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Comment by lefrenchy | Hacker News Reader

Such an embarrassing blunder, of many blunders, for this administration.

I was under the impression that the law that was already in place was that purely online courses were not allowed. And that it had been in place for a long time. After coming out and stating "this is already the law", and resulting pushback against it, the thing changed by this administration was to allow purely online courses for visa students.

Are you saying that allowing purely online learning for students with visas is a blunder, or am I misinformed about this?

The blunder was retracting the special exception made during Spring 2020 that allowed F and M visa students to take online classes.

The pandemic is far from over, especially in the US, a fact which is obvious to everyone. The retraction is pure stupidity. Of course it would be unreasonable to ask int students to attend in person classes given the situation.

I have been on the fence about this policy, for the following reason.

On the one hand, it seems overtly xenophobic and anti-intellectual. On the other hand, I don't see why an international student needs to be in the United States in order to participate exclusively in online classes.

Even if the issue is a lack of human welfare (eg unsafe neighborhood) or necessary infrastructure (eg slow/inconsistent internet) back home, an international student could live somewhere else and probably save a ton of money in the process.

What am I missing?

Time zones a big factor. Note that this is about online classes (live), not a MOOC.

I wouldn't want to expect a student in Sydney to stay awake at 3AM to follow a lecture at Harvard at 1PM.

The same is true for office hours with professors and TAs. You have a huge disadvantage in getting information if you are in a bad time zone.

Why make them leave? This gives them a sudden 10 day window to pack their shit and gtfo.

People have year long leases. People have commitments. Even if they choose to leave, no doubt they would prefer to do it on their time, not with ICE breathing down their neck.

Airplane tickets are expensive and rare. It's fucking hard to just uproot yourself in 10 days if your school becomes online only.

Also, having your visa revoked ducks the OPT process, in case you ever wanted to work in the US in the near future.

Why should someone who is already living in the US for the purposes of studying have to move somewhere else during a global pandemic and then move back to continue studying when the pandemic is over?

The problem isn't the original rule, or the possible retraction of the temporary exemption of that rule. Of course at some point it will be retracted. It was, however, instituted for the purpose of dealing with a state of emergency, which is still officially in place. The government has some leeway in policy making, but capricious & unreasoned decisions can be struck down, and this could fall into that category given the circumstances that produced the policy still obtained. (Regarding capricious/unreasoned decisions, see also the Supreme Court's recent ruling on DACA: It was not because the SC said DACA couldn't be eliminated, it was because the policy change did not go through the legally mandated process for such changes)

The problem was also the timing. Students under an F1 visa must remain enrolled in an eligible program. If they are not, they have 60 days to leave the country. College semesters often end around mid-May, we're in mid-July, meaning as of the date of this announcement last week, students in online courses had already failed to be enrolled in an applicable program for nearly 60 days and would have a week or three to pack their bags and leave the country.

Before that, they could try to figure out if their mix of online or hybrid courses qualified as sufficiently "in person". This was without formal definitions from the administration of what constituted a sufficiently "in-person" course with respect to hybrid courses: The general policy was announced but there was never any official posting to the Federal Register that detailed the definitions, limits, exceptions, etc. In the announcement, such details were promised, but never materialized.

So, students had 1-2 weeks to panic and determine if their schools:

1) had any in-person courses

2) if so, determine if any applied to their program

3) If 1 & 2 were a "no", find, apply, get accepted, and register at an alternate school with applicable in-person courses

4) Having spent time on 1,2 & 3, vacate the country within a handful of days.

This was election year red meat for Trump's base, which his campaign has explicitly made their sole focus. It lets them tell the true believers that Trump tried to keep the evil foreigners out but the liberal deep state traitors stopped him, that's why they need to keep supporting Trump. That's what's behind all of these absurd attacks on immigrants, queer people, etc that instantly get struck down.

Yeah, in some ways this was the perfect outcome for that kind of posturing.

Anecdotally, it seems to me that an actual drop in international student numbers would likely have hurt colleges in Republican-controlled states worse than Democrat-controlled ones. American students armed with student loans would still flock to top universities to make up for the international student shortfall, and I can't think of a top 10 [1] university off the top of my head that's in a state with a Republican governor.

[1] https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-unive...

Setting aside blue states with moderate Republican governors, I see: 1/10 (Duke) 5/20 (Duke, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wash U) 15/45 (Duke, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wash U, Emory, Ann Arbor, Wake Forest, UVa, Georgia Tech, UNC-CH, UF, Case Western, College of William and Mary, Tulane)

I doubt the split would be at the top 10 because they're simply too small to absorb all the domestic demand. I'm not sure how far down the list, however, would be the switch point between benefit and harm (or if it would be determined purely by rankings vs. some other consideration).

As far as Tulane goes, JBE (Louisiana) is a Democrat. Gretchen Whitmer is in MI too.

No true Redstate?

NC and VA both have Democrat governors.

Harvard and MIT don’t come to mind? (Mass. Gov Charlie Baker is a Republican)

I think those count as "blue states with moderate Republican governors," in quadrifoliate's mind. Very recently, Illinois the state trumped Chicago the city and successfully elected Bruce Rauner (Republican businessman) as governor in 2015. The result was the Illinois Budget Impasse. [1] Rauner was swiftly succeeded by a blue Governor in the next election.

I think the above poster's point is states like Massachusetts (Deval Patrick->Charlie Baker) or Illinois tend to zigzag between blue governors and red governors, which shows they aren't "Republican controlled" like truly red states.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Budget_Impasse

> I think those count as "blue states with moderate Republican governors," in quadrifoliate's mind.

Yeah, that's dead on, clearly I have a lot to learn about US politics :) I didn't even think of checking, how does Massachusetts elect a Republican Governor?

Because there's more to the state than Boston.

And Johns Hopkins (MD) makes 3 out of 10.

MD is pretty blue, but the governorship flips back and forth. Similar to MA.

I wanted to kick out the students but I wasn't able to convince the deep state so re-elect me isn't the most compelling campaign message under any scenario.

That's assuming that the way things work is you appeal to voters who desire certain policies and someone to implement them. Whether or not you agree, it seems to be a thing these days to argue that the Republican party has transcended that.

See: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/349155/post-poli...

Checking ABC, CNN, NBC... this news reported on front page. But there is one major network where it doesn’t appear.

So it’s probably winning if you don’t ever hear about the loss.

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