard has maybe $18 billion in endowment and lots of gifts and the buildings already in place. Ohio State has a campus in place and is heavily supported by tax money from citizens of Ohio and still has gifts. E.g., they have the Fisher School of Business. Why? No doubt some guy Fisher made a big gift. So how will you compete? Answer: You won't. So, you don't. So, there are no such US institutions. Clear enough? I can believe that most foreign students in US colleges and universities had to struggle financially to get through and guessed that they were paying for all their education and maybe also leaving a profit for the school. But the truth is, they were not paying for all their education; a larger part was being paid for by US citizens. So, why have US institutions long welcomed foreign students? Well, the institutions want to see themselves as helping the world, civilization. They don't see themselves as just creating proprietary, protected 'intellectual property' for the US. But did I mention, US citizens are hurting. China, South Korea, Singapore, etc. are booming. Some parts of India are getting going, e.g., in steel, autos, electric power, and more. Pakistan is doing well exporting textiles, very similar to what used to be made in the Carolinas in the US. A lot of this foreign growth has been seriously helped by the US opening its markets and making its educations available to the world. So, now the real unemployment rate in the US is about 20%, and US citizens in STEM fields are hurting. I'll end with a personal story: I'm starting a business. Why? One reason is, I am absolutely, positively, permanently unemployable at anything above minimum wage. And I have been since I was about 45. And I have an excellent background in STEM fields: Math SAT over 750 twice. Math GRE 800. BS with Honors in Mathematics. Also nearly a second major, in physics. Master's in Mathematical Sciences. Ph.D. in Engineering, really some applied math. Career in applied math and computing for business and US national security. The applied math and computing saved FedEx twice, saved it from going out of business, literally. I've published in high quality journals in applied math, computer science, and artificial intelligence. I've been a professor in one of the better MBA programs. I've taught computer science at two well known universities. Still, since age 45 or so, I've been totally unemployable. I'm healthy, never been arrested or charged with any violation of law beyond minor traffic violations, etc. Totally unemployable. Why? A major reason is that too many of the STEM jobs went to people in an identifiable, exploited lower class via the actions of the NSF and the H1B program. But, I still have a good background in pure and applied math, a lot in science, engineering, computing, technology, (right, all four STEM fields), and business. Did I mention I'm 100% unemployable? When I got to 45, it was finally about time to buy a house. Couldn't afford it. So, never bought a house. My wife died after a long illness, and I wanted to get married again; couldn't afford it; didn't do it. I'll spare you the rest of the details. And I know fantastically talented, beautifully trained Ph.D. pure and applied mathematician US citizens with great backgrounds in computing and business who are in the same situation. So, when I hear that the US has a shortage of expert STEM labor, I know that I'm hearing a flim-flam, fraud scam. Uh, for a comparison, early in my career, the company I was working for messed up, and I went looking for a job. In two weeks I sent some resume copies, went on seven interviews, and got five offers, all at more than I had been making. My wife was pursuing her Ph.D., and we were saving money rapidly. Really, it was such career successes that started the H1B program and the NSF interventions. Again, once STEM labor is about ready to buy a house, the powers that be get scared and act to destroy the careers of US citizens in STEM fields. For me this fight is just ancient history: If my business works, then I will do well. But I would not recommend that anyone try to have a career as an employee in a STEM field in the US because that field has a 'managed' labor supply, managed in a clumsy way that too easily can destroy careers. Some immigrants to the US have figured this out: I know two guys from Turkey. One is terrific at hardware computer architecture, e.g., VLIW. The other started a plant nursery. The guy with the nursery is doing better. Why? The plant nursery business is not of interest to the H1B or NSF manipulations. My business makes heavy use of computing, and there is some crucial core 'secret sauce' that makes crucial use of my Ph.D. and research abilities. But that is rare, so rare the US information technology venture capital community has no idea how to take it. Okay by me. It appears I can bootstrap my business, and venture capital will be slow to fund competitors. And nearly no one with my math background wants to do an information technology startup. Still, if go into a STEM field, f'get about a career as a non-academic salaried employee. Government actions tend to be clumsy, and often destroy what they seek to help. Well, the H1B and NSF efforts have essentially destroyed STEM careers in the US. Instead, start a lawn mowing service, a plant nursery, a red sauce Italian restaurant, etc.