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Does US Owe the World an Education At Its Expense?
An anonymous reader writes "'Right now, there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in classrooms at our top universities,' President Obama explained to the nation Tuesday in his pitch for immigration reform. 'They are earning degrees in the fields of the future, like engineering and computer science...We are giving them the skills to figure that out, but then we are going to turn around and tell them to start the business and create those jobs in China, or India, or Mexico, or someplace else. That is not how you grow new industries in America. That is how you give new industries to our competitors. That is why we need comprehensive immigration reform." If the President truly fears that international students will use skills learned at U.S. colleges and universities to the detriment of the United States if they return home (isn't a rising tide supposed to lift all boats?) — an argument NYC Mayor Bloomberg advanced in 2011 ('we are investing millions of dollars [actually billions] to educate these students at our leading universities, and then giving the economic dividends back to our competitors – for free') — then wouldn't another option be not providing them with the skills in the first place?"
in France. :)
They come, study, get a diploma...
And go away
For all that time, free university, free medical expenses...
F*ck socialism, it killed my country.
Oh, wait, we do.
For every immigrant that comes over here, we send the "donor" country back one of our citizens. We get an engineer, and they get a TV talk show host or a Senator. Seems like a good trade to me.
-- MyLongNickName
The best way to avoid a fight with someone is to be friends with them. The first step in becoming friends with someone is actually meeting them.
Competition between international businesses is much preferable to war between nations.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
The way this submission is crafted invites a flame war, but ok, let's tackle it.
The submitter is evidently not aware that the vast majority of international students pay full freight and then some when they attend a US school. So, in the small picture, that's why US universities market to them, at a time when US students are having difficulty ponying up (for a variety of reasons), and state legislatures are cutting funding for the public institutions.
Bigger picture, yes, we're educating the competition, but we're also familiarizing the next world elite with US culture much as the British used to, making the world ever more US-centric. Given the economics for the schools, believe me, these students are going to come. So, we might as well make it easier for them to stay AFTER we've educated them, and thus allow them to add value to the US (culturally, economically) over the long run. If we create the brains, why encourage them drain back out into the world?
Luke, help me take this mask off
The current situation does inure some benefits to the U.S., but in not easily measurable ways which is why they're not talked about all that much.
My observations when I was a college student was that international students would gain a perspective on the U.S., Americans, our life, and our culture which was different from what they expected when they first arrived. I assume when they went back home that this new perspective would cause them to evaluate their own local press and government statements about the U.S. in light of their first-hand experiences and knowledge. I had lab partners from Saudi Arabia, Ghana, and mainland China, all of whom I was able to talk with about perspectives and impressions of the U.S., and I have no doubt that each of them had a more nuanced and healthier view of the U.S. after having lived here.
If you want to stabilize relations with China and various Muslim areas of the world I think we'd be well served to invite far more of their students to study here so that when they go back home they can correct the thinking of their friends and family. Likewise the Americans who have a chance to study with them will realize that by and large "people are people", dispelling the simplistic "us versus them" mindset we seem to be afflicted with.
Cyrano de Maniac
International students are the ones that are paying full price for our universities, and they're the ones that keep our universities funded.
Universities court international students like it was nobody else's business.
A good part of the US GDP can be traced to actually selling higher-level education to international students. Consider that each international student brings in $50k+ to the US GDP, and multiply that by the number of students per year. It's easily a bigger industry than Hollywood.
I'm surprised that Government doesn't allow more sales of education to international students. Our economy could use that money.
Foreign money really does grow an economy. Consider also that in the 90's, the immigration door was wide open. Millions of people came to America. Now consider that each one needs to buy a house, at $100k+ each... you could pretty much explain the incredible GDP growth back in the 90's by our open border policy back then, and you saw how it hit our economy when we closed the borders after 9/11.
