Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

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In 2013, the number of Chinese students returning to China after graduating hit 90%. [1]

It used to be more like 9 in 10 would remain in the US to work.

If foreign graduate students are staying and working in the US, it’s probably a net benefit hosting them in US schools, even though it drives up demand and therefore tuition costs for US citizens.

If 8 or 9 out of 10 are returning to China, better to keep the spot for someone who will work in the US.

Now it’s probably government policy that’s the main driver for so many Chinese foreign exchange students to return to China (both US and China policies align in this sense), but it’s not like Trump is going to open up work visas for graduating Chinese students, so in that reality it makes sense to tighten the student visa issuance to account.

With 360,000 Chinese foreign exchange students, and I’m willing to bet that’s disproportionately private universities (5 million total enrollment) rather than public. I wonder what the elasticity of demand is for college these days, and how much of a tuition price drop that could entail?

Unfortunately my personal experience is there is very little integration on campus between foreign exchange and domestic populations, which precludes even the cultural benefit. Colleges claim they cultivate a rich/diverse environment but in reality the students largely exist within their own circle. It may be different at the graduate level, where ~25% of enrollment is foreign. I recall a NYT article last year about it, but I can’t find it presently.

[1] - https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-...

Most students returned to China because they are not allowed to work in the US. The chance of getting a work visa dropped significantly since 2010s.

Foreign students aren’t getting American education for free; they pay much higher tuition. They are effectively subsiding the tuition cost of domestic students.

I know the international tuition is much higher. But economics dictate the university cannot increase prices when it finds itself with empty slots they need to fill.

Universities will take a large financial hit, but tuition should also decline in the face of lower demand.

Not really. Most Chinese PhD students have full assistantship.

Most Chinese undergraduate students won't be able to get job in the US anyway.

Your second and first paragraphs are talking about different things.

I think people has to recognise there are two class of student; children from bourgeois class that mainly come to US just for their Bachelor, most of them don’t stay in the US afterward; Postgraduate student from the newly formed middle class in China that, if given chance, mostly won’t return to China.

I find this line of thinking so odd, because nobody ever says “exporting American {cars/corn/computers} to China drives up demand and costs to US citizens.” The worst-case scenario here is that education is economically just equivalent to an export, but that’s still a pretty great scenario! Especially since it’s an export that doesn’t pollute, supports high-paying labor, perpetuates the global premium associated with a US education, and has the side effect that sometimes foreign students do stay and continue to contribute to the economy.

But it’s not anything like exporting a consumable product.

It’s exporting expertise which is used to outcompete the US and eliminates US jobs and challenges profitability of US companies.

It’s obviously not without benefits in terms of establishing clout of US universities (and maybe even keeping many of those programs running) and for the people that do stay those are bright and productive immigrants which are going to go on to create value and jobs in the US economy.

The problem is when almost all of the students aren’t remaining to work in the US and the ones that do, you worry if they aren’t involved in some form of espionage for the Motherland.

Well, except there’s a finite amount of educational slots, and so fewer people who would keep that education and knowledge in the US are able to get in.

I don’t see how it’s different. The instantaneous production limit of cars/corn/computers is also fixed, but can be increased with demand. There is a notorious shortage of jobs for new PhDs[1], so it’s not like labor is a limiting factor.

[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/04/new-data-show...

What keeps institutions from increasing the number of spots to meet demand, much like car manufacturers?

They tried, turns out good education is hard to scale.

What do you recommend the EU should do with all the US students that come here to study for basically free, because they can't afford it back home?

We have like 5000 Americans studying in Germany alone. Do you think we should send them back home because they're not gonna work here anyways?

Do you not believe someone should give those young people an education just because they deserve a chance in life?

Can we not do things on principle sometimes instead of having to justify everything with economics?

Don’t non-EU students have to pay tuition fees? If not, they certainly should.

No I don’t think an expensive university education is a “right” that these young people should be given for a chance in life.

There are copious cheap public options for someone who is looking to build a marketable skill, and I think those options are already highly subsidized.

But more to the point, I don’t think hosting 350k Chinese foreign students in US universities where 90% of them will return to China to compete against American companies and American jobs is something that the US should be doing on principle.

> Don’t non-EU students have to pay tuition fees? If not, they certainly should.

They pay "nothing" just like every other student in Germany. Nothing here means "less than 500 bucks of (administrative) fees / year". The added benefits that you get with being a student (for instance free public transport) generally already outweigh that fee though.

> No I don’t think an expensive university education is a “right” that these young people should be given for a chance in life.

Education is actually a recognized human right under the "International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights" treaty. Exactly 169 Countries have signed and ratified the treaty, but the US are not one of them (signed but not ratified).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_education

Because I believe in that right myself, I'll gladly pay for the education of every US American university student (and others) in Germany with my taxes until the US steps up its game. Curiously I'm paying for my own education that way too.

> I don’t think hosting 350k Chinese foreign students in US universities where 90% of them will return to China to compete against American companies and American jobs is something that the US should be doing on principle.

In total there are almost 400,000 international students enrolled in Germany. For free.

> It may be different at the graduate level, where ~25% of enrollment is foreign.

Only 25%? If you look at science and engineering graduate programs, its probably closer to 90%. Or its certainly felt like that around every department I've seen.

You’re right, it’s overwhelmingly foreign students in STEM. I guess non-STEM balances it out?

The reason more Chinese students returned was because the number of Chinese going to the USA to study exploded. It is really hard for those liberal arts fuerdai to find a job in the states after they graduate.

Chinese student and liberal art subject??

Chinese students from rich powerful families studying liberal arts rather than STEM majors.

Who could blame them? The US is an inhospitable place for immigrants. People won't give them a chance to assimilate. They'll be suspicious of them from the start (like some of the comments here), they give them a hard-time if they don't assimilate right away and won't go half-way to be friends with them.

Compared to where? China? India? I think immigrants assimilate just fine into the United States. Assimilation is not easy anywhere. The United States isn't perfect, but plenty of immigrants are living great lives.

Do we know the fraction who were given a long-term visa but returned anyway? Trying to disentangle the difficulty of graduates getting visas from graduates who are just coming here to go home afterwards.

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