Do you think American colleges should accept Internationals?

Applying to College
61

<p>Galoisien - </p>

<p>The government grant system in Singapore sounds like a "win-win" for students and country. </p>

<p>Our government should be more creative in finding ways to help students pay for college. One thought would be to offer a grant to students and require them to teach in our public schools for a specified period of time. Students would benefit and our public schools would benefit. However, I still believe that universities and colleges should focus on lowering tuition levels to a level where more students could take the responsibility on themselves to find a way to pay.</p>

62

<p>sakky,</p>

<p>While I agree with much of what you write, I found #41 brazenly offensive. The idea that American kids are lazy, that they should be slaving away at schoolwork, to the exclusion of their social lives, interest in sports and the lives of other successful and talented young people (Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears ARE talented, despite what you might think about their personal lives) turns my stomach. Ugh. I'm glad my kids are not being raised in your optimal world.</p>

63

<p>I was educated in Taiwan many years ago. I was way ahead of American students in math when I first arrived, but what I was lacking was critical thinking. I was so used to being spoon fed and memorizing everything, it was very hard for me initially to think for myself, or think outside of the box. </p>

<p>I am currently in a job where it's very global - have to work with European, Asian colleagues. There were quite a few instances when we have encountered some difficult problem (under deadline), it was the American team that came up with solutions and got issues resolved. </p>

<p>I wouldn't be so quick to criticize American education, or American kids' work ethics.</p>

64

<p>Like it or not, American kids are, on the most part, very lazy. At my high school, which is located in a wealthy, suburban area, 15% of the students, at most, are actually committed to anything, whether it be academics, sports, or extracurriculars.</p>

<p>The vast majority, around 4 out of every 5 students, squander their lives by simply existing. The median American student just wastes their time by contributing nothing to their school or community, gossiping ruthlessly on end, and engaging in acts of oneupmanship. </p>

<p>Whats even worse is that about 10-20% of the students at my school go out and get themselves drunk and high every single weekend. </p>

<p>I dunno if its just the social/economic demographics of my area that allows people to just not care about their lives, or just enough to live shallow, hedonistic lives devoid of any purpose or worth, but the truth is, no other country, especially any developing country, self-indulges/tolerates its students to such a level. </p>

<p>At any rate, if you haven't noticed Kelly, US education rankings have plummeted in the last 30 years. Perhaps we were at the top of science and technology rankings many decades ago, the decades that produced your vaunted co-workers, but now, the US's education system consistently ranks near the middle or bottom in international surveys.</p>

<p>The international students universities do accept usually are very best the world (including the US) has to offer. </p>

<p>And in my frank opinion, protectionism and nationalism does NOT belong at the world's (not the US's) best universities. Those elements are/should be of a bygone era.</p>

<p>PS Britney Spears was talented. The last public performance at some awards ceremony (I forgot the name) was absolutely horrid. At any rate, idolizing these less than model people is perhaps symptomatic of what is happening to this nation...</p>

65

<p>Elite - </p>

<p>I agree with your assessment of a majority of US public schools... I pulled my children out of public school when they were in grade school. In their private MS and HS, they are working just as hard as I did in college (and I attended a school that is now a top 20 LAC). Between studies, athetics and various EC activities, there is no time for TV, getting drunk or other meaningless social activities. For the most part, my children's classmates are hardworking, focused, overachievers. Yet I see many of these "super star" students denied admissions to top universities because they don't have a "hook". I know that there are "super stars" suffering the same rate of rejection in the public schools as well. So I guess my focus is not on the average American student, it is on the highest achievers. Those are the students that should not be denied admission in lieu of an international student. And I repeat, I am all for International students attending America universities... as long as they pay full tuition.</p>

66

<p>EliteNemesis - I totally disagree with you. American kids will push the envelope more than immigrant kids, but it doesn't make them lazy. Many immigrant parents are very strict with their kids, and do not encourage their kids to do anything but study. </p>

