

Foreign Student Dependence - luu
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/12/new-report-shows-dependence-us-graduate-programs-foreign-students

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aggronn
An old professor of mine had a conversation with someone at MIT about a
student trying to get into their PhD Econ program, and he relayed to me an
interesting, paraphrased quote:

"Of the 30 person cohort they take in every year, only about 4 or 5 of them
were domestic. I don't understand why that seems so odd to people--isn't it
presumptuous to assume that every year, more than 20% of the top 30 students
in the world are american?"

In other words, it really shouldn't surprise people that for universities that
compete on an international level, a majority of students are international.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It would be odd if more than50% were Chinese. If we are talking about
worldwide populations ans statistics.

~~~
makmanalp
Slightly, but not entirely. I wonder how many Chinese people want PhDs per
year vs Americans? I'd expect the former is larger, partly due to sheer
population size and partly due to the must-get-credentials culture that I've
not seen in the US as much.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Chinese Uni's are PhD mills. Every student who attends, and can put up with
indentured servitude for n years gets one. That's not to say that there aren't
some very smart Chinese, and some good Uni's in China, just that the average
Chinese PhD is meaningless. edit: (not meaningless, but that the avg Chinese
PhD isn't equivalent to one from the US, Europe, Russia, etc.)

source: Colleague with a PhD from China, and living/working in China for a
couple of years on a research project.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
This is quite true. The best students go abroad to get PhDs anyways,
or...maybe some very special institutes in China that are up to Western
standards (e.g. Andy Yao's lab in Qinghua).

Smart students still come out of these schools in spite of the PhD programs,
but there are plenty of wasted opportunities.

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fnordfnordfnord
For what it is worth, I worked for ten years for the physics dept at one of
the universities for which statistics were listed in the article. I got to
know a lot of professors, a few deans, administrators, you know, the people
who decide which students get admitted. I've had, and overheard this
conversation with them a few times. It always comes down to money. American
students won't live six deep in a one bedroom apartment in the low-rent part
of town, like many of their foreign counterparts who come from a developing
country. I got downvoted yesterday for saying it was about the money, but it's
about the money. If your family is well off and doesn't mind footing the huge
bill for you, then you can do it. Most of the kids who are smart enough to do
post baccalaureate science work, can see that they will never get out of debt,
so they don't. Other American students who I have seen make it to a PhD in
Physics, had a supportive spouse, and often enough go into geophysics since
there is money there.

PS It's about the money.

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footoverhand
As an American Electrical Engineering Master's graduate from one of the
mentioned schools, the program I was in was flooded with international
students (mostly from India, some from China, a few from Turkey).

What I found interesting is most of the Indian graduate students came for a
masters, most of the Chinese graduate students came for a Ph. D. There were
too few Turkish graduate students to make a generalization about.

I think this is good because most of the time, American's can earn nicely with
their Bachelors in Electrical Engineering, so there's little incentive to
pursue higher education. Having got a Master's in Electrical Engineering, I
wouldn't recommend it as a way to further your career. The classes were
interesting, but so far I haven't found a job that needed those specialized
classes.

~~~
yardie
But what about all the jobs that require, absolutely require a Masters, and 5
years experience for an entry level position?

/s

~~~
footoverhand
Well there's a good chance that those job postings are created after they have
the H1-B visa candidate already selected. List exactly the candidates
"qualifications" so that no one is eligible. That way they can claim that
there are no local engineers that can do this very specialized work.

/ns unfortunately...

------
Glyptodon
And to nobody's surprise it becomes obvious why college labs are always TA'd
by people who can't speak English. (Which in turn leads to more frustrated
students quitting STEM fields...)

~~~
HarryHirsch
At good places you sometimes run into professors that you have difficulty
understanding. At bad places they won't recruit professors that you have
difficulty understanding because the darling students will complain.

That complaint of yours - it says more about the fellow who makes it that it
does about the TAs.

~~~
WalterSear
I had a calculus TA at Berkeley whose English was so poor that she would
respond to questions from Chinese students in Chinese.

When she didn't understand your question in English, she would make a blind
guess as what you were asking about and then answer that, speaking as fast as
she could so that you couldn't interrupt her to tell her that she wasn't
answering your question. This would continue until you gave up.

~~~
HarryHirsch
I had a similar experience in an Algorithms class, where the TA had a firm
grasp of perhaps 70 % of the material she was supposed to teach. This person
was an American citizen, though.

When I was discussing the quality of TAs with the Instructional Director in
our department this episode came up, and she was deliciously cynical. "The
students are resilient", she said.

This is true. At university you are supposed to work yourself and to create
learning networks with your fellow students yourself. It isn't highschool any
longer, especially not at Berkeley.

~~~
WalterSear
Right: it's my fault for not learning Mandarin to take calculus.

And by the same logic, it's my fault for not figuring out how to cheat on all
my exams.

Schools are for learning, not hazing. This kind of neglect can't be excused as
some kafka-esque "character building" exercise.

~~~
HarryHirsch
The point of a university is to master the subject by any means necessary,
which includes building up your professional and social network. This point
was impressed upon us in our first week at uni. We were _encouraged_ by profs
and TAs to set up informal learning groups, if we didn't we weren't going to
cope with the pressure. I keep telling my students the same.

I hate to say this, but it must be said: anyone who calls dealing with an
incompetent TA "hazing" when he is at a genuine university like Berkeley has
missed something. Didn't you have fellow students to talk to to be able to
pass Calculus?

I know there are not-universities, and anyone who passes through these is
cheated, but Berkeley isn't among the not-universities.

~~~
WalterSear
If you don't want to get it, I can't explain it to you.

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OldSchool
I think this is perfectly fine as long as foreign students are paying full
non-resident tuition when at publicly-funded institutions. Private schools may
do as they wish of course, but it's not a responsibility of US citizens to
pick up the cost to educate foreign nationals.

~~~
sidww2
In the sciences, almost everyone - domestic or international is paid a
stipend. It's more accurate to think of PhDs are paid researchers rather than
students. Taking classes is not the point of doing a PhD so it's not education
in the sense that doing a Bachelors or Masters is education

For Masters, everyone pays tuition - unless one can find a research
assistanship where the professor is willing to fund part or all of the cost,
scholarship, etc.

