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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

Not sure you can compare them so directly. $800 is an unobtainable sum (?) for 1 billion Chinese/Indians. I'd also wonder about the difference in quality between UC Berkeley and a lot of those colleges. They are probably very good but US colleges tend to dominate world rankings (partially why everyone goes to them). If outsiders are willing to spend money in your schools, what happens to prices?

I'm also unsure about the comparison between averages (500 billion impoverished + 500 billion wealthy makes for an uninformative average), or savings rate. If US families save less (for cultural reasons or they don't need to), it's not relevant. Or it might be late.

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Savings is used because looking at per capita income is a disingenuous metric.

Since making 10 times more than someone doesn't get you very far if you live in a place that's 20 times more expensive, savings rate was used as a rough proxy for "how much can an average person set aside for this considering all other factors".

You could certainly factor in GINI coefficients and quintile distributions for a more accurate analysis, but I don't think it will change the fundamental nature of the results:

The capital a parent earmarks for their child's college education takes more time to accumulate and is more quickly exhausted in the United States than in many other countries. This means that the United States parents may be less able to afford a secondary program for their child in the United States than their counterparts abroad who didn't have to bare the same initial cost burdens.

I appreciate the time/energy you put into that comment. That was unnecessary but informative. Thanks.

800$ is a very big sum for a lot of my countrymen. Also it is true that a lot of Indian schools operate with very few resources, that would be required to appropriately educate all the students they serve. And this makes them noncompetitive in international university rankings. And to be frank it is not in our interest to pander to the rankings, because they encourage expenditure of a large amount of resources to train a few people who may or may not directly help the nation's economy.

I don't think rankings are as important to even individuals as access to employment opportunities. The cost of college education has to be weighed against the return on investment. If for example, the H1B restrictions are tightened to the extent that foreign students aren't able to find job opportunities, then the ranking of the university would be irrelevant in absence of decent return on investment.

I believe the same holds true for the native students seeking graduate education. If the cost of education is too high, be it monetary cost or opportunity cost, the people will not seek it.

" it is not in our interest to pander to the rankings, because they encourage expenditure of a large amount of resources to train a few people "

What do you mean by that?

" train a few people who may or may not directly help the nation's economy."

The words "who may or may not directly help the nation's economy" makes me think they mean this: IITs are considered the top institutions in India. I have heard that the people who come out of these IITs don't really help India. Most of them end up working in developed countries and contribute to those economies. Nothing much for India. So, it doesn't make sense to spend money on them. If I have to choose between funding for one IIT or 5-10 low grade engineering colleges, I would choose the latter because in some way, it is still benefiting India. IITs, I don't know.

Just my thoughts based on those quoted words.

You need top scientists to get publications in Nature, Science etc. These scientists (and the equipment they need) cost a lot, and it's unclear whether it's actually a reasonable investment for a country where so many basic needs (ex. reliable electricity) are still unmet.

Except the American scientists we're paying aren't publishing their statistical code or data just an advertisement of scholarship. I'm not convinced it's a good deal. In fact, I think it's probably a huge waste considering the opportunity cost of the money.

Some people argue that US government’s generous spending on sciences is in big part for security reasons - so that, if the next deadly weapon is to be discovered, US will have it first. In such case, sharing code and data is be counterproductive.

Not by this American taxpayer's preference, we have enough war machines and war-induced suffering!

$800 is about the monthly salary for so many Chinese I’m finding it hard to think it is unobtainable.

Can confirm, 800 dollars is nothing for average Chinese family, consider how highly the value education. The money they send their kids to cramp school for college entrance exam can easily top that. The bigger question here, is how to earn to ticket to get into top schools.

That's more than double the median Chinese wage.

Granted, that's still a lot of people in absolute terms.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=china+gdp+per+capita&ie=utf-8...

In 2016,the average Chinese GDP per capita is 8,123.18 US dollars, it is almost as much as Russia ($8,748.18) or Mexico ($8.201.31). This really surprised me.

Yes, but that's because there are a few people who are extraordinarily wealthy. The median is a better measure of what people make.

Was Googling around for stats. Sorry if the link isn't good, but:

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/china-is-still-really-poor/

In 2010, only 11.2 percent (almost 150 million people) lived on less than $1.90 a day. Not shown above is that 27.2 percent (almost 360 million people) lived on less than $3.10 a day.

So that's what, a bigger population than the US who live on less than $1k a year?

Even in that 27.2 percent, a family of 3 lives on $3k a year. I don’t think 4 months of living expenses is unobtainable, especially when we take into account Chinese people high savings rate.

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