
Indian Students Lured by Recruiters Asked to Leave University - spriggan3
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/us/indian-students-western-kentucky-university.html?partner=IFTTT&_r=2
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ghaff
I did some tutoring in graduate school. Unfortunately some were clearly
admitted for a variety of, doubtless well-intentioned, reasons who did not
have the most basic underpinnings of math and related skills. Graduate school,
even with remedial training, is not the place to get students up to speed on
8th grade arithmetic.

Perhaps, in some cases, general diligence was also an issue but a lot of it
was just a total disconnect with respect to (especially quantitative) skills.
When someone comes up to you and requests (I still remember this many years
later) "I need you to teach me about graphs" (the simple X-Y version), it's
hard to know where to even start.

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mycodebreaks
“If they come out of here without the ability to write programs, that’s
embarrassing to my department,”

Why will you admit such students in the first place? This is a lapse shown by
the admissions office. Paying recruiters to find students, giving students
spot admissions - these are questionable practices the university shouldn't
indulge into.

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woah
What this sounds like to me: the university admitted a lot of people without
vetting them. A lot of them failed out.

Why is this a story?

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elevenfist
> the university admitted a lot of people without vetting them. A lot of them
> failed out.

Which is pretty disingenuous. Even for citizens I've seen universities admit
students to programs who have little to no chance of graduating.

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chimeracoder
> Even for citizens I've seen universities admit students to programs who have
> little to no chance of graduating

Yes, this is very common in unfunded graduate programs (ie, for which students
are on the hook for the full tuition).

Unlike undergraduate programs, these get far less scrutiny, and it's also much
harder to compare success rates, because programs are often specialized and
employment rates aren't always as indicative of the value of the graduate
degree as they are for undergraduate education.

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Overtonwindow
Perhaps American schools should stop trying to inflate their budgets on the
backs of international students.

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grimberg
I have seen this first-hand. Many of my supposed GTAs, particularly for more
advanced courses like Operating Systems, did not know any of the material that
they were teaching. In one case, I had to show them how to use the CLI. Some
had wonderful questions like "Are pipes how copy and paste work". Can I get a
refund on my degree?

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takee
Seriously don't understand the point of this story other than the implied
racist undertones. Why is it important to highlight the nationality of the
students in the title, when the failure is clearly on the part of the
university admissions office for not vetting the student applications/GRE
scores etc prior to having them fly in. The nationality just happens to be
related to the country where the recruiters looked in. I bet they would have
found equally unqualified candidates in any other country, but it's far easier
to go to India where just by the way of shear numbers you can swoop in a lot
more interested candidates in a much shorter time period.

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blatherard
It's basically a follow-up to a story from two months ago, which is more in-
depth: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/us/recruiting-students-
ove...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/us/recruiting-students-overseas-to-
fill-seats-not-to-meet-standards.html)

I guess India is highlighted because most/all of the students were recruited
from India?

