Int. students may need to leave US if classes are 100% Remote
edition.cnn.com
edition.cnn.com
Also, all [dupe] article comments should be merged and visible under each separate [dupe] article, so organic user dialogue isn't split up and minimized.
We commonly merge duplicate threads, but we don't catch them all. In the case of a sensational story like this one, where there's an endless supply of comments and the threads are more or less interchangeable, it's perhaps less important.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
(1) F1 visas have been effectively banned in much of the world since COVID started - the required interviews could only be done in now-closed centers. (2) H1B, L1, H4, and J1 visas have been suspended until the end of the year, leaving OPT transfers, H1B lottery winners (already a 1 in 3 shot), H1B transfers, and others in the lurch. (3) RFEs (a first step to visa denials) have been on a steep rise.
As a result, not only are we kicking people out, but international applications to US schools have absolutely collapsed; fewer people are even trying. The US is actively abandoning its goal of being the land of opportunity, and it makes me sad.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#M...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/22/trump-wan...
40% of the Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families [2][3], so the U.S. is really shooting itself in the foot (again).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy)
[2] F500 2010: http://research.newamericaneconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/20... (pdf)
[3] F500 2017: https://startupsusa.org/fortune500/
In fact, preventing immigration reduces jobs. Companies will happily offshore any position they can.
Jobs don't just exist in a vacuum. They're the result of a relatively complex economy, but growth generally creates jobs. So we should grow.
The brain drain effect is almost always linked to poor economic performance. And the rules are so ham fisted now. Bipartisan H1B reform goes nowhere (prioritize US masters degrees, block H1B dependent employers from more H1Bs etc). Stupid stuff is everywhere.
Immigrants bringing in revenue (plenty) support US jobs in the US.
It's going to be a rude shock to the less skilled american worker to find a lot of jobs going remote overseas (Canada even) and their middle management / entry level office jobs vanishing.
This historic effect here, where another country educates someone, and then they come to the US, is INSANELY profitable for the US. Seriously, in a ruthless way folks who are not successful in school, have health issues, have criminal backgrounds, are disabled etc don't come in on these visas.
Instead its ambitious folks ANOTHER COUNTRY has invested a lot into coming to the US. How does that hurt the US?
This has always been a huge advantage the US has had. Crazy to see the US throwing it away.
Lots of valuable brains are outside the country, but doesn't mean we should traffic in somewhat misleading statistics.
Does it change my view on immigration? Of course not, but it does indicate that if immigration was stopped entirely then it is not true to say that that 40% slice of fortune 500 companies would simply never have been founded.
The claim as stated here, "40% of the Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families", is very straightforward.
Now a more precise statement: 40% of Fortune 500 companies had at least one immigrant or American with at least 1 immigrant parent on found team. Changes the image in one's mind a lot. Why not actually be straightforward instead of misleading?
Your formulation is fine too, although immigrants are Americans, so I don't love that distinction. Regardless, these all conjure up the same idea for me. For the purposes of this discussion, I don't even see much difference between founder and cofounder. Typically if someone is called a cofounder then the business probably wouldn't exist without them.
To settle the argument, why don't we agree to stick with this sentence from the original study: "43 percent of these companies were founded or co-founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant."
That is not the same as saying that 40% of the founders of Fortune 500 companies were immigrants (which I believe is bruceb's point).
To your point: Let's say there were 5 founders. Let's say one was an immigrant. Would the company still have been founded by the other 4, if the immigrant were not there? That's unknown, but one would expect that at least some of the time the answer is "no". Or if it were founded, would it have grown as large as it did? Again, unknown, but in at least some cases the answer is probably "no".
To argue otherwise is to say that founders are replaceable parts - that they have nothing unique to add. That seems... questionable.
My comment should be read as: I have seen the 40% figure given very often on HN and I did interpret it as 40% of Fortune 500 companies being founded only by first-generation immigrants.
