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[quote]
During the 2010-11 academic year, 157,588 Chinese students were studying in the U.S. an increase of 23 percent from the previous year, according to the Institute of International Education.
<p>The ability to pay full tuition is a plus for many schools, though there are concerns about high rates of false application info and unscrupulous "education brokers" who charge students high fees and often misrepresent their ability to get the student into desirable U.S. schools.</p>
<p>I have very mixed feelings about this. My sons attend a math and science magnet program outside of Washington, DC, with a solid Asian majority, so I know these kids work hard and are bright as heck. But the difference in HS is that these kids are Americans… their parents emigrated here and they are as American as anyone else. This seems quite different from the situation in college where kids in China and elsewhere are groomed to attend US schools and take spots from American kids at institutions in which long-suffering taxpayers have made a major investment. This is a tough issue, indeed.</p>
<p>Well, I’m Chinese and I know that a lot more are coming in the US for a good education. They can get a good job here and make a living with more freedoms than in China. That’s what the US is, right? The land of the free? I feel like that because many Asian families have high standards for their sons/daughters and many have straight A’s + countless extracurricular activities, some colleges are biased and would choose another student of different ethnicity even if the GPA was lower and less extracurricular activities just for racial diversity.</p>
<p>AjaLee, sometimes diversity is a good thing. The one thing my brother and I have learned is that straight A’s and playing the violin is no guarantee that a student will perform well in the real world. Both my brother and I have supervised Chinese workers that excelled in school, but couldn’t think out of the box if their lives depended on it. On the other hand, we’ve had workers who were average students, but were incredible “thinkers”.</p>
<p>BTW my background is in software/engineering and my brother is a senior biotech scientist.</p>
<p>^ Which is why it is eyebrow raising when schools, including the Ivies and other top privates, are chasing students from China while capping the no. of Asian-American students.</p>
<p>Also, these schools seem to have no issue taking studious black students of African/Caribbean immigrant backgrounds (who make up the majority of black students at the top schools) who exhibit the same type of thinking as Asian immigrant students.</p>
That seems like a pretty twisted way to look at it. These students pay full-tuition and indirectly subsize the scholarships the colleges give to Americans. In other words, they are indirectly subsidizing American students and contributing to the American economy. The also go out to eat and buy clothes/cars…etc; heck, they are paying all those sale taxes too. They are not taking anything from you. You are the one that’s taking something out from them. So relax and be gracious because you are actually at the receiving end of the net flow of benefits.</p>
<p>Sam,
I appreciate your response, which is making me rethink my position on this. I had never thought much about this issue before and I admit I do not have data to support my position (or any position for that matter), but I can see the merits of your argument. Thanks for taking the time to put them on the thread.
Regards,
Craig</p>
<p>We should all strive to speak not from preconception but from reason.</p>
<p>And please don’t perpetuate such notions as 1500 + 2.5 and Ivies unless supported by hard data. I know of a person who has a C average at Yale and got into Harvard Business School, and he is not a under-represented minority. But I am sure he’s not the rule but the exception.</p>
<p>The full price students coming from China or anywhere else are not subsidizing the aid given to American students. The money that American students receive in aid is coming from the generousity of alumni who are grateful for their educations and want to invest in the future of their school and their country. I do not have any stats to back this up but my only concern with admitting foreign born Chinese students or others are that even if they decide to stay here in America they will be sending money back home to their relatives who have supported their desire to attend school here and as a result they will not be the generous donors that the top schools have always been dependent on. </p>
<p>From personal experience with the Chinese community, I could easily state with 100% accuracy that the parents of the Chinese children (and other foreign born parents) are never the ones to invest time or money in anything related to their childrens schools. I think a big part of that stems from the fact that all Chinese parents work from the time their children are born. The Chinese moms are not in the loop, so to speak, as to what American parents do to support their schools. When fund raising events happen the Chinese parents are very rarely present and they rarely contribute in a financial way. They are very busy bringing the kids to all kinds of ECs in the evening to be bothered supporting something that is not musical or academic in nature. </p>
<p>One of the biggest problems facing the Chinese community in America is their desire to stay seperate from American culture. If Chinese Americans want to be considered the Americans that they or their children are than they need to allow that to happen. The Chinese kids are so busy on the weekends with Chinese school, private lessons, Kumon, and hours of math work with their parents, that they NEVER have time to play or be involved in any non work related experiences with non Chinese kids. The average Chinese kid in my community does not have three hours of free time in a solid week. This is part of what is causing the lack of free thought and creativity in the children. They are by far very impressive with academics but these children are having a hard time expressing free thoughts. I have spent alot of time in this community and the children do not speak without their eyes looking over their shoulders to see if mom is paying attention. As wonderful as the kids are, and as great as their work ethic is, there needs to be some drastic changes or this argument about Chinese getting accepted vs Americans being accepted is going to go on for a long time.</p>
