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Most grad students do not pay full tuition, period. Many US students, and I would imagine those who get accepted to MIT most likely, qualify for NSF grants which cover the cost of graduate education. So your argument that MIT is acting as a "business to maximize its profit" is not very convincing.

I agree with you that some of the positions might be a bit extreme: the US is most certainly capable of producing highly qualified researchers, entrepreneurs etc.

Edit: One more point I would want to add is that currently, US universities, and the US itself, is seen as a very desirable place to live and do research. This might change if the country institutes a policy of (implicit) religious discrimination.

Most NSF grants and the like are for PhD students (the university still welcomes the funds they bring in, but they are a relatively small portion of income).

Universities make much more money off their Masters students, most of whom are international, and pay full tuition (or someone does for them).

I realize this is somewhat anecdotal, but still...

For MIT EECS (largest dep't on campus; ~700 PhD students) there's no Masters-only people (except MEng students who continue for a 5th year from undergrad). The department only accepts applications to the PhD program and funds its students accordingly. They probably lose money over their international students because none of them qualify for NSF fellowships, etc.

* Universities make much more money off their Masters students, most of whom are international, and pay full tuition (or someone does for them).*

It's a scam.

The Ph.D. is the real graduate degree in US schools. If you get a MS, people who know the system expect that you flunked out in quals (it's the parting gift for those that couldn't handle the work). Terminal MS degrees at serious schools are just outright selling prestige to the naïve.

A MS from MIT or Stanfurd is much, much less prestigious than a BS degree from the same school and requires less academic rigor.

I'm sorry, but your understanding of Masters degrees seem to be dangerously misinformed. There is a wide spectrum of MS degrees offered by US universities, from leading-to-PhD to Professional-degree-for-Software-Devs. I agree there are some who "flunk out" their quals and leave with a Masters, but the selection process for a PhD is stringent enough that this is a very small minority of all MS degrees.

Personally, a research oriented MS degree allowed me to work closely with a researcher and contribute to that research leading to paper publications and a thesis. The goal of the program seems to have been to allow people to get a taste of doing research and then move on to a PhD program if they found that appealing.

> So your argument that MIT is acting as a "business to maximize its profit" is not very convincing.

Please don't put it in quotes because this is not what I said at all. I said it's a business protecting it's revenue source.

> The other problem I have with all of these articles/arguments is this image being painted that the US would be dumb as a rock if it weren't for the influx of immigrants.

That's a silly straw-man.

The reasonable form of the argument is about marginal effects: for each smart immigrant you remove, America becomes dumber, for each smart immigrant you add, America becomes smarter. That form of the argument is evidently true regardless of how many smart people were born in America.

> This idea that we better let-in hordes of immigrants for fear of not having businesses launched or any innovation

It's not that there wouldn't be any, just less. America will be poorer — not destitute, but less rich — if it keeps out smart immigrants.

I disagree with both your premises. You could also argue that, by not allowing an immigrant in you can open up another slot for someone already in the US to attend MIT (or any other university).

If you read enough of these articles they all sound the same: We need immigrants because otherwise we will not have innovation and we will not have new businesses.

These arguments are not being made as mathematical or statistical realities, they are simple fabrications to produce emotional response.

I take offense to that. I'd rather we agree we need immigration and not justify it through fabricated logic.

> It's not that there wouldn't be any, just less. America will be poorer — not destitute, but less rich — if it keeps out smart immigrants.

I think you bought into the fallacy. We don't stop thinking, innovating or creating just because person X didn't come into the country. If Musk didn't get involved with Tesla someone else would have (another bit of misinformation, he isn't the founder). Would we have had SpaceX? Well, maybe not. But that doesn't mean we would have no new rocket companies at all. Look at what Jeff Bezos is doing.

Again, I am not anti-immigrant...I just want honesty in the discussion.

You're engaging in a variant of the "lump of labor" fallacy. MIT likely has a choice of a high-scoring, likelier-to-succeed foreign student vs a lower-scoring, likelier-to-fail American.

All of the better US public schools have the same dilemma for in-state vs. out-of-state students: the out of state students are smarter on average.

As a student, I'd rather go to school with smarter kids. Maybe you don't.

> You're engaging in a variant of the "lump of labor" fallacy.

No, I am not.

You are missing the entire point. Nearly every article or mention of immigration includes some variant of the equivalent to (paraphrasing):

"Without immigrants our entrepreneurship suffers greatly".

I reject this with passion. We have amazing people already in the country, both native and existing legal immigrants. If we closed all immigration today (not proposing this is a good idea) we would have no problem at all maintaining a rate of innovation that challenges most other nations.

We have excellent people already in the country. We don't need to use this lie to justify the need for immigration. There are a number of very compelling and valid reasons for which immigration is important and should be encouraged. The above-paraphrased fear-mongering claim isn't one of them.

I am not missing the point. I have worked with many amazing people, the more the better. Some are immigrants. Clearly, the total number of amazing people in the US is going to decline if we are unfriendly to immigrants. I want the best country, so I want immigrants.