To me someone who was born in a country and has citizenship in that particular country is not an immigrant.
But, to your actual point (I hope): I'm inclined to agree with your definition of immigrants. And yet, if we didn't accept the parents, we wouldn't have the children either.
The problem with that argument is, where do you draw the line? One generation? Two? A few decades? A few centuries? If you follow that argument too far, only businesses founded by Native Americans weren't founded by families of immigrants.
I think that categorizing people as immigrants, (first generation) children of immigrants, and non-immigrants makes sense for this discussion. And if "founded by families of immigrants" means first-generation children, that's still to some degree an argument that we want immigrants because of the effect they have on the economy. Not as direct an argument as if they were founded by immigrants, but still something of an argument.
Alternatively, that role would have been filled By someone else.
If your hypothesis were true, then the rate of Fortune 500 companies being founded by immigrant families (40%) would be representative of the % of immigrant families in the U.S. population (24%), which it's not.
Made up numbers follow. If the average number of Cofounders was 4, at 25% population rate the number would be around 66% immigrant founded by that stat.
A real America-first policy would encourage and fight for high skill immigration, since that builds the economy of the US and depletes talent from other countries.
If ability is normally distributed, and immigration is a filter for A players, their descendants will regress to the mean to become B players. B players want their C player American kids to have jobs over the A player non-American immigrant. America first.
Instead of investing in our domestic population with job training and scholarships, corporations are importing labor from overseas. Those people getting imported have degrees (sometimes of dubious quality) paid for by socialist states, often work for 'staffing agencies' to circumvent benefits and PTO of the real company, have very little job mobility, are most often paid below-market rates.
It's basic economics. More labor means cheaper labor.
Why are Blacks and Hispanics underrepresented in Software development [1]? If you compare the overall employment figures to the overall demographics of the country, they're almost identical, but way, way off for software development. It's because the most vulnerable people in the US don't have access to jobs and education, and corporations have no incentive to train entry level workers when they can just import them.
> so the U.S. is really shooting itself in the foot (again).
In what manner? The US doesn't need every genius walking on planet earth to reside in the US.
EDIT: reference
The US population has grown from ~150 million in 1950 to ~350 million now.
The only thing that got more expensive relatively speaking is housing. Which kind of make sense because land area don't tend to change.
Look around at your house and answer if you could get the same stuff (or even, poor replacement of the same stuff) if you're at the same percentile of income in 1950s.
1950 to 2020 looks good on paper, until you realize that the bulk of the wage growth happened prior to 1990. Since 1990, the S&P 500 has gone up approximately 10x. Meanwhile, wages have approximately doubled. That means in the last 30 years, the wealth gap has increased. If you consider only minorities, the picture is even worse.
It's almost like, US workers are losing their bargaining power for some reason. If you consider outsourcing, various trade agreements, and white collar immigration, those are all net-negative on US labor. Some demographics have been disproportionately impacted than others, just as predicted.
This is the lump of labour fallacy[0], and is erroneously used to argue against immigration.
H1B was being abused and needed to be reigned in.
There are still plenty of people coming into the country through various means, the US is still extremely generous with immigration.
There are plenty of qualified citizens here and in the zero sum game that is hiring national immigration policy should put their needs first before anyone else's.
Even if you are anti-immigration, your biggest issue should be tourist visas which is how illegal immigrants stay in the US, and those are unlimited and in the millions. H1B quotas are stupid by design.
This exact sort of anti-competitive nationalism has been tried before, and over and over again it has been abandoned. It's a failed policy that gives other countries a competitive advantage over your own.
It's better to learn from others' mistakes than to repeat them yourself.
Everything I read about it convinces me it's a byzantine and capricious process, and largely down to chance.
My process of gaining permanent residence in the Netherlands is a cakewalk by comparison. University MSc, then free access to the job market for a year, then after some years of employment and passing a relatively simple integration exam, I have long-term European residence. At no point was this up to the arbitrary whims of some immigration officer or a far-fetched lottery chance.
