
As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting - sethbannon
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/international-enrollment-drop.html
======
lewis500
There are really three different downsides to this.

First, the foreign students cross-subsidize the locals' education. There are
large fixed costs to running a university and these students pay way above
their marginal costs. So now the universities have fewer resources; hence
cutting the newspaper funding etc.

Second, the foreign students increase the schools' reputations and can
collaborate with the faculty. Research is a public good. We do not have a
research system so that we can think of things for nerds to do; we have it to
produce valuable knowledge. In my own PhD program, the productivity of the
Americans was much lower than the foreigners. That productivity led to
discoveries that benefit everyone.

Third, immigration: some of the foreign students would have wound up staying.
We should want these people to stay here and have families. Educated people
who work hard and are ambitious enough to go overseas and stay are good for
the country.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than
> the foreigners.

I think the bias has swung way too far the other way. Racism against Americans
is still racism.

Also, this applies mainly to undergrads (full paying students), not PhD
students who are generally fully funded.

~~~
lewis500
Regarding PhDs, grad international enrollment is declining.

Regarding the full-paying foreign undergrads, their tuition contributes
towards the costs of the university that are shared. American students,
especially at middle-ranking public schools, are hurt when schools lose their
funding.

Regarding the "racism against Americans," there is no such race, and if there
were one it would not explain research productivity. What would is the self-
selection of who will go across the world to study something technical, the
much better high schools in other countries, and in the mere fact that the
rest of the world is a larger talent pool than the US. It is easy to think of
reasons.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> Regarding PhDs, grad international enrollment is declining.

Your source on that? All the schools I’m in contact with are still as
international as ever in their CS PhD departments. I’m not sure what the
trends are outside of CS, but I can’t imagine they would be very different. I
think you are just pulling this number out of thin air.

Research is funded quite differently from undergrad programs. Sure, fewer
TAships are available, but your research funding is much more detached. DARPA
and NSF aren’t going to become stingy all of a sudden.

> Regarding the "racism against Americans," there is no such race, and if
> there were one it would not explain research productivity.

If I claimed (without any evidence in fact) that “Indians or Chinese are less
productive than Americans” I would totally be accused of racism even though
both India and China are multi-ethnic. It is especially a stupid thing to say
as foreign and domestic students are pretty diverse, with slackers (or
dreamers) and very focused students on both sides.

~~~
pm90
> Your source on that? All the schools I’m in contact with are still as
> international as ever in their CS PhD departments. I’m not sure what the
> trends are outside of CS, but I can’t imagine they would be very different.
> I think you are just pulling this number out of thin air.

So you're asking for a source when your own view is based on anecdotes? Great.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Yes, the number of international graduate students is at an all time in 2016,
and I’m sure for 2017 also. It isn’t rocket science:

[https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-
studen...](https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-students-
united-states)

Growth has been falling, but that wasn’t the claim that was made, which was
actually ridiculous.

------
petilon
This is bad news. People like Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, Elon Musk,
founder of Tesla and SpaceX, not to mention CEOs of Google, Microsoft and
Adobe all came to the US as students. Without the immigration of the brightest
on the planet, the US will, over time, lose its edge.

~~~
mc32
As other have pointed out, this is mostly about the schools losing full-
tuition international students, ie.e "International students pay double the
$6,445 tuition of Missouri residents" \--which is insane. I mean, it's insane
for in-state students to have to shell out 6.5 thousand a year for higher
ed...

The international students are typically those kids of parents who are perhaps
middle to upper middle class in a foreign country (JP, KR, TW, IN, CN, UK, AU,
etc) who want to send their kids to an American school and get an "American"
degree and go back home for a job --those who come from non-English speaking
countries get the bonus/cachet of now having a degree from an English speaking
country which potentially gets them an international station or at least a
slightly better slot.

~~~
fellellor
>go back home for a job

Haha. Not really. American salaries, standards of living are among the
highest/best in the planet. Plus an abundance of economic opportunities and
relatively low discrimination compared to what one may face in other developed
countries.

