Exporting Knowledge Via Students

brainhum writes "SF Weekly reports that proposed Department of Commerce regulations will require foreign students at US universities to apply for export licenses to use dual purpose technologies in the classroom. From the article: 'Inherent in the new rules is a discriminatory contradiction: Students from India, which has cordial relations with the U.S., will need licenses to study, but students from Saudi Arabia -- home country for most of the participants in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, and much of the financing and ideology behind Islamist terrorism -- will not.' The proposed regulations point out that current export license requirements are based on the person's most recent citizenship, which they believe, could allow a person born in Iran to avoid licensing if they held Canadian citizenship. More information is available in the SF Weekly story "Student of Concern"."

Comments

Wrong idea!

[AKAImBatman]

They've got it backwards! We don't want to restrict American information, we want to export as much of it as possible! We have to make the world a safer place by ensuring that every street corner in the world has a McDonalds and Starbucks! Not to mention Plasma TVs and DVD players so that our current enemies are too busy drooling in front of the television to be worried about such a thing as killing Americans! (Don't laugh, I'm halfway serious.)

To sober up a bit, this is a silly restriction. Nearly all the information you can obtain in higher education can be now found on the Internet. Why bother even trying to restrict it? Besides, competition keeps the world healty. Without it, what desire is there to continue developing new and better technologies? Not to mention the matter of helping our fellow man. India has improved a lot, but my understanding is that there are still plenty of poverty-ridden areas. Many African countries are another good example of this. Why stop them from developing their country? If you want to be effective, close the legal holes in our own country that effectively allow for the import/out-sourcing of slave labor. (e.g. We should open our borders and allow people to legally immigrate in order to work, and then start prosecuting the abuses of the H1-B system.)

There's probably not too much that can be done about out-sourcing (other than ensuring working conditions are required to be to american code), but that doesn't matter quite as much. In a short period of time, the out-sourcing bubble is likely to collapse as companies find that they aren't saving money. Alternatively, foreign wages will rise to a sufficient degree to make such out-sourcing impractical.

Sorry about the American-centered post, but the original story is all about us and our laws. Europeans and other world residents may feel free to chime in with their anecdotes and feelings on the issue. :-)

Re:Wrong idea!

[metlin]

Most students would simply go to another country without these restrictions, such as United Kingdom, Germany or other countries with good educational opportunities.

This is the US shooting itself in the foot - the international intelligentsia who come to the US contribute significantly to the American society. By restricting what they have access to, you're restricting their contributions.

Consequently, they'll simply go elsewhere, where there are similar opportunities without such draconic laws. The result? The US will lose out on a lot of very smart people who until now saw the US as a good destination for education and research.

And you must also keep in mind that a lot of these folks do stay back in the US after higher education and become permanent residents or citizens - discouraging them from studying and you've lost a lot of talent preemptively.

Re:Wrong idea!

[s20451]

I'm always suspicious when somebody calls attention to the "real" reason. Is it too hard to understand that simple events have complex motivations?

Why did the attacks happen?

- Was it because US troops are on Muslim soil? The US has more foreign bases than any other nation, sometimes on seriously unfreindly territory (e.g., Cuba), almost all of which have provoked no suicide attacks.

- Was it because of cultural dominance? Then why aren't Canadians and Europeans bombing the hell out of the United States? They bear the worst of it.

- Was it because of the poverty of the Arab world? But most of the attackers were middle-class and well educated. This is also true of many Palestinian bombers. Furthermore, many Arab countries are well off.

- Was it for reasons that takes more than five seconds to describe? Most likely.

Re:Wrong idea!

[MasterOfUniverse]

Was it because US troops are on Muslim soil? The US has more foreign bases than any other nation, sometimes on seriously unfreindly territory (e.g., Cuba), almost all of which have provoked no suicide attacks.

cuba does not regard guantanamo as holy place. Muslims regard saudi arabia as holy place.

- Was it because of cultural dominance? Then why aren't Canadians and Europeans bombing the hell out of the United States? They bear the worst of it.

If you would know, canada,europe and US are all part of Western Civilization. There are differences, but not as great as a difference between US and middle east

- Was it because of the poverty of the Arab world? But most of the attackers were middle-class and well educated. This is also true of many Palestinian bombers. Furthermore, many Arab countries are well off.

Right, and the attackers understood that it is thier duty to standup for the weak, since they are well educated in the land of illitrate (ofcourse the form (suicide bombing) is wrong imho.) Many middle east countries are indeed well off. But only thier dictators (with US support). The general polulation lives in poverty (except UAE).

- Was it for reasons that takes more than five seconds to describe? Most likely.

Yes, but you covered the main reasons already. When you see that the only very few people are getting rich in the land of oil and you still don't have money to eat 3 times, I think you would question why.

Hidden Agenda?

[Nytewynd]

It seems that by if this were in the interest of security, they would be required to include Saudi Arabi in the list of contries. By including India, it almost seems like a backwards attempt to limit foreign students from replacing Americans in the technical fields. I am not sure if that is a conspiracy theory/tinfoil hat kind of thought, but something seems odd about this entire piece of legislation.

First of all, like someone mentioned, anything you can learn in the US in a classroom is already published somewhere. The same textbook you buy for your class is probably on Amazon.com for anyone in any country to purchase. Teaching an Indian student about Nuclear Engineering is really not a security concern. If that student was intent on learning nuclear technology to create WMDs, there are other countries they could go to anyway to learn.

Placing restrictions on education is the last thing we should be doing. With the general population dumbing down, we should be accepting anyone willing to learn. Highly educated people are becoming few and far between. I don't care if the next guy that designs the power plant that keeps my house lit up is Indian or American, as long as someone learns how to do it.

I don't want to get politcal, but this seems like a situation entirely fabricated by the government for some kind of hidden agenda.