<p>Colleges in the US should be for the benefit of Americans - private or public. Private schools are tax exempt entities, which means that they do not pay taxes and still enjoy services provided by the government that's paid by the Americans.</p>

<p>To provide good, affordable education to its people has always been the biggest challenge of any civilized government. It is expensive, it doesn't come easy. If we are to open our higher educational system to everyone, then we should also allow every child in the world to come to US for K-12, if they should chose. I think many people would say it would not be fair becausse the educational cost is funded by each school district's tax money. I don't see how it's any different for having "protectionism" (as some would like to call it) for US colleges, may it be private or public.</p>

<p>Many colleges in the US actively recruit international students because of their ability to pay and create diversity on campus. Many wealthy foreign families are happy to send their children to colleges in the US. So it is a win-win situation. Every once in a while, there are international students that are so outstanding some colleges would be willing to invest in them, hence merit scholarship. </p>

<p>No, I do not think US' educational system (higher or lower) should be for the benefit of anyone but Americans.</p>

67

<p>
[quote]
Colleges in the US should be for the benefit of Americans - private or public.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Colleges in the US should exist for the benefit of themselves: self-interest, market forces and all.</p>

<p>When CEOs run multinational corporations in country X, they are not running the corporation to employ workers of country X -- no, they are running it for their own benefit. In the process, as a byproduct, they benefit workers of country X, sellers in country Y, and buyers of country Z. </p>

<p>That's the principle of the invisible hand.</p>

<p>If you want to ensure that investment dollars stay in the US, what's wrong with a service bond?</p>

<p>Not to mention, the libertarian policy has always tended towards quasi-open immigration.</p>

68

<p>If colleges exist for the benfit of themselves, then they should be runned like corporations - self sufficient, and tax paying entity.</p>

69

<p>Well, they shouldn't suffer from double-taxation -- though income taken from the entity should definitely be taxed. Since for example (free) public schools should be gradually converted into school voucher institutions, to harness market forces, it wouldn't make sense to generate additional unnecessary bureaucracy by effectively pushing money around with no net gain. Remember the point of public funding -- perhaps even private endowment funding -- is to be a market correction to account for spillover benefits (educatio is a positive externality) to prevent underallocation of economic resources.</p>

<p>I don't really see the logic of "American schools should exist for Americans" -- it makes sense to protectionists, but not to economists. As far as the economics of education goes, taxes should be generally gradually devolved and deprecated, eventually replaced with social and cultural institutions anyway, and as I recall, the US as a whole spends a rather minute portion of its GDP on education. Basically, what we seek is a return on investment dollars given by Americans. That is equitable -- you can create service bonds, take assurance in the fact that there are plenty of overseas endeavours that will reap returns for Americans, and so forth. </p>

<p>Ce</a> qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas....</p>

<p>You have to remember that the US is not an isolated economy and that world society as a whole is becoming more and more integrated. Many of those investment dollars don't even come from Americans, and several billion dollar endowments are probably being funded by a Swiss banker somewhere. The LSE might be corroborating research with the University of Chicago while they arrange to send students to each other for an overseas stint.</p>

<p>Let each school decide how to work out tuition for international students; some international donors might specifically specify that X% of their donation money should be allocated to international students, etc. while public schools might see subsidising the tuition of certain OOS or international students as an investment that will benefit its financiers in the long run.</p>

<p>Let the spontaneous forces of order run their course -- why interfere by crude government fiat?</p>

70

<p>huh.........?</p>

71

<p>The simple fact is that Americans are not funding the entirety of American education and that international students are going to contribute back towards the American economy in a variety of ways.</p>