These are the __only __factors which decide whether a family sends their kid
to the US for higher ed or not. The degrees themselves aren 't worth much at
all.

Unless on course you are talking about the very elite, who have well
established businesses and properties in their home countries, who then want
__Ivy League __degrees for their kids. They won 't give a f __k about the
average mid western universities that the article is actually talking about.

~~~
janekm
You underestimate the value of an “overseas” degree in “developing” countries
like China. A student who comes back to China with a US/UK degree will get
preferential access to first-tier city resident permits, direct financial
“housing” benefits from the city, a good job and faster career advancement and
more besides. Some of those benefits are starting to get scaled back but it’s
still a big advantage.

~~~
tanilama
U overstated it vastly...In China, UK degrees got so inflated, many of which
being one year master, that they are pretty useless now.Oversea working
experience is still valued

~~~
gaius
_In China, UK degrees got so inflated_

This is driven by ex-poly degree mills cashing in. If you’re studying in the
UK it’s Russell Group is still prestigious for the right reasons. Otherwise
the value is questionable.

~~~
chillydawg
Even that is changing. I know of a masters course in a UK Russell group uni
where Chinese students outnumber any other group including locals. The result
of this is terrible, terrible English skills and huge pressure from the
"sales" department to give better grades to keep that sweet Chinese money
flowing. Essays written in broken English that suddenly and suspiciously
transition into perfect prose are common and no longer punished. When one of
the students was asked why they picked that course at that uni, they said it
was because the entry requirements were easiest and the level of English
required was low.

Now, obviously, this course at this uni is clearly going to crash and burn at
some point, having used up all good will pandering to rich Chinese students.
The problem is that this is an industry race to the bottom. Sure, the main
stem subjects at Cambridge or Manchester are in good shape, but all the fringe
subjects are going to shit, especially the one year masters courses.

I can't name the specific course or university as I was told this in
confidence by a faculty member, so believe what you will, but the race to the
bottom is happening and is causing immense harm to UK institutions at all
levels, not just the ex-poly degree mills.

------
dmode
I would highly recommend to Indian students not to study in the US going
forward. At least until the generally hostile attitude towards immigrants and
meaningful reforms in GC attainment is done. If you plan to lay down your
roots in America after school, it will simply not happen in the current
climate. Go study in Canada, Australia, UK, and India and contribute to those
societies

~~~
sombremesa
All you have to do is get married to an American.

You could be the best and brightest or the dumb and dullest, won't matter.

~~~
netheril96
Indian/Chinese men are much less desired than whites and sometimes blacks and
latinos in the US dating market. Marrying an American is probably harder than
alternative approaches, at least for males from these countries.

~~~
pentae
Or you know, put up an ad on craigslist.

------
sitkack
Even my old community college stuffed itself on mediocre kids from overseas
paying 3x market rate, but god their parents were probably really stoked to
see them be someone else's problem.

Universities need to cull their bureaucracies and stop wasting their time,
money and effort with their spin-out accelerator programs. Research, teach and
keep the roof patched. Problem is, they will probably double down on out of
state tuition and patent grabs.

~~~
Simulacra
A lot of my professors in undergrad engineering hated teaching. They openly
derided it as a chore. This was very disheartening as a student to hear.

~~~
nitwit005
More a consequence of the schools happily trading teaching quality for
research prestige.

And for sports prestige, of course.

------
moduspol
> International students pay double the [...] tuition of [in-state] residents

> Nationwide, the number of new foreign students declined an average of 7
> percent this past fall

I mean, perhaps Trump can be blamed for some of it, but maybe these schools
might consider lowering tuition a little to become more attractive to foreign
students?

------
foobarbazetc
The only surprising thing about this article was how lowly paid a language
professor is. $47,000? What?