Hosting top foreign students is about as close to "win/win" as you get, depending on how it's managed. They pay tuition. They do research. They spend money on basic necessities while here (rent, food, etc.). Sometimes, if we're lucky, they stay here after graduating and become citizens. Highly paid citizens who are likely to contribute more in tax revenue and economic activity than they consume in govt. services. That is to say, the exact type of citizen we want to attract.
Someone with a similar opinion:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/10/09/the-20-billion-export-industry-that-the-government-is-holding-back/
I came to this country to attend university and nothing was handed out to me. I paid full tuition and all living expenses out of my pocket. So, I actually brought money in and helped the US economy. Not only that, but after getting a degree, I STAYED and became a heavily taxed US citizen. So, not sure what the point of the article is.
Meanwhile, they learn the local language and culture. They are more likely to do business with you.
The reverse is also true: US students will learn that there are people outside the US with different cultures and beliefs to their own and that, if they want to do business with them, they will need to take this into account. Since they provide this education for free to US students perhaps the question should be "Does the rest of the world owe the US an education?"...or we could just agree that its a mutually beneficial arrangement that we all learn about different peoples and cultures and leave it at that.
#1 is especially great. When I was in grad school for computer science, almost all of the office mates I had over the years were international students from India or China, and we were able to share a couple of great cultural experiences thanks to the time we spent together. While I do have fond memories of coming up with algorithms to solve problems that hadn't been solved yet, I have far more fond memories of us comparing notes and sharing aspects of our cultures.
For instance, in one conversation I had with an Indian friend, we realized that even though we were both referring to an animal called an "ox", we were talking about very different animals (mine was more like a cow, whereas his was more like a water buffalo). And I remember the shock on his face when, after talking about animals that are local to different regions, I offhandedly mentioned that we don't really have monkeys in America. Despite the fact that he had been living in America for a few years, he apparently hadn't realized he had never seen one in the wild, and that realization came as a complete surprise to him, since he had grown up most of his life with monkeys around him in the same way that I grew up with squirrels around me.
Then there was the time that my Chinese office mate had me over for dinner with his roommate. To say the least, while I was aware that American Chinese food wasn't authentic, any notions I had left were blown out of the water when they served up that meal. We were able to have a friendly conversation (during which they continually complimented me on my chopstick skills (which I always thought were rather decent), despite the fact that they were easily 3-4x faster than I was with them) about censorship and our perceptions of how each other's governments are engaging in it, which was rather enlightening for both of us. And in return for their hospitality, I invited them to join me and my family for Thanksgiving. As we were pulling up and they saw the neighborhood, they were convinced I was from an extremely wealthy background and were a bit surprised when I revealed that my family is pretty solidly in the middle-class. They took pictures of all the various decorations my parents had put up, be it plastic plants or the curio cabinet my parents keep in the corner of the living room, neither of which they understood the purpose of. Things that we would take for granted, but which seemed entirely...well...foreign to them.
I also discovered prior to the trip home that neither of them were aware of what a turkey was, so I made sure to sit down with them in advance and show them a picture of what it was (my parents had an unfortunate incident a few years prior, when they had a family from the Philippines and Indonesia over for Thanksgiving, only to discover partway through the meal that they apparently kept turkeys as pets), yet their eyes nearly bugged out when they saw just how huge the bird was as it was coming out of the oven. And while some of the food clearly wasn't to their tastes (which was to be expected), they LOVED the homemade cranberry relish that my family makes for each Thanksgiving (to be fair, we like it too, which is why we keep making it).
For me, I remember enjoying conversations over language the most. We'd discuss various odd constructs in Hindi, Mandarin, English, Japanese, or other languages and then talk about how they were handled in each. It was especially interesting to discuss English with the Indian students, since their background was in British English, which has a few grammatical differences from American English that none of us realized until they presented themselves (e.g. saying "he got off of the bus" and "he got on of the bus" sounded equally ridiculous to them, whereas the first one would sound just fine to an American).
Perhaps the most valuable lesson I received, however, was during my first week of grad school. I recall being concerned that I'd be going head-to-head in my classes and research against the best and brightest from around the world, and while some