To me the idea that immigration is zero sum is repugnant and wrong.
It's going to be good to vote this cycle.
Nothing has been reigned in. H1B quota got full early on this year and H1bs were allotted through a lottery of qualified candidates. Transfers are still being allowed. If your argument is that H1B gets abused then right way is to pass a reasonable bill and not blanket ban everything.
Yet again, F1 visa already prohibit students a 100% online school from entering the country. So your impression of immigration being "reigned in" is pretty misguided.
US is the WORST country on earth for immigration. I came to US >10 years ago, still NOWHERE near getting a Green Card. Will probably won't get well into my 30s or 40s. It's practically impossible to get it in the next 5 years.
The same time I started undergrad in US, my friend started undergrad in Germany. He was already a German citizen by the time we were working. I was still on F visa. This was like half a decade ago.
My biggest regret EVER was doing this in the US. If I got a PhD in Europe instead of US, I wouldn't be a person who doesn't have a country.
I understand that American people don't want immigrants. But let's not pretend immigration into US is easy. I've been trying my entire life to live here without getting kicked out and it's pure luck. One mistake and you need to wrap your entire life, leave loved ones and go back home. Again, I'm NOT saying I'm entitled to living in the US, I'm saying this is an extremely long, and complex process.
Bringing in uniquely talented individuals who can distribute expert knowledge accomplishes that.
Bringing an IT worker who does a good JAVA/.Net programming does not accomplish that... right?
Here's some of the high-level effects of bringing international talent of all sorts to the US of year:
1) more talent in the US
2) less talent in other nations
3) the US can ignore pre-university education and opportunity problems
1 and 2 are great for the US government and the top of the US economy, but bad for pretty much everybody else.
3 is pretty awful for a huge number of actual US citizens. Especially given the current state of our nation, this seems like a problem.
I don't believe in "talent". It's all about nurture. If you need more talented people in huge fields for generations, yet half of your nation doesn't have college degrees, the problem is that you are not investing in your people successfully. If we invested more in education and resources for kids, parents, and families from before conception through early childhood and education, we would not have a shortage for fields like... computer science and engineering. These aren't fields that just popped up, they've been a big deal for a century.
Yes - this is active, but not irrational, because this is a reversion to mercantilism of the earlier centuries (it is not a conservative position, but a regressive one).
The only people welcome to this country are "growing things in the ground".
Because if the only thing that you consider to be productive is farming (as in production == farming), then the whole social requirements of education, research or specialization is irrelevant. And in fact, those people are a drain on the food security and profitability of the extractive industry of farming.
Maybe because it is fresh, I was struck by a bit of the lyrics from Hamilton as being a direct reference to this thought that the rest of America is just "moving money around" in the service industries (even the industry, where every stage is just making something from somebody else's raw material, till you get to the Appalachian coal mines).
Don't tax the South 'cause we got it made in the shade /
In Virginia, we plant seeds in the ground /
We create, you just wanna move our money around /
This financial plan is an outrageous demandWouldn't lock-downs have resulted in the consulates being required to close in much of the world?
And how much reciprocity is there? Are Americans even allowed to travel to most of the world today? There are stories about schools in places like UK having to charter planes to bring students since it's impossible to get there otherwise. Making this all into a narrative about xenophobic americans seems near-sighted.
Key fact:
- International student cannot legally attend a 100% online school from the US (with an F or M status).
- International student in school with "Hybrid" models (some in person, some online) cannot have a 100% "online semester". The school will need to certify that the student is not taking 100% online classes.
- If a Hybrid school moves to a fully online halfway through, the student needs to depart the US (or transfer to another school)
This only applies for the student to be legally _within_ the US of course.
EDIT: The law already prevented this, basically. Spring and Summer had special exemptions granted by DHS. So this is just a reversal to the "usual policy", which it seems many school expected would not happen (at least not that quickly). My university is scrambling to understand the exact consequences.