~~~
seibelj
Seems right to me, given the job prospects for someone whose talent is
speaking two languages. Do you think the market for Italian / English
specialists is super hot?

~~~
fellellor
Leaving everything to be decided by market factors definitely has it's flaws.
There should be room for authorities\patrons to intervene and prevent a
certain skill set from being wiped out because it doesn't make business sense
to preserve them.

~~~
hardwires
It's not being "wiped out", it's being scaled down to sustainable levels.

If "the authorities" protect price levels for every job that is in a larger
supply than demand, that money goes straight out of the pockets of the people
who perform jobs that _are_ in demand, i.e. the people performing the tasks
that are needed the most by _all the other people_.

You have a less efficient economy as a result, which makes people poorer on
the average.

------
tanilama
Well, why come to a country that is openly hostile to you after all?

~~~
anonymous5133
$$$ is why

~~~
tanilama
Unless u get a job. It is pretty hard by itself, even harder under Trump. As
an investment, its return is diminishing.

~~~
mc32
I can see the difficulty of getting in to make a degree even more valuable in
some countries.

~~~
tanilama
True for Good Schools. It is a great privilege to get into Ivys and top US
institutions. Those Midwest public schools in the article don't really have a
reputation for themselves.

------
nn3
So they're cutting the french tuba and Italian professors, but keeping all the
far more expensive deans?

Seems backwards.

~~~
mac01021
Are you saying they don't need to have a dean in order for the school to
function?

That might be true but, assuming it's not true, the best they could do to
reduce the cost of deans would be to reduce the dean's salary by half. And
laying off 2 or 3 faculty from departments that are not in high demand will
lead to a much higher cost savings than half of a dean's salary. Removing a
whole out-of-demand department even moreso.

------
Decabytes
It's really sad that research institutions are leveraging international
student's high tuition to increase their revenues.

~~~
Overtonwindow
Not just that but those same students want GTA positions. To fund those
positions the universities are increasing fees and no-credit courses on
students.

------
conjecTech
This can be largely explained by the drop in birth rates in China associated
with the one child policy. The number of college-aged Chinese in 2020 will be
roughly half what it was a decade before[1]. People have seen this coming for
years. The administrators blaming this on politics are most likely
scapegoating for their poor planning.

[1]
[https://www.indexmundi.com/china/age_structure.html](https://www.indexmundi.com/china/age_structure.html)

~~~
dmode
If this was the case, it would be a gradual decline, instead of a dramatic
decrease in one year. Also, anecdotally, none of my family members want to
study in the US anymore.

~~~
conjecTech
How gradual would it have to be for you to find this plausible? The prior NYT
article referenced in this work mentions that first-time international student
fell 3% from 2016. Those were numbers collected prior to the election, mind
you. And a 50% change in the largest cohort of international students over
only 10 years is going to make for a pretty big impact. Especially considering
that these middling American schools are seen as alternatives to better
domestic choices like Tsinghua. If the schools being discussed here were low
on the priority list of potential students, the change would be even more
exaggerated.

Imagine the hypothetical where there were 2 schools, each of which could
educate 50 students per year and where all students prefer school 1 to school
2. If the population drops from 100 to 80, school 2 would see a 40% decrease
in enrollment, even though the general population only dropped 20%. Now if
school 1 is in China and school 2 is in the US...

------
mathattack
Losing international students is bad, but the cuts they claim are hardly
draconian. Given the current environment (high change, bloated costs, online
education) we should expect massive changes at non-flagship public schools.
Should local students working full time pay to subsidize a money losing swim
team? (Independent of internationals)

------
glbrew
Apparently I'm the only one who is happy about this. I went through
undergrad/grad school just as the explosion of foreign students occurred.
Don't get me wrong, I'm open minded and liberal but I saw class rooms go from
a dozen English speaking students with close connections to the professor to
rooms stuffed beyond the fire code specifications of 50+ students who I
couldn't even communicate with, not to mention the precipitous fall in
education quality associated with this transition. Foreign money and skill is
nice but I saw top tier programs go to shit to cram in a bunch of high paying
mediocre foreign students. Domestic students deserve access to high quality
education, and I personally saw major US programs fail at that.

