I find this line of thinking so odd, because nobody ever says “exporting American {cars/corn/computers} to China drives up demand and costs to US citizens.” The worst-case scenario here is that education is economically just equivalent to an export, but that’s still a pretty great scenario! Especially since it’s an export that doesn’t pollute, supports high-paying labor, perpetuates the global premium associated with a US education, and has the side effect that sometimes foreign students do stay and continue to contribute to the economy.
But it’s not anything like exporting a consumable product.
It’s exporting expertise which is used to outcompete the US and eliminates US jobs and challenges profitability of US companies.
It’s obviously not without benefits in terms of establishing clout of US universities (and maybe even keeping many of those programs running) and for the people that do stay those are bright and productive immigrants which are going to go on to create value and jobs in the US economy.
The problem is when almost all of the students aren’t remaining to work in the US and the ones that do, you worry if they aren’t involved in some form of espionage for the Motherland.
Well, except there’s a finite amount of educational slots, and so fewer people who would keep that education and knowledge in the US are able to get in.
I don’t see how it’s different. The instantaneous production limit of cars/corn/computers is also fixed, but can be increased with demand. There is a notorious shortage of jobs for new PhDs[1], so it’s not like labor is a limiting factor.