>” Visa requirements for students have always been strict and coming to the US to take online-only courses has been prohibited.”
So it’s a reinforcement of policy rather than change although some institutions would like to see accommodation for this kind of circumstance —which is understandable if students came here with the intent to attend in person, but it’s worth noting the the visa requirements have not changed
The policy didn't change at all, it's super restrictive.
What institutions I'm affiliated with are asking is for temporary flexibility during COVID-19. Specific start and end dates based on periodic review of health measures.
And the answer is still a resounding 'no' from any sort of federal representative we can get in touch with.
This, honestly, feels like the federal immigration department is trying to punish schools who are more cautious about opening up like nothing is happening. It tastes bad.
edit: edited to reflect the inaccuracy as pointed out by PeterisP. SEVIS is overseen by ICE, not the department of education. Our representatives for SEVIS are generally connected to the DoE in some fashion. I didn't realize folks wouldn't know that ICE oversees immigrants, and that the Ed Department isn't responsible for making this policy.
If taking online classes means that the students visas become invalid, or if their current visa restrictions mean that it's prohibited for them to be in an online-only program, then that's exactly what it means, and it's wrong to blame schools or education department about it, it's not about education but about immigration policy - the domain of Department of State, Congress, etc.
We have an administration that doesn't value academia or the visa program. So it's no surprise they're willing to sacrifice it in name of "schools must open".
Secondly, what I was saying is that whoever is the person that refuses to take it higher - that person is the problem. If you're stuck underneath them, go above them, or go public, or do whatever you need to do to avoid compromising yourself.
You'd have to escalate up to the president, he's the only link between the people the grandparent poster is complaining to and the people who decide the things grandparent poster wants to change. And it may well be that the response of the top administration is that everything works as intended, that the effect you're complaining about is something they want to increase, not fix.
Rigid enforcement of rules designed for a world that doesn't exist anymore, and won't for a while, is a deliberate choice and not one that we have to make.
The pandemic is an ongoing rolling emergency. Making life worse for people for no good reason may be the default, but that doesn't mean that the people who can waive the rule shouldn't be held responsible when they decide not to. Inaction and action are nearly indistinguishable from the side of the people being affected.
[0] See this guidance from March: "Given the extraordinary nature of the COVID-19 emergency, SEVP will allow F-1 and/or M-1 students to temporarily count online classes towards a full course of study in excess of the limits... This temporary provision is only in effect for the duration of the emergency" Absolutely nothing substantive has changed since then, but ICE has apparently changed its mind and- implausibly- decided the emergency is over. It's absurd.
https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2...
And all those grad students on a teaching scholarship were told to remain in the US because their scholarship is tied to being residents of the State for some tax reason or another for the institution.
fun times.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ice-fake-u...
[0] "For F-1 students enrolled in classes for credit or classroom hours, no more than the equivalent of one class or three credits per session, term, semester, trimester, or quarter may be counted toward the full course of study requirement if the class is taken on-line or through distance education and does not require the student's physical attendance for classes, examination or other purposes integral to completion of the class." https://www.nafsa.org/_/file/_/amresource/8cfr2142f.htm
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ice-fake-u...
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...
There is a clear externality forcing this situation and it is clearly more detrimental to force them out of the country than to just make special accommodations/provisions. Pass a bill if that makes it more palatable and set it to have a termination date with the ability to “re-up” if this situation continues. But shrugging and going “them’s the rules” when it suits us and being flexible elsewhere (freelancers getting unemployment benefits, for instance) seems arbitrary and, frankly, capricious.
Student visas make good sense, allow people from around the world to come here and get an education which is better or different and have a cultural exchange... but if coming here just gets you the cultural exchange of going to the grocery store and watching lectures online that could be watched from anywhere... what's the point?
