Cobrat, we KNOW that it’s a society in which your college determines the trajectory of your life. Why are you telling us this as though you are revealing some new news? Here’s the other thing you haven’t figured out. We (as Americans) think a system which locks you in so much based on your college is a stupid system, and we don’t envy it in the least.
It’s for those on the thread who may not know about the education systems and culture of Chinese/East Asian societies. If you know about it, then feel free to ignore it.
PG, Cobrat is also an American. Let’s not do this “we” and “you”.
Cbreeze - yes, I’m aware, I never suggested otherwise.
Actually, I found Cobrat’s messages in this thread to be pretty interesting. A little long-winded (no offense, Cobrat! 
) but as a person whose kid went to schools pre-k-8 that were majority Chinese-American, I learned quite a bit.
I think it’s really interesting how everything has come full circle.
US companies outsourced jobs to China (namely manufacturing) in order to cut costs.
As a result medium household income has been flat for over a decade in the US. While Chinese income has grown.
State Govt cannot afford to keep funding colleges and thus they keep raising tuition.
How do colleges balance the budget? Do they cut spending? Nope, they need to new sources of income.
Enter Chinese International students. The offspring of the people we outsourced our jobs too.
Thus now they have a newly created wealth and disposable income.
What they want to spend it on? Prestigious US universities.
It’s like they are dying to give America its money back.
As long as college tuition keeps raising and US income remains flat we can except more international students as the years go on. I wouldn’t be surprised to see 30%+ in 20 yrs at some state flagships.
@bomerr We saw the same “effect” in the 80’s with Japan. Instead of spending $ on prestigious US universities, it was buying golf courses and commercial properties. It didn’t really work out for the Japanese. 
A major part of that is most Japanese who are able to attain admission to the top tiers of colleges in Japan tend to stay there as the pedigree of one’s undergrad degree is paramount and they still tend to be dismissive of undergrad degrees earned from overseas…even if it’s from elites.
It’s a reason why you’d see far greater numbers of Japanese grad students on even the elite campuses in the US than undergrads.
Most follow the domestic undergrad and then foreign elite grad degree path to a greater degree than other East Asian counterparts.
There are exceptions, but they tend to be viewed as exceedingly odd by most Japanese. Especially when it could have serious negative ramifications if one desires employment with topflight public sector agencies or highly desirable Japanese conglomerates.
A few points to keep in mind, however:
- The rate of increase of college tuition can not stay this high forever. It is already leveling and eventually will fall.
- Thanks to the one-child policy, after the 1987 birth-year cohort, each cohort of Chinese becomes smaller and smaller until you reach 2003, when the numbers start to level. The 2003 birth-year cohort is just a little over half the size of the 1987 birth-year cohort. The 2003 cohort is almost 5M smaller than the 1996 cohort (the kids entering college now). Granted, India's middle-class is still expanding.
- I do not expect the near future to be peaceful and calm in China.
- Already, the value proposition of full-pay at an American college is decreasing (though, again, unrest in China changes the equation).
Granted, the HS age population is flat or declining in most northern states.
American society is very nearly as stratified by university background. Just look at the last few presidential administrations, or at the new start-up elite.
No, American society is nowhere near as stratified by university background. That’s silly. The majority of people in upper middle class lifestyles went to “average state universities” or are in fields where a college degree isn’t all that relevant or important - for example, running successful car dealerships, or retail stores, or a local chain of restaurants.
Someone who thinks that the US is all that stratified by university background isn’t opening their eyes and looking around. Yes, you may not clerk for a Supreme Court Justice if you didn’t go to a handful of schools, but really, you just have to drive down the street of any affluent area - the majority of people in those areas do NOT have elite university educations.
Moreover, within the world of elite universities, it is NOT so stratified that there are any meaningful differences in the top 20 universities / top 20 LAC’s. They all offer worlds of opportunities - way more than any one student can take advantage of, anyway. You will find people who exalt HYPSM or the Ivies or whatever, but they’re usually naive. People who actually go to those schools know that the differences aren’t anywhere as big as naive people think they are.
Here you go – some numbers without political commentary:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2014/geography-of-foreign-students#/M16980
Note that you can change the location to your liking. Fwiw, in the next years, you might see a large influx of students from Brazil as their government is making a massive investment in sending a large numbers of students abroad.
Equally interesting is that you can reverse the search and see where students of say Madrid go or Mexico City. There are some interesting patterns in destination. For instance, Mexico City’s top 2 destinations are Columbia University in the City of New York and Harvard University, with the majority (probably) of lawyers pursuing a LLM at Columbia and government well-connected baby-admins at the Harvard Govt school.
For that matter, while China is very stratified, education isn’t the biggest stratifier. Power, connections, and blood matter a lot more. So do . . . . onions (the vast majority of self-made millionaires in China not only utilized connections but are/were insane risk-takers).
However, there is a strong cultural affinity towards pursuing education there; likely stemming from the days when education led to power, respect, as well as money (merchants may become rich, but social standing was monopolized by officials & literati, and the only way to become that was through education).
HOW one made their money mattered just as much or sometimes moreso than how much one actually has when it came to respectability during the Confucian dominated imperial era.