<p>From a "social calculus" view (the "methodological individualism" of economics and especially the Austrian School of economics) it doesn't make sense to delineate the US economy as a single closed system where all its output goes to itself and where it receives no input from the outside; there are many subsystems and overlapping systems which are overlooked by the oversimplified idea of "American schools for Americans". Many schools have international donors and international funders; many international students will go on to give back to their previous benefactors in a variety of ways. If the government doesn't think a sufficient return to its constituents is coming out of the schools through its funding let it make its own demands (though a general libertarian demand is to deprecate taxes and devolve government as a whole).</p>

<p>If you want to seek the best students to benefit your economy, then just find ways to make those students contribute back to your economy to account for the allocation of resources required for the market correction for education in the first place. Service bonds, which I have suggested several times, is one such means.</p>

<p>People complaining about internationals remind me of the old complaint from WASPs about how Jews were stealing Ivy League seats from "true Americans".</p>

<p>Don't forget comparative advantage: the fact is, some American students may not thrive best in the American education system, and many international students may not thrive best in the education system of their own countries. The problem then is, "How do we set up the terms of trade?" Clearly, setting up tremendous trade barriers in the form of high tuition [that is, not providing suitable market correction] is not the optimal situation, for it results in allocative inefficiency.</p>

72

<p>^ Great post.</p>

73

<p>
[quote]
While I agree with much of what you write, I found #41 brazenly offensive. The idea that American kids are lazy, that they should be slaving away at schoolwork, to the exclusion of their social lives, interest in sports and the lives of other successful and talented young people (Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears ARE talented, despite what you might think about their personal lives) turns my stomach. Ugh. I'm glad my kids are not being raised in your optimal world.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I was deliberately attempting to be provocative to illustrate the simple point that not all (or even most) American kids are hard-working. Look, I happen to have gone to an above-average US high school, yet I distinctly remember that, at most, 25% of the kids there were actually truly serious about their studies. The rest were exactly as I described: far more worried about popularity, wearing cool clothes, where the next party was, who was dating the captain of the football team or head cheerleader, and so forth. Sad but true. </p>

<p>The worst part about US high school life are the social pressures: those students who actually want to study hard, especially topics like math and science, are deemed to be 'nerds' and are hence "punished" by the high school social caste system. They're the ones who get bullied, they're the ones who can't get dates, they're the ones who won't go to the prom because nobody will go with them. Sad but true. </p>

<p>Consider the painful writings of essayist and technology entrepreneur Paul Graham.</p>

<p>*When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity. This was easy to do, because kids only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity. We graded them from A to E. A tables were full of football players and cheerleaders and so on. E tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the language of the time we called "retards."</p>

<p>We sat at a D table, as low as you could get without looking physically different. We were not being especially candid to grade ourselves as D. It would have taken a deliberate lie to say otherwise. Everyone in the school knew exactly how popular everyone else was, including us.</p>

<p>My stock gradually rose during high school. Puberty finally arrived; I became a decent soccer player; I started a scandalous underground newspaper. So I've seen a good part of the popularity landscape.</p>

<p>I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.</p>

<p>Why? To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. The mere fact is so overwhelming that it may seem strange to imagine that it could be any other way. But it could. Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school. Nor does it harm you in the real world. Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries. But in a typical American secondary school, being smart is likely to make your life difficult. Why?</p>

<p>The key to this mystery is to rephrase the question slightly. Why don't smart kids make themselves popular? If they're so smart, why don't they figure out how popularity works and beat the system, just as they do for standardized tests?</p>

<p>One argument says that this would be impossible, that the smart kids are unpopular because the other kids envy them for being smart, and nothing they could do could make them popular. I wish. If the other kids in junior high school envied me, they did a great job of concealing it. And in any case, if being smart were really an enviable quality, the girls would have broken ranks. The guys that guys envy, girls like....</p>

<p>When I was in school, suicide was a constant topic among the smarter kids. No one I knew did it, but several planned to, and some may have tried. Mostly this was just a pose. Like other teenagers, we loved the dramatic, and suicide seemed very dramatic. But partly it was because our lives were at times genuinely miserable.</p>