I personally have a problem with how international students are used as cash cows and then later often as a lower class of intellectual labor in labs (I have heard first hand stories of this happening, more than once). When universities have an ample supply of people willing to do anything in order to get citizenship, the people who don't have that circumstance are pushed out because of the poor conditions enabled by the many people who accept it. Career academia sucks. Grads and post grads are paid little and way overworked chasing after the dream of a rare tenured faculty position.
And as for 'lower class intellectual labor', lets talk medical Residents? Years of indentured servitude post-doc. And we consider that reasonable.
International students pay twice the price of tuition alone, not even mentioning all other extra expenses they have to pay. And since they cannot utilize a lot of financial aid available to US residents (federal student loans, certain scholarships, etc.), they pretty much have to have a lot of money in cash to be able to just pay for college.
Note: I am not saying that since they are very likely rich, they deserve to deal with all those struggles. And I get it, there could be some international students who come from a far-from-wealthy family, where all their money were pooled towards their college education. That seems to be a rare exception though, from what I have observed (haven't met a single international student like that, but plenty of the former kind).
They're two years into a program, didn't create the circumstances that are forcing them to take their education entirely online, and the notion that they can return to their home country and participate in classes that might be happening at 3:00 am local time seems pretty far fetched?
Most of these upper-level online classes are participatory, not Coursera-style "watch a recording".
Additionally, this ignores the financial losses (ex costs of breaking leases, selling property, expensive/hard to schedule air travel which may require more legs than usual now, shipping, large currency conversions) caused by a sudden move back. Additionally, there will be costs to get internet access and other necessary materials back home. Some institutions still have not announced their plans, and they can change at any time.
These are people who want to and have been living on campus. They are not just taking advantage of the visa to sit in front of a computer screen for four years--so there is no reason they should have to leave. This clearly has no relevance to the initial intent of the policy, and refusing to waive it in this case demonstrates the government's effort to hurt people of other nationalities in any way possible.
I guess the gray area here is that colleges, many of them being for-profit entities, are facing big drops in enrollment and can essentially sell US citizenship in exchange for tuition payments. Once an online course system is set up, the only cost is generating new user credentials.
This is a big overstatement. There are many far from trivial steps between being a F/M student and getting citizenship.
It certainly is a way for people to start they "immigration journey" to the US, though, obviously.
Luckily, that's exactly what these new "rules" allow for (check the source material, not just news coverage of it; the source material is written in a pretty plain and easy to understand language, not walls of legalese). You are only getting kicked out if your courseload is fully online or if you don't take enough classes to qualify for a full-time student status. Otherwise, you are good.
This "universities sell US citizenship" thing is plain misinformation.
* One of my friends went to live with her parents after her OPT expired. She was supposed to enroll in an M.S. in August, but due to COVID, the embassies in her country were shut down. While her university is hybrid, she chose to stay in her home country to take the online-only courses, which are (fortunately) discounted.
* My sister, who is trying to renew her F-1 and has no other status options, is hoping that her school doesn't go online.
* My mom, an immunocompromised professor, is asking the university for an exemption to their in-person requirement. The university said no. The word around is that a financial analyst explained to administration that if people don't have the "campus experience" and therefore stop paying for housing/dining halls, the university would face insolvency within 2 semesters.
All in all, it seems like a way to pressure universities to open. They cannot reasonably close and lose like 5-10% more of their revenue by losing all international students, especially if they haven't figured out online course delivery to recoup some fees from F-1s.
Vulnerable faculty will likely be forced to hold "in-person" lectures (ergo worsening their risk profiles) for the universities to create quasi-in-person courses: in that, videos will still be recorded and students probably won't show up but, on paper, it wouldn't be classified as an online course. This would likely be coupled with batch-scheduled exams being the only occasion the students need to show up in person for (or perhaps, those too are obviated via take-home exams?). This is essentially identical to some large enrollment, advanced CS theory courses I've taken.