In the Confucian social hierarchy, the 4 classes below the imperial family from highest to lowest are:
Scholar-Gentry/officials - They were the educated and/or landowning class who assisted in the running of the society and the education…mostly of aspirants to their class.
Farmers - They tilled the land to produce the crops for food and other agricultural goods.
Artisans - Their skills and labor produce fine crafts, buildings, and other goods for both useful and aesthetic needs.
Merchants - While they were useful to society, they are considered the lowest because their occupation was viewed as profiting off the productivity of others, not producing anything in their own right.
This social hierarchy is not only the reason why merchants did their utmost to marry their daughters into scholar-gentry families, but also to save up money to buy land and encourage their sons to study for the imperial civil service exams so their family could hopefully vault to the top of this hierarchy.
Depends. Despite their wealth, some self-made millionaires in Mainland China became wealthy despite their lack of connections, power, or blood.
However, having large wealth doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll gain respectability…or be able to keep that wealth if the powers that be and/or their rivals decide to deprive them of that wealth through persecution on various trumped up and not-so-trumped up charges…
Also, even if the corrupt CCP power politics aren’t in play…self-made millionaires are still unlikely to gain respectability among the educated elite…some of whom are in political power or fellow self-made million/billionaires if they don’t emulate behaviors/customs perceived to be characteristic of the old scholar-gentry class…or their modern equivalents.
This includes having pedigreed degrees from elite domestic or now…overseas colleges/universities, showing strong interest in educational associated philanthropy, or in extreme cases…being obsessed with using Classical Chinese phrases in official/professional correspondence and even corporate/institutional banners/ads to the point the CCP passed an edict banning such practices.
Actually, many people grossly exaggerate the importance of elite university attendance in China. Like in the US, it is a nice game to try to get in to a top school, but like in the US if you don’t your life is not over.
I work at a second tier techology university in the middle of China (think maybe a Cal State equivalent). Our students are well trained, easily employable, and many are very ambitious to go into business and be succesful. The mass of technology companies in the big provincial capital are started and run by provincial locals, staffed by locals, and hired from local universities. I don’t think they would prefer a Beijing or even Harvard graduate. And why should they, such a graduate isn’t going to bring anything special to the table.
We should look at China as it is now, not a caricature of how it may have been decades ago.
That sounds just like China to me. In both countries, access to the very top tier of power is essentially limited to those who went to one of maybe ten institutions.
See for example: http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/07/22/obama-national-journal-harvard-oxford/2574001/
From the Chicago Tribune two days ago: About U of I freezing tuition
“Tuition costs have risen faster than at a number of our peer (institutions) over the last decade,” said Christophe Pierre, U. of I.'s vice president for academic affairs. “We are concerned that we are losing Illinois applicants, even though they would prefer to attend. They accept offers for a lower-cost education at out-of-state universities.”
The proposed freeze was discussed at a U. of I. board committee meeting Monday, and is expected to be voted on by the full board Jan. 15.
The decision to freeze tuition comes as the U. of I. saw a record low 71 percent of its freshman class this fall coming from Illinois, with a significantly greater share from abroad. Only about 42 percent of applicants from Illinois who were admitted to the U. of I. last year decided to attend — a record low yield that has troubled U. of I. officials.
In recent years, students have turned down the U. of I. to attend other Midwest institutions that offer competitive tuition — even for nonresidents — and better financial aid packages. The Urbana-Champaign campus has the highest in-state tuition and fees of any public Big Ten school other than Penn State University, according to the U. of I. Its tuition also is higher than that at peer institutions such as University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Maryland.
“Tuition is one component of an overall strategy to just be more effective in recruiting top-notch students. It is part of an overall strategy to become more affordable and accessible,” Pierre said.
In my Ds high school last year, of the 77 kids accepted to UIUC only 19 decided to enroll in our state flagship school. Five years ago, 54 enrolled out of 75 admitted. Enough said!
@annwank, I notice that kids seem more willing to go farther afield now, though (and that’s while keeping in mind that Madison & W Lafayette aren’t really farther from Chicagoland while Iowa City, Bloomington, Columbia, & Ann Arbor aren’t that much farther).
Plus, many Midwestern schools have Chicagoland recruitment as part of their survival strategy. There aren’t enough qualified IN kids to fill both of IU and PU, nor qualified IA kids to fill both UIowa and ISU.
Besides those schools, both Mizzou and UMinny have started to recruit Chicagoland kids aggressively recently.
There’s a large contingent of top-stats Illinois students at Alabama as well.
Yep- agree with above 2 posts. We have put 3 kids through UIUC and now have child # 4 there. We are very happy with the education they have received as well as internships and post grad jobs- ( all excellent! ) Of course, they have all been in some of the strongest programs UIUC offers: CS/EE/Accounting- COE and College of Business both have a $5K upcharge over the other colleges within the univeristy. However, compared to my kids’ other acceptances ( multiple at ND, Northwestern, Wash U, Michigan,etc ) UIUC is a bargain for those that don’t qualify for financial aid and I believe, the education is on par with these institutions.
As to the influx of Chinese students - well, I’m seeing it at the high school level as well. Friends with kids at some of the Catholic High Schools have 10-15 Chinese students coming in per year and staying with host families the high schools find for them.