------
Simulacra
Universities should not make up budget short falls and high administration
salaries in the backs of students.

------
newen
This is also due to Obama era scholarships/money provided to refugee students
aren't done by the Trump administration anymore. The universities were
indirectly subsidized by the US government and aren't done so anymore.

------
Robotbeat
...and rural college towns. That ought to be in the headline, too.

------
bawana
Finally. Time for the sword of Damocles to fall on those overpaid
administrators.

------
brohoolio
Trump is going to ruin the American economy.

Attack universities by discouraging foreign students. Cut federal funding for
research. Encourage political attacks on universities. The most damaging will
be not forgiving student loans from people who went to scam universities, like
Trump university.

What Trump and others don’t recognize is that the American university system
is a distributed system of factories that manufacture knowledge, innovation
and the future.

Just look at self driving cars. Much of the tech and the talent came from
various universities.

~~~
throwaway7312
>> Trump and others don’t recognize is that the American university system is
a distributed system of factories that manufacture knowledge, innovation and
the future.

There is another side to this. And that is that the American university system
has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-
supporting half of the American electorate.

It is a bad thing for innovation when there are fewer smart people immigrating
into the U.S. However, when you have a system of institutions that adopt
adversarial political positions toward a large chunk of the electorate, you
should expect that at some point you will end up in a situation where the
electorate elects leaders who work, to some degree, against what the winning
side of the voting public regard as powerful institutions firmly in the hands
of political opponents.

There is not, unfortunately, an easy solution to the adversarial relationship
between academia and half of America. The shift toward a mono-cultural
academia (from a political standpoint) has occurred over decades; the left is
now firmly entrenched in American universities and unlikely to relinquish its
position any time soon.

We can't ban politics from universities either; you will never get politics
out of any organization in which humans are involved. We are distinctly
political animals.

So perhaps the focus should be on returning academia to a more politically
balanced setup... that we might no longer end up in scenarios like today,
where half the voting public views academia as a shining part of the
leadership of progressive society, and the other half views it as a once-great
former pride of our country, sadly fallen and increasingly adversarial. So
long as the universities remain a bastion of the American left and an enemy of
the American right, they will continue to feast during the years in which the
left holds power, and continue to starve during the years when it does not.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Disclaimer: I'm not American. But my view is that the American right has
placed itself outside the Overton window of anyone with a higher education.

For example, the President is a climate change denier. How do you expect those
views to be represented in universities when they fly in the face of
overwhelming scientific evidence?

In most countries, this problem doesn't exist because parties with ideas
equivalent to the GOP don't exist or are marginal.

~~~
throwaway7312
Climate change isn't a very good example. Individuals who subscribe to
anthropogenic global warming and individuals who are skeptical of it have
equal levels of scientific comprehension. [1]

It's more accurate to note that either side of the political divide in the
United States has its share of unscientific beliefs. On the right, you have
things like creationism and anti-vaxxers. On the left, you have things like
gender theory and anti-GMO. Dismissing either side as rubes because of deeply
held (if unscientific) ideologies doesn't help bridge the divide any.

>> In most countries, this problem doesn't exist because parties with ideas
equivalent to the GOP don't exist or are marginal.

As an American who has not lived in or visited America for quite some time, I
agree there is typically more uniformity in most intranational political
ideologies worldwide. Though I would not agree "most countries" don't have
parties similar to America's GOP.

I think it'd be more accurate to say most Western European and Western
European-descent countries do not have parties like America's GOP. Meanwhile,
most non-Western European or non-Western European-descent countries do not
have parties like America's Democrat Party.

For example, every major political party in Asia and Africa, with very few
exceptions, pursues an ethnonationalist agenda. This is more akin to the
modern American GOP than the modern American Democrat Party. On the other
hand, in Western Europe, ethnonationalist parties tend to be not only out of
favor, but illegal.