It seems especially cruel that they'd choose to enforce the rule at a time like this.
The rule makes sense and is there to prevent an exploit on using student visas to move to the US.
However, enforcing it during a pandemic is cruel and really reinforces how Trump and his administration are aggressive towards international people - even if we are coming to elite schools and would bring value to the US economy.
What if the state close all college campuses ? Sorry, bye bye, go home.
> See this guidance from March: "Given the extraordinary nature of the COVID-19 emergency, SEVP will allow F-1 and/or M-1 students to temporarily count online classes towards a full course of study in excess of the limits... This temporary provision is only in effect for the duration of the emergency" Absolutely nothing substantive has changed since then, but ICE has apparently changed its mind.
https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2....
Of course not saying that means the policies made are good or bad, I am just curious to the second order effect this will have.
Keep in mind that this is expected for 1 of at least 4 years of undergraduate, or 1 of 2-5 years of graduate, education. Someone's still going to have plenty of time living in the US and interacting with potential future US colleagues.
(I'm accepting at face value your assertion that signalling provided by a degree from a US institution has ~no value. I don't think that's the case, but my comment above makes that question close to moot.)
Changes have been proposed to the Visa program in 2020: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2020/01/new-h..., https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/us/politics/trump-h1b-wor.... Most are about the H-1B Visa (and wouldn't be specific to graduating students from outside the US), but the process of going from F-1 to H-1B may also be affected.
https://www.internationalstudent.com/study_usa/graduation/vi... (and that whole site) has more on Visa options for graduating students. Hope this helps.
An individual looks at his or her options, decides that pursuing education in a foreign country will result in a better future for them and their family.
And somehow restricting their opportunity and their freedom to do so is a good thing? Certainly not for the individual in question.
Personally, I think the way to prevent brain drain is not to impose restrictions on individual liberty but to compete better on the education/career market.
Countries that are at the source of brain drains would typically like to do that but can't, just like they have problems solving other problems. $arbitrary country does not have the major tech companies to support tech-company level salaries and there is a chicken-and-egg problem there.
So an artificial restriction like that would indeed tilt things in their favor, which may help them solve this very problem in the long term.
If this anti-immigration trend is held over a sufficiently long time I think rich countries will start realizing what a magnificent deal they had.
I suspect as soon as the sentiment changes that people will rush to come here again. The US has for better or worse a fairly unique culture and those who like that will still want to immigrate in 5 or 10 years.
And these people brain drained for a while and coming back later is better for those countries.
I am talking about emigrants that come to more developed countries and then going back afterwards.
If the study is 100% remote, none of these benefits applies anymore, and since the quality of studies itself is comparable to many European or Asian universities, it is hard to justify the cost of US university scholarship.
Here's one major problem off the top of my head: what if you're from China or Iran and your school uses G Suite for Education? Accessing classes from home would be literally illegal.
I urge everyone to sign this petition[0] to help international students who are here to pursue higher education in the US, by asking ICE to rescind their decision.
[0] https://www.change.org/p/ice-let-international-students-stay
The nativist, anti-intellectual, and outright fascist elements of the US have gone from a vocal minority to a genuine force in American politics thanks to the Senate. While they still are a minority of the population, probably 20% if you cast the absolute widest net possible, due to gerrymandering, 2 Senators per state, lifetime judicial appointments, the electoral college, and extreme voter suppression they are in charge of huge swaths of the government. It's gonna be a wild ride.
If you're a US citizen, you can contact your representative/senators offices and ask them to deal with this.
Are any HN'ers aware of policies emerging to this effect? I expect there to be some back-and-forth between educational institutions and the government on this one.
In normal times transferring to another college is a process that takes 9-10 months. The admission rate for transfer applications is really low. And that's just for domestic transfer students. It is not even theoretically possible to transfer to another school in a couple of months. Not to mention that the F-1 student visa and the I-20 form needed to obtain such a visa are for a specific school only, so international students would also have to go back to their home countries and obtain new visas.
