Provocative headline aside, this is an interesting article and worth the lengthy read.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/07/uiuc-growth-number-chinese-students-has-been-dramatic
One of many quotes that stood out to me:
Well, at least sheās honest!
So they failed at marketing the school and instead are going for a short term band-aid that will create long term financial issues. Just like UCās, who have large populations that do not give back, no booster/alumni/community support after they graduate. Take take take, but no giving back, it will cost them more in 10 years. They will be in same hole that the UCs keep digging and have to keep raising rates. Tuition boost now with zero return going forward. Of course not giving back doesnāt apply to everybody, but it is a trend that has been written about over and over again in WSJ, NYT, and others.
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@blueskies2day, do you by any chance have a link documenting that foreign alumni (or Chinese in particular) donāt support their US alma maters? I saw a similar comment underneath the article, but I hadnāt seen that specific claim made previously.
Iām guessing full-pay students EVERYWHERE are less inclined to āgive backā than those who received significant financial or merit aid, unless theyāre graduates of elites schools whose every dollar raised enhances a graduateās cachet.
Is it really true that full-pay foreign alumni make contributions at a lower rate than full-pay domestic alumni?
BTW, the giant publics traditionally simply havenāt engaged with alumni as much or asked for donations as much because they were fat and happy at the public trough. With state funding as a percentage of the budget dropping like a rock pretty much everywhere, however, the next big trend with endowments will be these behemoths (as well as big publics like USC and NYU) reaching out to their vast pool of alums just as much as the elite privates have for maybe a hundred years now (because they will be forced to).
Consider that in 2005, UMich had a smaller endowment than Columbia, UVa had a smaller endowment than Rice, OSU had a smaller endowment than JHU, both PSU and Pitt had smaller endowments than Brown, both UW-Madison and Purdue had smaller endowments than Williams, and UofI had a smaller endowment than CalTech.
By 2013, each public had a bigger endowment than the private I compared them to.
I appreciate this article. Long, but well worth reading.
I am a state of Illinois resident, son is graduating from UIUC in May, and I am so happy for the āAsianā based experiences he has received there. I am not happy our income taxes are going down from 5% back to 3%. I, for one, am very impressed with U of I, given the hand they have been given.
One reason for the increasing trend of Mainland students applying to US colleges other than the growth of the upper-middle class is the cutthroat competitive nature of the Mainland Chinese college application process and how not making it into the top tiers of colleges means oneās future career options in China are permanently closed to them.
Oneās college pedigree matters a lot more there than it does here in the USā¦and it extends well-beyond career considerations, but also into professional and personal social networking as well.
Since US colleges are more flexible in admissions requirements and thereās a bit of a ācool to go to college in Americaā thing occurring, this is a good alternative for students who would otherwise have been consigned to attending a third tier or lower college in Mainland China due to their gaokao results.
I find that interesting as the Oxbridge schools have found their most generous alums are foreign alumni, especially those attending taught graduate programs as I heard from the Vice-Chancellor while attending a Cambridge in NY event at the invitation of a friend a few years ago.
In fact, said chancellor said one issue British schools including Oxbridge were contending with is their domestic alums, especially undegrad alums donāt have the same culture of alum giving as their foreign alums or in US colleges.
However, one crucial part of alum giving is whether the given alum felt he/she had a positive memorable bonding experience at his/her alma mater. If so, thereās a higher likelihood of alums giving generously to the alma mater. If not, then probably not.
This might be one aspect UIUC and other colleges may want to take some introspective thought towards when searching for solutions.
Also, speaking from observations of my extended family and other Chinese families, they tend to give generously both to their alma maters abroad as in the US. NTU gets lots of donations along with elites and Big 10 institutions among them.
Actually, full-pay students are more likely to give back than those on FA/scholarships as the latter are more likely to have financial constraints even after graduating on average than full-pay students. Itās one reason why many colleges who donāt have large endowments actually prefer full-pay students to those needing FA.
Most students on FA come from lower income backgrounds so itāll likely take them several years to establish themselves economically to the point they can feasibly contribute.
This is moreso recently as many FA and non-full pay students also have to take out heavier loans than they did during my undergrad years.
A canard that is too often accepted without judgement is that Asians donāt have a culture of donating or giving back compared to other groups. I admit that I fell for that myself previously, and, granted, I canāt say I know what the characteristics of giving are in China itself (maybe Communism corrupted?) but when I started looking at the donor list to my HS, I came to the realization that Asian-Americans are actually over-represented among the list of all-time biggest donors (and this is a HS where Asians are a big percentageābut have never been more than half the student bodyāyet among the top donors all-time, Asian-Americans comprise nearly half that group.