Sorry that this argument doesn't work for you. But yes, you are engaging in a variant of the "lump of labor" fallacy: the more great people we have, the more innovation we will have.

Hmm. Not sure how many different ways to say it. I've been very clear.

This isn't about not wanting immigrants.

This is about not creating false reasons for which we claim immigration is necessary or important.

That's it. Simple as that.

> the more great people we have, the more innovation we will have

Absolutely, positively, unequivocally false.

Innovation is NOT a function of quantity.

General Motors has over 200,000 employees.

Tesla had about 900 employees in 2010. They innovated the shit out of a market dominated by giants. And that's the story of every single small team that has disrupted market segments. Read "The Innovator's Dilemma".

More people does not mean more innovation. This is demonstrably false across a wide range of industries.

We do not need to import people to innovate and foster entrepreneurial drive. We have enough smart people already on board.

> This idea that we better let-in hordes of immigrants for fear of not having businesses launched or any innovation is, well, repulsive. That would mean we are a wasteland of a country, and need to be rescued by immigrants, which clearly isn't the case.

Go to any research lab in the US; you'll probably see more immigrants than native-born. Far more, in many places. If America cancels visas and closes borders, it will still launch businesses, it will still occasionally produce a unicorn, but it will be crippled in basic science.

Don't we already have a huge surplus of PhDs?

Not in Tech and Medicine, but we do in Science. No clue about Engineering.

>If America cancels visas and closes borders, it will still launch businesses, it will still occasionally produce a unicorn, but it will be crippled in basic science.

Conversely, we saw in the now (in)famous Princeton study that Congress doesn't care what you or I want. They only care what the wealthy want. We need the wealthy to advocate for proper education at the primary and secondary levels. And more to the point, we need them to fund it. This won't happen as long as they continue to have relatively cheap access to foreign labor via loose immigration, H-1B visas, etc. I'm not an advocate of closing the border, but the more we pressure corporations to need better local talent the better. Maybe a nudge in the other direction over time wouldn't be the end of the world.

The article, as you say, mentions international graduate students. Most of these are probably funded by grants or the university itself (as is the case for most STEM graduate students in the US). So I doubt MIT - or any university - is making money off them.

Undergraduates, however, are a different matter.

The university gets some income from graduate labor. Grad students write papers about work their PI gets funding from the NSF/whoever for. PIs then write a new grant awarded based on their proposal and prior work. The university then takes some percentage of the grant off the top. How that compares to expenditures needed to pay for the education of PhD students by the school, I do not know.

But that does not differentiate between US and non-US students at all. The original argument was that non-US students generate more revenue for the schools.

There is a huge difference in how universities treat their Masters vs. PhD students. Indeed, universities are not making loads of money off international PhD students (most receive free tuition, a stipend, etc). However, international Masters students are cash cows for most universities (most pay full price -- or someone does for them).

I attended MIT for undergrad as well as master's. Most master's students I knew did not pay tuition (it was typically covered by their lab or through being a teaching assistant). On balance I wouldn't describe MIT master's students as "cash cows" for the university.

No, that's not right. MIT takes few foreign undergrads, and the graduate students are almost all paid for by grants. It is actually harder for MIT to find funding for foreign than domestic grad students. The The principal issues are

- MIT values the skills and intelligence of foreign grad students, who contribute greatly to the research enterprise.

- MIT's president is a Jewish immigrant from Venezuela who understands well illiberalism and is horrified by seeing in the US some of the things he saw in Chavez. Reif has been quite apolitical (see his bland letter after election), but the immigration ban has riled him up.

Very well put. The crux of so much of this comes down to business interests. When you finally wade through the bullshit and get to the heart of it, it's about money. Not ideals or the end of the free world.

Good luck fighting this fight here, though. It's like arguing that Star Trek is good on a Star Wars fanfic forum. They're just not ready to hear that.

While many people disagreeing with the parent's logic have valid points. The threat to a major profit center is not a small concern to MIT and they are rightfully interested in doing what they can to fight it.

> The threat to a major profit center is not a small concern to MIT and they are rightfully interested in doing what they can to fight it.

And there's nothing wrong with that. They just need to be honest about it and not claim that we are doomed if we don't accept foreign students. We have lots of very smart, creative and motivated people in the US. We don't need to import them.

In fact, one could argue that our national interests are better served by improving our educational system (K-12 and beyond) in order to ensure that we produce better, smarter, more motivated and entrepreneurial people than anyone else in the world. If it is true that we need immigrants because we don't have them here then we have a serious problem that needs to be addressed at a national level. In other words, we are under-serving whole generations of students all the way down to K-12.

Is it really that hard to believe that the US enjoys a disproportionate number of smart immigrants that isn't sustainable with the US's population alone, and that we are at risk of losing this extremely valuable population? To believe keeping out immigrants won't harm the competitiveness of American talent means you believe that the natives are some how exceptional compared to the rest of the worlds population by place of birth alone. Or do you just not care if smart people live, work and defend another nation if it means people who got here first have higher employment?

The overwhelming majority of us would be pleased if smart people did their work anywhere they find accommodating. Why should it have to be in the USA? Science and tech innovations are quickly shared around the world in the present day.

