The international students are typically those kids of parents who are perhaps middle to upper middle class in a foreign country (JP, KR, TW, IN, CN, UK, AU, etc) who want to send their kids to an American school and get an "American" degree and go back home for a job --those who come from non-English speaking countries get the bonus/cachet of now having a degree from an English speaking country which potentially gets them an international station or at least a slightly better slot.
Haha. Not really. American salaries, standards of living are among the highest/best in the planet. Plus an abundance of economic opportunities and relatively low discrimination compared to what one may face in other developed countries.
These are the only factors which decide whether a family sends their kid to the US for higher ed or not. The degrees themselves aren't worth much at all.
Unless on course you are talking about the very elite, who have well established businesses and properties in their home countries, who then want Ivy League degrees for their kids. They won't give a fk about the average mid western universities that the article is actually talking about.
You can rack $100k USD, in a country where average yearly salary is $2k and living expenses are nil.
When you talk about 'standard of living', imagine what standard of living you'd have in USA at 50x average salary. If I'm not mistaken that would be around 1-2 million a year. Add to that free unlimited healthcare, free prescriptions glasses. No land ownership fees, no condo fees, some money to buy your way anywhere, etc.
[1] https://www.iie.org/Why-IIE/Announcements/2017-11-13-Open-Do...
Also note that I said US offers a lot of economic opportunities not that other countries didn't. And I was talking from the perspective of a person from a developing country looking to travel to a developed country. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
I fully get that a STEM graduate has an easy life in USA, we have that anywhere. But you have to look at regular people, with average jobs. What you refer to as "developing country" most of the time offers better free healthcare that the top notch USA option that's simply out of financial reach.
Not to derail the discussion but just to illustrate. Canada just brought a law for maternity leave to be up to 18 months, paid.
In this article, surprisingly, the author suggests that his education abroad (Cambridge) was a result of his failure in the chinese system.
Finally, I threw in the towel, and asked my parents to send me abroad. Anywhere else on this earth would surely be better.
And regarded western universities as much less competitive and demanding.
What it lacked in rigor, however, it more than made up in the remarkable growth of perspectives I experienced by interacting with students from a massive spectrum of backgrounds from all over the world.
That will be another major loss for US universities, outside of the purely financial side.
Also these degrees don't offer any substantial advantage in any of the other countries you mentioned.
The currencies of all the countries you mentioned trade very unfavorably (maybe not the right word) with respect to the USD. So even if the cost of a higher ed degree seems like a lot to US locals, that cost is a few orders of magnitude higher from the perspective of a family considering this investment for their ward.
The only way this degree is worth the money, even after the substantial scholarship/assistance that US schools used to offer, is if you got a job that pays you is US Dollars. If at the end you don't get such a job, then the degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
A masters degree used to cost about 20-30 thousand dollars in total if you got the aforementioned scholarships/assistance. Then once you landed a tech job you'd have made up your original investment within a year if you lived frugally, which most international students tend to anyway.
After that you could save up your money, which would be a substantial amount once exchanged for the local currency and return. This is unlikely.
Because most would choose to stay and climb higher on their career ladder and provide a more luxurious standard of living for their families.
This is the whole point of going through the university system, not the degree.
Again, you don't need the foreign degree if the BIG CO is hiring locally anyway. Sure it makes you stand out, but your net gain is very little compared to someone who got educated locally as well.
Sorry about belaboring this point.
Of course, there are other considerations besides pay... but if you are trying to maximize pay, beating Silicon Valley or New York takes some doing.
This is driven by ex-poly degree mills cashing in. If you’re studying in the UK it’s Russell Group is still prestigious for the right reasons. Otherwise the value is questionable.
Now, obviously, this course at this uni is clearly going to crash and burn at some point, having used up all good will pandering to rich Chinese students. The problem is that this is an industry race to the bottom. Sure, the main stem subjects at Cambridge or Manchester are in good shape, but all the fringe subjects are going to shit, especially the one year masters courses.
I can't name the specific course or university as I was told this in confidence by a faculty member, so believe what you will, but the race to the bottom is happening and is causing immense harm to UK institutions at all levels, not just the ex-poly degree mills.
"Let me fix all of these points for you!" - Donald Trump
Most of the folks I ran into liked America but loved their countries of origin and looked forward to getting a job and doing well. I was not talking elite students (which is different from students at elite unis who can be a mixed bag)
That still doesn't mean you wouldn't rather settle in the US when you went through all the trouble to get educated there, in most cases.
