Us online tuition move hits foreign visas | Hacker News Reader

Us online tuition move hits foreign visas

bbc.co.uk

52 pointsweyland10834 comments

The title of this post could be improved a lot. "US to withdraw visas for students at completely online colleges"

Aside from that, this is a dumb move, and going to potentially affect up to hundreds of thousands of students. If not in actual effect, then at least in perception and concern about whether the US is the place for them to study and want to contribute to.

And moreover in the short term, basically incentivizes some significant portion to stop wanting to pay full tuition for essentially remote study that could be given by anyone. I await the trickle down effects on the lost spending and economic impacts in college towns of people getting kicked out from this.

Actually it's not that. It's not "withdraws visas for online only universities."

It's actually no visa even if you are on-site and taking in person classes but take more than 1 class (3 credits) from online classes.

Full text: https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...

In 3. It looks like anyone taking any in person classes will be allowed to take more than 3 credit hours online, not vice versa

It’s a dumb move if you see the impact on the students as a bad thing.

If you want to make the US an unappealing place to emigrate to, and thus drive down immigration and please your nativists, then it’s a smart move.

Based on the way the wind blows in US politics, this is a smart move. They could be even smarter, and once they’ve got the students out of the country, terminate their courses. There’s no way they’d ever want to come back after that, and it would be raucously popular with the natvist support base.

I _really_ appreciate your comment.

I was initially reacting in a very knee-jerk and emotional way because I personally see this as a Bad Thing® as it does not align with my values and my wants for my country (US). Your comment made me think about it from a different perspective.

It saddens me to think that you may be right - that this may be deliberate - but you made me at least acknowledge that it might be the unfortunate 'will of the people', or at least some of them, even if not a majority.

There is a useful phrase for this sort of thing - "the cruelty is the point". A lot of the trump administration policy makes more sense if you realize that it isn't about benefiting themselves but is actually about harming those they hate, even if those policies also hurt themselves.

Your cosmopolitan “values” of celebrating global human labor trafficking are simply a means to exploit the global working class.

For most working Americans, and effectively many foreigners as well, global human labor trafficking is an objectively bad thing.

Can you explain how my "values" celebrate global human labor trafficking?

That’s what comprises the overwhelming amount of immigration to leading western nations. And it’s what governs, lobbies, and votes for pro-immigration law.

Even better - if you think universities are leftist and want to defund them, this deprives those universities of tuition.

But at what costs... Even if everything works as expected, the mid to long term cost will be ridiculously high (in term of money invested/spent, reputation, etc) just to satisfy a support base.

That depends entirely on your planning horizon. If you take a long term view, the cost is penurious. If you take a short term view (which our society is built around), then it’ll win you the next election, and nothing after that matters.

Nothing of modern politics is about building a better world or country for anyone - it’s just about winning at any cost.

Tactically, this move is canny. Strategically, it’s dire - but those setting the strategy will be dead of old age before it comes home to roost, so.

I feel that explains how the US found itself in this mess.

This post nicely summarizes the game. The effects of short-term tactics are meant to show once Trump is unable to get re-elected for whatever reason. At that point, some fool will get into power and will have to handle the aftermath.

If my goal was to make money for myself and my corporation (I do that as POTUS since I highly influence all the major funding decisions), I'd do the exact same things. My insta-base will realize the long-term effects on themselves when I'm dead or, at the very least, out of the picture. But, when that time comes, I would be leaving a legacy with a level of wealth/power that will allow mine to absolutely dominate politics for decades.

In other words, Trump is like water and rolls with all punches including big ones like COVID. I'm not American, but one can definitely admire the epitome of self-interest.

I’m sure it’s a rounding error on the economic, social, and physical damage that was done by pretending COVID 19 was a liberal hoax for a month

> They could be even smarter, and once they’ve got the students out of the country, terminate their courses

I hope you were sarcastic there..

It isn't just the direct effects.

A huge portion of grad students are international students. PhD students don't tend to take many classes. Not only does this hurt the international students, but now a huge portion of TA labor is at risk with no real alternative - a month before classes start again.

There is a 0% chance that the universities don't respond to this and come up with some online/in-person mix to satisfy the visa requirements. International students are cash cows.

In all honestly, this likely has little to do with international students and more the Trump administration purposefully forcing the universities hands.

Just a theory.

I agree, this feels like the administration forcing universities to move back to in-person classes through economic incentives.

It's one thing to not grant any new student visas because international travel and relocation is iffy right now. And it's one thing to yank visas for international students that have gone home because of the pandemic. That's understandable. But this impacts students that are already in the US, have already paid tuition for the fall semester, and are essentially shoveling free money into the country.

It makes no sense whatsoever, unless as some kind of political bullshit play around "re-opening".

As I commented elsewhere, this is really a move aimed at destabilizing the higher educational system. Trump and his base see do not care about Universities, which are seen as "liberal."

Universities cannot just resume fully as long as the virus keeps raging, no matter what. Caught between the Trump order and the virus, things will start going downhill.

Uh... they are liberal strongholds, overwhelmingly. There is a mountain of evidence for it.

https://heterodoxacademy.org/professors-moved-left-but-count...

My immediate interpretation was that this is a play by the Executive Branch to pressure universities to maintain in-person classes in the coming semester.

Not exactly. Trump and his base do not care about Universities, which are seen as "liberal." Universities becoming fully open does not help his base or the economy as a whole, and thus his re-election chances.

This is a move aimed at destabilizing or collapsing the higher educational system. If safety from the virus continues to be a concern (as seems likely for the foreseeable future), universities cannot just resume fully, no matter what. Caught between the Trump order and the virus, things will start going downhill.

I don't think that your analysis is coherent given the demographics of the political divide. The GOP has more support among high-income Americans than the DNC, and that support increases as you go further up the line. Rich people tend to send their children to universities. It doesn't serve them to destabilize or collapse the higher education system.

I think the larger weakness in your line of argument is that whatever happens to students will have externalities that reverberate beyond universities themselves. Students who are not in school will probably live at home, reifying the pandemic in the minds of their parents. They may question their tuition, creating a quagmire for universities that suddenly have to explain the high price of education via glorified webinars. They may choose to take time off and compete for jobs in the labor market.

It would be somewhat demoralizing for a middle-class family to be unable to send a college student back to school.

This is a nice example of the mind-reader fallacy. Plenty of Trump supporters care deeply about universities, but feel that they are presently not fulfilling their societal role very well. That role being to preserve and add to our intellectual and cultural heritage while forming young persons to be thoughtful and productive members of society.

This is a punch right at China.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/233880/international-stu...

Ah yes. Forced to stay away from a raging corona virus hotspot. Got em

Seriously. Right to the gut! Boom!

Hard to say - this could be a way to force universities to fully open as well; most universities with heavy international population would want this to happen to their paying students.

As has become the norm, this punch will boomerang back and have the opposite effect. China's brain drain [1] further reduces and the engineers who would've built companies here will do so in China now.

[1] https://macropolo.org/digital-projects/the-global-ai-talent-...

I mean, China just has more people. If you look at per capita numbers, China has barely 2x the number of enrolled students as France (and the US is not really a target market for french students).

It will be interesting to see how much of the pull of a US education is the education and how much is a Visa, American contacts and the "American lifestyle"...

simple pandering by the current us gvt. student visas are cancelled, rolls into h1b. n no more of those dirty liberal immigrants. n then you can parade how strong you're against china.

And you will still have to pay full fees.

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