
How Chinese Students Saved America's Colleges - jseliger
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-30/how-chinese-students-saved-america-s-colleges?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=57761bfa04d301138ca178d3&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
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roymurdock
Here's the author's conclusion:

 _All in all, one gets the feeling that, while all those Chinese students aren
't going to suddenly go home, the big enrollment increases are probably over.
Then again, one might have thought that three or four years ago, too -- and
been totally wrong._

This piece contains minimal data + analysis, and no real argument or opinion.
It's just a blog thinkpiece with a clickbaity/controversial title. Don't waste
your time.

~~~
mahart
Well there _are_ 2 bar graphs and 1 line graph in addition to _" the feeling"_

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fhood
The only issue I have with Chinese students is how acceptable cheating seems
to be in their culture. Obviously this isn't true for all Chinese students,
but it is wide spread enough that my parents (Professors who teach grad
classes in physics and oceanography) say that you can't trust the standardized
test results of Chinese students because there is a good chance they cheated.

Oh and they are often racist. Really racist.

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sotojuan
This applies to many "model minorities" that aren't form Western countries.
I've heard the same thing about people from India and Russia/Eastern Europe.

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kartD
From my experience Indians (and practically everyone else, except the Chinese
who cheat everywhere) only really cheat once they get into college. The
Chinese probably cheat because English qualifications are really difficult for
them.

But YMMV. It's really pointless to point fingers. Americans cheat by abusing
ADHD drugs, heck there's a shortage in most states and a $20 prescription (~20
pills) goes for $20 a pill on the street.

And really, everyone is racist. It's practically innate. It's going to take a
while to get over this. I mean as animals we always distrust those who are
different from us. Some are just more expressive of there racism than others

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fhood
abusing adhd drugs is not the same as cheating. A person who uses ritalin to
study still knows the material at the end of the day. A person who cheats does
not!

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kartD
Hardly, it's an unfair advantage. There's a reason it's a prescription drug.

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fhood
you are missing the point. Cheating is bad because a degree is supposed to be
a guarantee of a certain level of knowledge about a subject. People who use
medication to study have that knowledge, people who cheat do not. Is using
drugs to study fair? No. But that isn't what I am arguing.

~~~
kartD
A degree is also a guarantee of a certain level of capability. If I can only
achieve it while taking a drug, then isn't it just as deceptive?

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rm_-rf_slash
Saved? How about robbed?

Not only are the Chinese students crowding out qualified Americans from the
few top spots in some of the world's best universities, it is a well-known
fact to the FBI that Chinese (and other foreign) intelligence agencies recruit
citizens studying in the US to steal research information that the hackers in
Shanghai can't as easily get from afar.

My father was a researcher for a major university for decades. He fought
tooth-and-nail for every dollar in grant money he could get to create the
knowledge that underpins the basic electronics that run our devices. And he
would get tens of thousands of hacking attempts from China every single day.

He also spent years building a hardware test environment, and a Chinese grad
student that worked in the same lab took the designs and replicated them in
China for a tenth of the cost - all without as much as a decent thank you.

But the Chinese pay full price so the few American students who can get in
save a little on tuition, so it's all ok.

/rage

~~~
TorKlingberg
You are blaming millions of people for a random collection of gripes.

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mrrrgn
Their point stands. The Chinese government is a bad actor with a history of
tapping university students for industrial espionage. Their population also
dwarfs ours which could justify some concern about American students being
"crowded out."

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o0-0o
What we could do it triple the cost for each Chinese, and give two Americans
citizens a free ride. Does socialism only work one way? Right->Left?

This article ignore a few opinions/facts:

1\. Chinese are taught the US is their enemy, and that they should come here
to learn our strenghts and weaknesses and take them back to China. 2\. Chinese
poeple have a history of stealing intellectual property through universities
and everywhere else. The lack of moral and ethical judgement is stunning and
sad. 3\. Chinese have manipulated their currency including tieing it do the
dollar, which is on par with just printing fake money for your citizens.
Therefore citizens are now 'new rich', and can afford to buy what hard-working
citizens of other countries can't because their countries don't manipulate
their currencies. 4\. US lets in anyone willing to pay in cash, mostly. Anchor
babies, investment citizenship, expedited services for the wealthy, etc. 5\.
US has race quotas as a legal precendent, where the universities can set the
amount of Asians, etc that are accepted, regardless of qualifications. Not up
to par? Who cares, let them in, they got the cash... 6\. US has the best
colleges in the world, and has for some time. Do you think the Chinese want to
study in Tibet?

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Moshe_Silnorin
This is ridiculous. Racial quotas in American universities select against
Chinese people in favour of on average less-capable whites. One of the more
noxious examples of modern racism is the fact that the ivies have much higher
standards for Asain students than for any other race. Basicly a reply of the
1930s Jewish quotas.