America is a rather strange country politically in that regard. Half of it is
more like Western Europe. The other half is more like the rest of the world.
In that sense, I suppose it is a bit like if you created a country made up
half of England and half of China. The result would be a type of tumult
similar to that of the U.S. (if a bit more extreme).

[1]
[https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2016.1148067](https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2016.1148067)

~~~
pm90
The right and left are not equivalent. While anti-GMO may be a personal
preference for many hipsters, its most certainly not the defining agenda of
the left. Also the left seem to be much more willing to change their beliefs
in the face of scientific evidence, whereas the Right is more theology, faith
and other such nonsense. So don't say they're equivalent, because they simply
aren't.

------
junkscience2017
Schools like Cal are still offering too many slots to foreign students despite
being chartered to serve the families of taxpayers who provide their funding.

The same issue will eventually plague Canadian schools...foreign students will
simply pay more directly for tuition even though taxpayers are still the core
source of funds.

For private universities, no one should care..they should select students from
wherever they like. But State schools should exist to serve their residents.

~~~
mc32
A question I would have, if I were an international student living in say,
California, is why would I pay tuition as a legal immigrant on say a F-1 visa,
but if I came in illegally, I would have a chance at getting a subsidy[1]?
Could they just pretent to be illegal for the subsidy and then when done just
go home on your F-1. It's not like the school would check or even less ask the
feds about status.

[1][https://students.ucsd.edu/finances/fees/residence/ab540.html](https://students.ucsd.edu/finances/fees/residence/ab540.html)

~~~
sjf
You can't get an F1 visa without the school knowing, they are sponsoring the
visa.

~~~
mc32
Couldn't you go AWOL and then register as undocumented? Or why not be able to
register for Non-Resident Tuition Exemption? Wouldn't that be discriminatory
in some sense?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Couldn't you go AWOL and then register as undocumented? . Well, you can't
> qualify for DACA without a time machine, so you'd need to estsblish
> eligibility under AB 540 by spending three years as a California resident
> attending a California high school to qualify. Having done this, you
> wouldn't have to pretend to be undocumented, since you'd pretty certainly
> lose your F-1 status. So, you'd potentially be eligible for in-state
> tuition—but also potentially eligible for deportation. Plus, unlike an
> actual good-standing F-1, you’ll have a lot harder time ever getting legal
> status in the US.

> Wouldn't that be discriminatory in some sense?

Of course it would; every status distinction made in law is “discriminatory in
some sense.”

The relevant issue is does it fail to meet the legal standard of legitimacy of
purpose and adaptation to that purpose applicable to the basis and nature of
discrimination.

------
Overtonwindow
George Mason University leans heavily on international graduate students. The
school increased no-credit-but-required classes on undergrads to pay those
same international students who wish to be GTA's. It's almost like a Ponzi
scheme.

------
sol_remmy
This is good news. At the moment, universities are the primary gatekeepers to
becoming a citizen in the U.S. Right now universities are capturing nearly
100% of the "citizenship cost" that immigrants pay start their path to
becoming citizens. That is disgusting and greedy.

With 100K in loans paid to the university, anyone can come to the U.S. on a
student visa, make contacts with companies, and eventually become a U.S.
citizen. A U.S. graduate degree serves as the primary "citizenship cost" for a
lot of immigrants.

Instead of New England universities shaking down immigrants, I would like to
see midwestern small towns, red states, small business all get a piece of the
small fortune that immigrants spend to come to the United States.

~~~
yedava
According to the article, it was Midwest (aka "red" state) universities which
have mostly benefited the most from foreign students.

Also what visa allows immigrants to skip university enrolment and be directly
employed in a small town small business?

~~~
sol_remmy
> Also what visa allows immigrants to skip university enrolment and be
> directly employed in a small town small business?

The student visa allows one to be in the country for an indetermine amount of
time (until their degree is done) and that person is free to obtain employment
while enrolled in university