Agreed. I find many Americans are too quick to assume that the Chinese attending US colleges are āthe bestā. In fact they are likely to be at least a tier or two behind the top Chinese students.
I disagree that "many Americans are too quick to assume that the Chinese attending US colleges are āthe best.ā " I maintain that the majority of American students, even at top schools, donāt particularly care one way or the other about whether the Chinese attending their colleges are āthe bestā or a ātier or two behind the top Chinese students.ā
This perception was still prevalent 7-8 years ago at a few Ivies among Mainland Chinese grad students who almost all invariably graduated from top-tier undergrad colleges like Bei-da, Tsinghua, Renmin, Nanking, Nankai, Fudan and other top-tier institutions in China. Most then seem to have a bit of contempt for their compatriots attending the undergraduate college because of the perception they were wealthy kids who āgot elite U prestige by using a gold-laden backdoorā and the somewhat true fact that no one back then would have turned down admission to elite Chinese colleges to attend an overseas undergradā¦even prestigious ones.
The āproper pathā was to do oneās undergrad in Chinaā¦preferably at a top-tier undergrad and then go to elite US/overseas institutions for grad school.
I live in Illinois and itās a travesty that our state flagship school costs upwards of $32K for an in-state student. Itās no surprise that Illinois needs full payersāthus the increase in the international population at the school at the expense of in-state residents. Itās just the reality of the state of our state. We are BROKE. We couldnāt live in a more screwed up, fiscally irresponsible state. Looking forward to leaving here once D2 graduates in May.
I wouldnāt look at it this way. I think having more full pay students enable more in-state students to enroll. The full pay are subsidizing the non full pay. Same can be said about in-state publics that are accepting more OOS students who are paying more.
Indeed. That would certainly be news to folks at elite Us like Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia. Heck, in the last one tycoon donated so much money they renamed the engineering school after himā¦Fu School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, anyone?
āI find many Americans are too quick to assume that the Chinese attending US colleges are āthe bestā. In fact they are likely to be at least a tier or two behind the top Chinese students.ā
āThis perception was still prevalent 7-8 years ago at a few Ivies among Mainland Chinese grad students ā¦ā
Two different things, cobrat.
The first post above was talking about perceptions of Chinese attending US colleges AMONG AMERICANS.
Your post was about perceptions of Chinese attending US colleges AMONG THE CHINESE.
Iāll take your word for it that in China, there are these huge chunks of ācontemptā (because apparently people without anything better to do sit there and āhave contemptā for other groups of students), but in America, really, no one cares.
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I live in Illinois and it's a travesty that our state flagship school costs upwards of $32K for an in-state student.
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That number includes a generous allowance for room and board. The costliest UG tuition at UIUC is Engineering - about $17K a year (for resident). At any rate, UIUC is one of the most expensive public uni in the country. I still remember UIUC used to be one of the ābest bang for the buckā universities - oh how the mighty has fallen.
Itās not because they donāt have anything better to do. Instead, itās a product of a cutthroat competitive educational system from middle school onward and a society where the pedigree on oneās undergrad/grad degrees determine their professional and social networks for the rest of their lives.
Taking an analogy from the Japanese case with a very similar competitive educational system, Iāll paraphrase a quote from a book on Japanese society:
Attending a topflight institution, especially Tokyo Uās Department of Law means the graduate has the pick of the most prestigious public and private sector positions to begin a mostly his flourishing career well into and beyond retirement age thanks to processes like amakudari where former officials end up appointed to prominent senior positions or boards of topflight corporations.
Attending a lower-tiered institution on the other hand may means the most he can hope for is a lower-mid level managerial position in a small/low profile company/public sector department from which mostly he will be forced to retire from at 55 and then will need to find odd jobs or something to hold him over until he can start collecting retirement.
Note that decreasing state support as a percentage of state schoolsā budgets is a secular trend that has affected virtually all public flagships over the past few decades. Pretty much all state flagships have gone from being state-supported to de facto state-aided (and the joke is that soon they will be only state-located). At Mich, UVa, PSU, and CU, the percentage of the budget that is funded by the state is in the single digits these days.
@PurpleTitan That % can be misleading, since many of these large research universities budgets includes hundred of millions in research funding (and/or other sources of funding, such as hospitals). Much of these budgets have little to do with undergraduate education.