And the present system means that Americans are almost entirely blocked from pursuing careers in science by the awful economic prospects. Foreigners that come here can always get good appointments back home that will support a family if they can't get tenured in the USA. Americans would be out of work with zero savings and mediocre prospects at 40.

If you think Americans have something valuable to contribute to the world of science beyond than our cash support, then you can't support the level of mass foreign migration into science schools and professions.

I mean, sure, I want them to be able to work anywhere, but as American citizens we are enriched when they work in our schools, our private companies, in our government and especially in our military. I also don't believe that they are any less deserving than Americans at those jobs, or that Americans have any birthright to them.

Why don't Americans, discouraged by the economic prospects of our careers here go to foreign nations and support a family? Foreigners are willing to uproot themselves to start in the United States. And we are all better for it.

To answer your question, they do. I got a physics PhD in the United States. After being disappointed by the poor prospects offered the, I moved to the UK, where I now hold a prestigious permanent position. No more post-doc hopping for me!

I don't think MIT would charge US citizens $200K when they have a $13+B endowment along with healthy company research sponsorship and licencing revenue ($60M/year).

But yes, as soon as I read the article I immediately thought of lost revenue from foreign students from certain countries.

A lot of your arguments are factually incorrect.

> At well over $50K per year per student the university-as-a-business (rather than an altruistic entity) is concerned about a drop in revenue should immigration policy change. Let's not pretend this is all about good intentions, pink unicorns and ice cream. > A school like MIT (don't mean to focus on them, pick any school) can charge exorbitant tuition to foreign-born students and make millions. And the students pay for it.

Most international students do not have the resources to pay for graduate school and are either funded via grants, teaching or research assistantships or personal-loans. In particular students from these 7 countries. They might have been doing well in their respective countries but the same money after conversion into dollars doesn't have as much purchasing power in the US.

> The other problem I have with all of these articles/arguments is this image being painted that the US would be dumb as a rock if it weren't for the influx of immigrants. I'm sorry, I don't buy that one bit. We already have great talent in this country.

Sure, all international students and faculty are evaluated at par with US citizens. Any bias here is counterproductive to competitiveness and research output of top schools who've signed the brief. So yes, great talent, enough to fill 60% capacity. That is not equivalent to dumb as a rock.

>This idea that we better let-in hordes of immigrants for fear of not having businesses launched or any innovation is, well, repulsive. That would mean we are a wasteland of a country, and need to be rescued by immigrants, which clearly isn't the case.

According to the article, "It cites one estimate that international students directly contributed $32.8 billion to the U.S. economy and supported or contributed to the creation of 400,000 American jobs in the 2015-2016 academic year.". So unless you mean that the total contribution to US economy was $32.8 billion and only 400,000 jobs in total were created in 2015-2016 academic year, the article isn't saying US is a wasteland of a country. Moreover students, post-docs and professors doesn't exactly mean hordes of immigrants.

> They should be honest and say "we are going to lose a ton of money because we make a killing with foreign students".

Again, most PhD students are funded via grants, which depend on good research output, which depend on a competitive admission process which selects the best talent.

>On the other hand, if MIT had no foreign students and charged a LOT less for tuition it would be full of wonderful, capable, creative and eager-to-contribute US residents.

If you say that MIT makes a ton of money by charging more from foreign students, I don't see how you can argue that by taking in none they can charge a lot less for tuition.

Bottom-line: I agree with the general idea of verifying what you read and reading between lines, but based on facts and not assumptions.

> If you say that MIT makes a ton of money by charging more from foreign students, I don't see how you can argue that by taking in none they can charge a lot less for tuition.

You missed my point. All of these institutions are grossly over-priced. This has been discussed on HN in the past. The cost of an education in the US is ridiculous. When a university has 40% foreign students and they --one way or the other-- pay exorbitant rates this only serves to skew the cost scale up for everyone else. Regardless of how it's paid, we are talking about $200K to $250K for an education, that's obscene.

In state tuition is 45k a year. Regardless of if the US economy is in a bad state US colleges can charge a huge amount to US students because the US govt is willing to offer huge student loans.

Big 10 universities are ~$15,000 a year for in state tuition (for undergraduates). They include excellent research schools.

What schools are you pricing there?

Ah I was going from this website:

http://www.collegeview.com/schools/massachusetts-institute-o...

Can't seem to find anything on mit's website other than something that gives 46k as the average for undergrads

http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html

MIT is a private school so it doesn't really have in state tuition.

And that's yet another horrible part of the problem. Loans and grants don't help make tuition and the general cost of an education reasonable. They have an inflationary effect because people are chasing that degree rather than a reasonable ROI.

It's kind of a weird logic, advocating a nativist position (don't get me wrong, there are arguments for that) in the context of the Trump travel ban.

In order to sue, MIT has to show it was harmed. That's why it's talking about the international students like a statistic. It has to put it in that kind of context.

MIT isn't suing (this is an amicus brief [0]), but they are showing the same kind of interest.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amicus_curiae