<p>Bullying was only part of the problem. Another problem, and possibly an even worse one, was that we never had anything real to work on. Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so at the time.</p>

<p>At best it was practice for real work we might do far in the future, so far that we didn't even know at the time what we were practicing for. More often it was just an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through, words without content designed mainly for testability. (The three main causes of the Civil War were.... Test: List the three main causes of the Civil War.)</p>

<p>And there was no way to opt out. The adults had agreed among themselves that this was to be the route to college. The only way to escape this empty life was to submit to it....</p>

<p>The real problem is the emptiness of school life. We won't see solutions till adults realize that. The adults who may realize it first are the ones who were themselves nerds in school. Do you want your kids to be as unhappy in eighth grade as you were? I wouldn't. Well, then, is there anything we can do to fix things? Almost certainly. There is nothing inevitable about the current system. It has come about mostly by default.</p>

<p>Adults, though, are busy. Showing up for school plays is one thing. Taking on the educational bureaucracy is another. Perhaps a few will have the energy to try to change things. I suspect the hardest part is realizing that you can.</p>

<p>Nerds still in school should not hold their breath. Maybe one day a heavily armed force of adults will show up in helicopters to rescue you, but they probably won't be coming this month. Any immediate improvement in nerds' lives is probably going to have to come from the nerds themselves.</p>

<p>Merely understanding the situation they're in should make it less painful. Nerds aren't losers. They're just playing a different game, and a game much closer to the one played in the real world. Adults know this. It's hard to find successful adults now who don't claim to have been nerds in high school.</p>

<p>It's important for nerds to realize, too, that school is not life. School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look, you can see beyond it even while you're still in it.</p>

<p>If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.*</p>

<p>Why</a> Nerds are Unpopular</p>

<p>But the other problem is not just that the current US high school system stigmatizes smart students, but that the system therefore actively deters students from wanting to be smart. High school kids aren't dumb. They can see what will happen to them socially if they actually try to study hard, as opposed to spending their time trying to be popular (i.e. by working out and playing sports if you're a guy, by being a cheerleader and worrying about fashion and make-up if you're a girl), and many of them will then simply opt for the latter. That's why so many US high school kids don't do well academically. It's because they don't want to do well, because the high school social system actively discourages them from doing well. </p>

<p>Contrast that with what happens in the school systems in other countries, especially in Asia, where doing well in school immediately makes you "cool". </p>

<p>As Thomas Friedman once said, "In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In American today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears—and that is our problem"</p>

74

<p>
[quote]
admitting 3 chinese people from THE SAME SCHOOL NOT IN THE US is definitely strong evidence of a trend that's obviously happening. how many US high schools send off 3 kids to princeton?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Allright, I admit I misread the original post, but so did you. The poster stated that Princeton admitted 3 kids from the same school in China, but said nothing about whether they all actually went to Princeton. </p>

<p>But to answer your specific question, I will tell you that, in my graduating year, *my * old high school (in the US) got 3 kids admitted...*to Harvard<a href="although%20not%20all%203%20went">/i</a>.</p>

<p>And besides, I don't see what the problem is anyway. So what if China is sending more and more kids to Princeton? Why is that necessarily a bad thing?</p>

75

<p>It's a myth that US colleges are subsidizing internationals students to come to the US. Actually, US higher education is one of the country largest sources of foreign funds with over $14.5 billion in 2007 alone. This does not include revenues from the very lucrative international 'satellite' campuses of elite US colleges abroad such as MIT in Singapore or Georgetown in Qatar.</p>

<p>According to a report by the Institute of International Eucation:</p>

<p>
[quote]
International students contribute approximately $14.5 billion dollars to the U.S. economy, through their expenditure on tuition and living expenses. Department of Commerce data describe U.S higher education as the country's fifth largest service sector export, as these students bring money into the national economy and provide revenue to their host states for living expenses, including room/board, books and supplies, transportation, health insurance, support for accompanying family members, and other miscellaneous items. Open Doors 2007 reports that 61.5% of all international students receive the majority of their funds from personal and family sources. When other sources of foreign funding are included, such as assistance from their home country governments or universities, a total of two thirds (66%) of all international students' primary funding comes from sources outside of the United States.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>International</a> Students in the US</p>