There is absolutely no shortage of excellent universities in China.
I know lots of international students and the vast majority would like to get a job here. In fact, by and large most of the people I knew who returned to their home countries did so because they didn't succeed in finding a visa-sponsored job here.
Source? Most of the international students I went to school with are still here, working.
There is a market to provide good education. Some students have the merit and the means to pay for it, others don't have the means but have merit. It makes 0 sense to deny those that are able to pay just because they can.
By and large the article is not talking about those people. Undergrads are where schools make their money (lots of graduate students are funded anyway). Almost none of these people would have been affected. It's hard to overestimate how useful and desirable the top schools are.
When students from Akron are running any of those companies (a school the article talks about), then we can worry about losing out on top talent. I think the way US society is so divided based on if you went to a top college or not is just as problematic.
Not that the recent rhetoric isn't a problem...
Stanford has an endowment of 22.2 billion. UPenn has one of 12.2 billion.
The University of Missouri school system has an endowment of 1.2 billion spread over 4 campuses.
I doubt that Stanford and UPenn would feel the pinch over the next century. Even the income off the interest of the endowment would probably suffice for campus upkeep and professors' salaries.
Missouri's timeframe is drastically shorter, as they have four times the physical facilities to take care of and ~4 times the professor salaries.
Also, who would be easier to find grants from either the public or private sectors? Stanford professors with industry contacts, Ivy League professors with that cachet, or somebody from a regional public school?
A talent pool of 320 million people is plenty. We don't need to scour the globe.
I'm white and have a native accent, but in my 2 short years of grad school I had four (!) instances of someone responding with shock at learning that I was a US citizen. One postsdoc even asked flat out what the hell I was doing in grad school if I wasn't working towards a green card.
Also, if you want to get into UW, try being from Eastern Washington. There is a quota.
Really? First school I googled is 3k students.
"High tuition and fees are always the number one culprit."
No. US students attend IF they get in. This is why we are in a student loan crisis. There is no lack of money backed by US guaranteed college loans.
Can you help me understand this logic? I don't understand the connection being made from admissions statistics to the student loans crisis.
Or, at least, I think that's what the post you are replying to was getting at.
Another view is that the "student loan crisis" is a much bigger deal for people who take out loans for colleges that are easier to get into, colleges that have lower graduation rates and that don't have the same pipeline into higher paying jobs.
Most of the elite schools have 90+% graduation rates, and if you graduate from one, you have a pretty decent crack at making good money (and thus paying off your loan without too much trouble.)
The idea here being that the elite schools are what colleges promise to be (a path up the socioeconomic ladder) but they are extremely selective (I could totally pay, for example, but they wouldn't let me in; not without me taking two years off to go to community college first. My high school grades were terrible.) - many of the less prestegious schools don't have such high success rates. Community and state schools have graduation rates that are half what the elite schools have. San Jose State, a really pretty good 'state school' has a graduation rate around 50% (Of course, San Jose State is also pretty cheap) University of the pacific, a mid range (expensive) private school in Stockton has a 60% graduation rate.
I personally feel that rating schools based on their graduation rates is super problematic; I mean, an elite school isn't going to 'take a chance' on a student who might not tough it out just because they take a reputational hit if the kid swings and misses. But it does make sense from a student loan perspective; if someone is accepted to Stanford, chances are they will graduate, and chances are, the student loans incurred won't be a huge burden, due to the opportunities available. - But a lot of this is simply that you aren't accepted to Stanford unless you are the sort of person who has a lot of opportunity. Maintaining these high graduation rates means that students who are less likely to succeed are not given a chance to try; Because a high graduation rate is part of what makes an elite school, and because high graduation rates generally mean an input filter that filters for people who would have succeeded anyhow, elite schools are not good ways for people who don't have opportunity to gain opportunity.
https://imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2017
http://www.ipho2017.id/home#official-results-of-ipho-2017
The US ranks decently but behind China, Russia, and Vietnam, in both subjects.
IMO 2017: Lin, Gu, Bhattacharya, Chroman, Peng, Huang
IPhO 2017: Song, Raman, Balaji, Qin, Shi
I would guess that, for many if not most of them, their ancestors just immigrated to the US 1-2 generations ago.
The US usually ranks well but often comes behind China, Russia, or less well-known countries like Vietnam.
Top talent are born all over the world. With global education becoming more decent esp in developing nations, these talented people can flourish and become competitive with those born in developed countries. 7+ billion surely include many more top talent than 300+ million.