
Using International Students as Cash Cows Does No One Any Favours - crunchiebones
https://newmatilda.com/2014/11/28/using-international-students-cash-cows-does-no-one-any-favours/
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nraynaud
what's interesting for people with an non-xenophobic eye, is the contrast
between the students, those whose parents or sponsor paid for everything and
those who are really trying to turn their destiny around.

It really mimic the American side of thing with the prep schools, the legacy
admission, the fraternities vs the first gen students or even the students
born in a reservation.

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auganov
Briefly attended one of these prep schools. There was as much contrast between
people as anywhere else. Including contrast in affluence (being able to afford
a five figure tuition doesn't automatically make one crazy rich).

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jpatokal
(2014), not that anything has changed.

The article is about Australia, but the content applies to pretty much
anywhere that accepts international students for money -- grade inflation is
very much a thing in the US too.

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electricslpnsld
It was interesting to see the breakdown of country of origin for students at
my alma mater. The undergrad program was by and large Americans, the masters
program mostly students from China and India, while the PhD program was
roughly 50/50 students from China and the US. Sorting by price, the masters
degree was by far the most expensive, undergrad was fairly pricey but with
tons of financial aid available, while the Ph.D. students were all paid a
stipend of 30K a year. At ~50K a year in tuition for the masters program, the
CS department was making bank by inflating the size of masters cohort. Seemed
kind of unfair to the masters students, from my perspective.

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darkerside
What's unfair? Admitting so many of them, or charging so much?

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Latteland
It's unfair because the school gets used to the far higher tuition charged for
international students, and they don't allow domestic students in. Or they set
aside a max % that can be foreign. The schools need the money. But foreign
students take the place of domestic students, especially at selective
institutions.

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raincom
Look at its correlate locally: forcing everyone to have a degree even to work
at Enterprise car rental.

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Dancecity
Guaranteed student loans are at the heart of the issue.

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liftbigweights
No it isn't. It's an oversupply of labor vis a vis jobs.

In the late 90s, high school students and gardeners could get jobs in tech.

When there are too few jobs for the population, credentialitis happens. This
is why government jobs are pretty much all about credentials.

When there are too many jobs for the population, they lower the bar when it
comes to credentials.

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zwayhowder
I am just about halfway through an MBA program at an Australian University. On
average most of my essay assignments are 2000 words +-10%. I was writing 2000
word essays in high school 20 years ago, this is not what I expected at all.

Having said that I didn't do an undergraduate degree, and really want that
piece of paper so I can open some new doors.

So many of the other students in my group work shouldn't be passing high
school classes let along a postgraduate degree from a "world class"
university.

One thing I want to make clear is this is not xenophobia, I speak (a little)
Mandarin, Korean & Japanese. I love working in multicultural teams. I don't
care where you are from or how hard it is to speak English any more than
people in China, Korea & Japan care how badly I mangle their languages. I care
if you don't try, don't practice and play the racism card when a lecturer
fails you because you clearly don't understand the premise of the subject.

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soared
How did you get into an MBA program without an undergraduate degree?

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exotree
If you have a lot of professional experience and high marks on the GMAT you’ll
be able to get into a surprising number of MBA programs at prestigious
universities. I’m sure networking also helps.