76

<p>cellar,</p>

<p>Even if internationals are paying 100% of their tuition/expenses in cold hard cash, they are still being subsidized by U.S. taxpayers because each u's COA is subsidized for every student.</p>

77

<p>The cost of living in the US in general is being subsidised and lowered by trade; if the other countries of the world did not exist, the costs of production would be much higher. The US economy isn't a closed system.</p>

78

<p>
[quote]
No. They should not. Since AMERICAN TAXES help FUND AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES, they should not admit non-tax payers. So yeah. I do agree about the whole enriching the education process thing, but I think American Universities should look at the AMERICAN students first.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]
holy crap i didnt know so many people were going to answer this question. i will tell you guys my OPINIONS as to why american colleges should accept little to 0 international students. i feel that american colleges should educate for the most part, domestic students. the united states is number 1 in the world and to keep that position, i think for the most part, AMERICAN students should be given the education to succeed and make this country better. most likely, internationals will take advantage of american education only to help their countries out, not the untied states. also international i meant like that student is applying from non-US country. i know there are many students here on cc that are from foreign countries and believe that american colleges SHOULD accept internationals but this like i said, my own feelings about this.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>What you (and much of this discussion) seems to be missing is that colleges are non-profit organizations. That is why they don't pay taxes. That is why they are, in effect, subsidized by the US taxpayer. Hence, they should be judged by the standards of other nonprofit organizations. </p>

<p>So let me pose the situation this way. You say that American taxpayers fund American schools (via tax exemption), so they should only be serving Americans. Well, then does that mean that US-based charities should also only be used to serve Americans? For example, the Gates Foundation is the largest charitable foundation in the world (as measured by endowment size) and does not pay a dime in US taxes. Furthermore, US taxes are clearly going to help build the Foundation via charitable donations (i.e. if I donate to the Gates Foundation, I get a tax deduction). Yet most of their funded projects are not in the US, but are international (i.e. fighting disease in Africa). And I suppose that curing Africans of disease and giving them clean water and food doesn't really help Americans maintain the position of the US as a superpower. In fact, I would argue that the reverse is true - if Africans are healthier and better fed, then they will compete better against Americans. </p>

<p>So maybe that means that the Gates Foundation and other US charities should not be trying to help Africans or other foreigners? After all, US taxpayers are helping to fund these charities, right? Hence, they should only be used to serve Americans, and if Africans are dying of disease and starvation, well, that's their problem, right? Heck, maybe that's actually good because that means that those poor countries will never be competitive threats to the US. </p>

<p>Now, if you actually believe that this line of thought is not only wrong but actually obscene, then it simply begs the question of why is it that US-based nonprofit charities should be free to serve foreigners, but US-based nonprofit universities should not be free to serve foreigners?</p>

79

<p>Bay,</p>

<p>You don't seem to understand the economics of the college industry. The $14 billion that internationals pay in the form of tuition, rent, food and other services to study in the US is money that would not be there if they did not come to the US. In fact, internationals help bring down the COA for all students. Most pay pay full tuition, get no financial aid and often cannot work to pay for their expenses. Average tuition for US students would have to be lot higher if their contribution was not there. Internationals subsidize YOU, not the other way around. At many colleges, internationals are a major profit center and are actively sollicited through marketing campaigns.</p>

80

<p>Furthermore, I would envision that donors, international or domestic, want to see their funds go to actively benefitting those who will have potentially high impact per unit of money -- some of which means offering aid to international students. (They are a diverse lot, and may be both very rich or very poor, naturally.)</p>