Not shure what universities are doing. There are a lot of them. So far I've heard that Harvard will continue charging the same while pushing big chunk of students online.
You're right about benefits of foriegn capital flowing into US through international students. Net result can very well be negative.
This is extremely personally harmful to people affected.
Edit: this would raise issues of fairness and equal treatment (a lot of students, especially those not accustomed to remote learning, would feel cheated). There probably is no perfect solution.
Students will lose their visas because of bureaucratic BS which can be changed anytime, but probably won't be because of the current political climate.
So, one concern is grounded in nature, another in bureaucracy, I don't think there is much of reconciliation. Although I agree completely that students are not getting what they paid for (if they paid for in-person classes).
Lectures are recorded, exams are usually flexible open windows
We're talking University experience here, which is all about engagement.
I hope this will give Europa and Asia the chance to get some of their emigrated talents back.
America of the past is gone. It's rapidly deteriorating. Save your lives and don't enter into any educational or business arrangement with America.
But it is also an attempt to force universities to open in the Fall despite the dangers of doing so. Many universities depend on the tuition from foreign students. The timing shows this (right after Harvard announced plans to go online), as well as Trump's tweets that schools must open in Fall.
At the same time this is happening, they are waiving the degree requirement for federal employment: a nice little monopoly rent universities had, as well as the immigration one. Americans might not appreciate this but not only colleges subsist on international students: they subsist on them requiring degrees for visas and to get preferential visa treatment. It's a path to residency.
I would have much preferred that there was a semblance of Rule of Law, and it would be more like discounting college degrees entirely for immigration and remove special visa privileges for students, but this gov is stupidly against immigration.
Love or hate the top Ivies, they open up doors (or at least fast-track you to the door) that remain closed for a lot of graduates.
If your only goal in life is to maximize your chances at some cookie-cutter prestigious professional job / career, then $200k isn't too bad. The ROI is going to blow most everything else out of the water, as far as education goes.
Please don’t throw this number out without understanding how it really works.
55% of Harvard undergrads get some sort of financial aid. Much of this aid is in the form of grants that cover tuition. One simple example — if a student’s family makes $65k or less a year, tuition is free. Above $65k, there is a sliding scale, and financial aid officers have quite a bit of latitude to work with people with unusual financial situations.
To be fair, I think families making $250k-$350k in high cost of living areas might get the short end of the stick in this system, but even they have some flexibility if they work with the financial aid department.
If you could get a student visa just by enrolling in a US-based online class, that would be quite the loophole for immigration.
There is Georgia Tech, but there is also the College of Northern Virginia. Here is some background: https://cis.org/Report/Dregs-Higher-Education-Damage-Our-Imm...
That's embarrassing. But even so, if you don't deal with known abuses you get groups like this, so it's imperative on the government to get ahead of the crazy train.
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/maajid-...
It's not mentioned at all in that linked article.
On it's surface, with no prior knowledge of reputation, it can be hard to recognize the diploma mill from the legitimate program. This becomes even more difficult when the legit program is a lesser known, lower tier, but still properly functioning institution.
USA immigration system needs reform. No free welfare for anyone who is able to work. For those who supports excessive welfare, set a donation page for them to put their money where their mouth is, tax deduction is fine with me though considering they actually did something instead of just talking the talk or expecting others do what they talk.
Most importantly, better the education system here first, no more trophy generation, no more AA for college admission, and reward STEM kids instead of treating them as nerds in school. Until then, you have to depend on H1B/F1 to stay ahead, which should only be a temporary fix.
Of course if they come from countries that do not possess the facilities necessary to access online content, that would put some students in quite a pickle. Maybe those could also be treated in a special manner, but I doubt that many would be affected.
Maybe the article wasn't explicit enough, but I'm not quite seeing the problem with this decision. Maybe the manner of communication?
These students will not be allowed to stay.