There’s no way you can differentiate how much of the money come from where, unless of you work at the finance department of that school. Schools’ scholarships come from schools’ revenue which comes from multiple sources. If all scholarship money only come from alumni contributions, it would dry up in 10 seconds! If you look at any financial statement, tuition and student aid/scholarships are netted in the presentation, suggesting student aid/scholarships probably do mostly come from tuition.</p>
<p>As for sending money back…blah blah. These are not refugees FOB leaving their poor families behind their home countries. If they can afford full tuition here, do you really think they are the kind that send all their savings back home? In fact, none of my friends that were internationals are really doing that, at least not that I know of. I feel that you have some kind of preconceived notion and stereotype in your head that got nothing to do with reality. Also, except few schools like Princeton, most American alumni don’t give anything, according to US News data. The fear that any school’s money would dry up because it accept, say, 10 more students from China is ridiculous. I bet 99% of the alumni give way less to their alma mater in their lifetime than the 4-yr full-tuition.</p>
<p>There is no way tuition is paying to keep schools going and to offer need to those who can’t afford tuition. Take one look at the amount of money donated to any of the top schools here in America. The money in these funds did not come from penny pinching tuition dollars it comes from alumni donations.</p>
<p>Even full pay students are attending the top schools because of alumni donations. Just take a look at any of our elite Universities and tell me that tuition is keeping them running. What makes our American schools a possibility for our kids is the fact that American are generous donors.</p>
<p>If you were speaking about a more bare bones state school than I would say that full pay students are at the very least covering their own cost in addition to the tax payer dollars funding the rest.</p>
<p>^Are you speaking from solid data or just pulling * out of your *ss? Do you read financials?</p>
<p>Who says tutions alone keep schools going? I said revenue come from multiple sources! Tuition, governemnt grants, private gifts (alumni contributions), investment earnings, endowment…are examples of sources. Tuition is a major items among them. Endowment is another big one typically.</p>
<p>You do realize a lot of the headline grabbing gifts are RESTRICTED, depending on what donors want, and don’t necessarily go to scholarships, do you?</p>
<p>I clearly stated that I did not list any schools financial reports but you can do that yourself. I would like to say that "pulling out your *ss is a very American expression…congratulations!</p>
<p>Just wondering who do you think builds the beautiful buildings and purchases the amazing equipment and pays those salaries to operate these pristine universities? Do you think they do all of that and offer need based aid all from tuition dollars from full pay kids?</p>
<p>Full pay kids help pay (not all of course) for need based aid. Like I said, you can’t differentiate unless you work at the finance department. Does it really matter where exactly the surplus goes? It all come from the same pot (unless the funds are restricted for certain purposes only). I doesn’t matter whether it’s operating expense, salaries, student aid…etc, the point is international students help pay for them.</p>
<p>The American universities prefer full pay American students because they know American born students will most likely be Alumni donators. </p>
<p>By the way there are operating costs that are certainly seperate from need based aid awards. You may be correct in that there may be some overlap in how money is distributed in the overall operating cost of a university, but to say that a full pay foreign born kid is making it possible for a kid to attend a top American University even at a cost of $50,000 plus is not realistic. The schools that might possibly be making a profit from full pay foreign born kids are the state universities or the smaller schools that do not have the endowments that the more prestigious schools have.</p>
<p>As I said it might be possible that the state schools whose tuition for instate residents is less money might actually be coming out ahead if there are full pay students from anywhere, including other states. But full pay students foreign students are NOT subsidizing need based students because it costs substanstially more to run any top University in this country than the full pull provided by students. The top universities could fill their Universities with full pay Americans so it trully is about more than just a financial reason that top schools admit foreign born students. Thus the conversation goes to diversity.</p>
<p>Actually some of the largest and most heavily endowed private universities in the US depend also heavily on tuition revenue. A good example is USC with a $3.5 billion endowment. It generates nearly 40% of revenue from tuition, around 20% from government contracts, 16% from its endowment and only around 13% from gifts and pledges despite its very large alumni base. Not surprisingly, USC also has the largest number of foreign undergrads of any school in the US. </p>
<p>Gifts and pledges from alumni are only a small portion of total annual revenue for the wealthiest US universities. At Yale, gifts and pledges from alumni represented less than 4% of total revenue last year with more than 40% of revenue coming from endowment returns, 23% from contracts and another 17% from its hospital.</p>
<p>Across all colleges, private and public, tuition and fees are still among the largest sources of revenue. International students in particular, have become a major source of revenue for cash strapped colleges, especially when contributions from alumni are at the lowest level ever because of the economy.</p>