~~~
adiabatty
[https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S11/80/78Q19/ind...](https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S11/80/78Q19/index.xml?section=newsreleases)

Espenshade and Chung found that African-American and Hispanic applicants would
see their acceptance rates go down noticeably if affirmative action were
ended:

> According to the study, without affirmative action the acceptance rate for
> African-American candidates likely would fall nearly two-thirds, from 33.7
> percent to 12.2 percent, while the acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants
> likely would be cut in half, from 26.8 percent to 12.9 percent.

White students' numbers wouldn't be affected much, but 4/5s of the "missing"
African-American and Hispanic students would be "replaced" by Asian students:

> Removing consideration of race would have little effect on white students,
> the report concludes, as their acceptance rate would rise by merely 0.5
> percentage points. Espenshade noted that when one group loses ground,
> another has to gain -- in this case it would be Asian applicants. Asian
> students would fill nearly four out of every five places in the admitted
> class not taken by African-American and Hispanic students, with an
> acceptance rate rising from nearly 18 percent to more than 23 percent.
> Typically, many more Asian students apply to elite schools than other
> underrepresented minorities. The study also found that although athletes and
> legacy applicants are predominantly white, their numbers are so small that
> their admissions do little to displace minority applicants.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
>Espenshade and Chung found that African-American and Hispanic applicants
would see their acceptance rates go down noticeably if affirmative action were
ended

I care about fostering merit more than equality of outcome. Lowing standards
for emotional reasons isn't something I care about, or even think is moral.

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wil421
Where in the article does it state how Chinese students are saving our
Colleges?

I would expect the most populous country to send the most people to the US for
education. Especially one with a rising middle and elite class. The only thing
that's holding India back is the poverty, middle class isn't growing as fast
as China. Most Indian immigrants I've met here already have degrees.

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projectramo
How about a little more color:

There are 20.2 million kids in US colleges (12.2 million college students
below the age of 25. There are another 8.2 million over the age of 25).

Source:
[http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_105.20.as...](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_105.20.asp?current=yes)

Of these students, 974,000 or about 1 in 20 (round it to 5%) is a foreign
student. The important thing about foreign students is that, except for a few
cases of truly spectacular talent, they pay full freight and effectively
subsidized US students.

Now of those 974,000, about 1 in 3, or about 300,000 are of Chinese origin.

[http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/16/china-us-colleges-
educat...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/16/china-us-colleges-education-
chinese-students-university/)

That is about just under 2%. I hardly consider that crowding out US students.

(Please also note that some US students who go to China and learn from their
schools, though I assume this is tiny.)

So in terms of fear of "crowding", I think this is overblown.

In terms of taking IP over to China, its important to understand that the vast
majority of this IP is free stuff that anyone can learn. We are talking about
math and science up to the graduate level.

When you talk about the truly advanced PhD level stuff, well they are
"stealing" it, but they also "create" it by working on experiments,
interacting with other people, and so on. They contribute it as much as they
"steal" it. At least, in my experience, you can't really learn at the PhD
level without engaging other people.

So if someone here believes the Chinese government has a secret plan to send
over their best and brightest to toil for years in top academic institutions
and take back the knowledge they helped create, all I can say is: this plan is
going to backfire and help the US as much as anyone.

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leecarraher
I think the reason behind the glut is that India and China greatly outnumber
US populations 4:1, while number of universities in China is only roughly 2:1,
and India, it is about 2:5.

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awl130
i thought this would be about studying. walking the campus of usc (univ of
southern calif) i was struck by the shocking physical and psychological divide
between the asian students, huddled in the library, versus the white students
attending what looked to be an on-campus rave in the middle of the quad. the
former representing the new kind of usc student, the latter representing the
greek / legacy / party stereotype of yesterday's usc. note that usc's
academics have skyrocketed in the past decade and my theory is that it is on
the backs of new students from asia that is propping up those SAT /
matriculation rates, while simultaneously dragging along the detritus of the
legacy old guard.

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tonmoy
Chinese students are spending time and money to learn and take knowledge back
to China. Meanwhile, kids in USA are wondering if college/education is worth
it.

~~~
burnitdown
Hard to justify spending $80,000 for a degree that leads to a job that makes
$34,000. Something is broken.

~~~
sthkr
Well, that is if you study something useless like art history, sociology,
media, communications or english literature. I laugh whenever I come across
someone who's spent thousands of dollars going to university to study english.

Well, if you studied engineering, science, medicine, accounting or law. You'll
eventually probably make good money. If you can't land a job in the US, you
can go abroad and your American degree will be valuable in other countries
just for the fact that you studied in the US.

~~~
ac29
There is a huge glut in some of the sciences. I'll only speak to Biology/Life
Sciences, since that's what my degree is in, but I would say well over 50% of
graduates, including myself, don't end up working in the field. The jobs I
got, and could get, in the Bay Area, were right about in the $34k/year range
(and that was for someone fortunate enough to have multiple years of research
experience).

Spending a few more years in school and taking on more debt to get a graduate
degree might have helped, but I make as much or more now doing IT work than
most of the people I know who have Masters degrees in the field.

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bhouston
This is also happening in Canada.

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marcoperaza
The fact that they found a population willing to overpay and sustain their
disgustingly wasteful bureaucracies is _not_ a good thing.

