Comment by mahdi7d1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mahdi7d1 | Hacker News Reader

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A college where everybody eats free dinner and lunch (We pay 1/10 of the actual cost of the food), pays no tuition, can take student loans with really low interest rates (the amount they loan is not much and it's not same as student loan in Western countries where you take loans to pay for tuition fees rather here students take loan to buy stuff they need like laptops and such.) is supposed to result in prolific people who are going to help the country so the government takes care of them. However a lot of these student immigrate to other countries to study for masters and PHD and never come back and stay there for life while they were supposed to be going there only to study! Seems like the government is providing people so they can immigrate. How bad this government can be?!!

BTW I'm Iranian and since I feel like everyone here is American I thought maybe sharing a little different point of view could be beneficial. I myself think of immigrating to another country a lot and honestly seems like everything here designed in a way to make us immigrate. From mandatory military service to economic problems and being disconnected from the world (more in a economical sense again where we can't have international transactions, but here I am connected to you informationally(I think I just invented a new word)!)

You're touching on a different problem, though one that emerges in international contexts. It's also evident at national levels where higher education is subsidised regionally, but employment is flexible at a national scale.

Namely: regions which support low-cost education tend not to see its benefits if they also have a low-wage or low-tech economic base. Such states are simply subsidising brain drain to more affluent regions.

This is one (of several) reasons why improved education is far less effective at increasing economic productivity than is commonly thought. (For more on this I highly recommend Ha-Joon Chang's 21 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, which has an excellent chapter on the topic.)

This turns up in India (particularly in technology), the Philippines (medicine), Eastern Europe / former Warsaw bloc (science, mathematics, computer programming), and in the US. For the latter, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has long had an excellent computer science programme. Its graduates are educated at the cost of Illinois taxpayers (both individuals and businesses), but tend overwhelmingly to leave the state. There's effectively no tech cluster near UIUC, and very little of one in Chicago itself. Tech employment in the state is ~320k vs. 1.4 million in California. And that's actually reasonably good --- 7th ranked in the US, ahead of Massachusetts, which at least has a tech tradition.

It's a bit hard to read by total employment and compensation, but my sense is that positions are less technically interesting within Illinois as well.

By position, top-10: CA, TX, NY, FL, VA, WA, IL, MA, PA, GA.

Bottom ten (starting at the bottom): WY, AK, ND, SD, MT, VT, HI, WV, DE, ME.

Top ten metros by tech employment: NYC, DC, LA, SJ, SF, Dallas, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta.

Atlanta has 40% the tech employment of NYC.

https://www.cyberstates.org/#interactiveMap?geoid=0__usa

https://www.cyberstates.org/pdf/CompTIA_Cyberstates_2022.pdf

> This is one (of several) reasons why improved education is far less effective at increasing economic productivity than is commonly thought. (For more on this I highly recommend Ha-Joon Chang's 21 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, which has an excellent chapter on the topic.)

You touch an excellent point that I never factored in when looking at why western government organizations demand free education in poor developing countries through policy or loan measures.

People who are taking highly specialised degrees and training for free cannot work locally because there is no market.

You earn on reputation, interest, and skilled labour through these measures.

I'd never quite reached the point of thinking it was a deliberate action, but now that you mention it.

And add to this liberal skilled-worker visa entry programmes with work-to-stay requirements.

Rich nations to poor: you raise 'em, train 'em, and pension 'em. We'll work 'em, pressure down their wages and bargaining power through work-to-stay reqs, and capture all the surplus labour value.

Bond villains, eat your hearts out.

> I'd never quite reached the point of thinking it was a deliberate action

I always thought these aid and loan programs through organizations like IMF, WP, and countries require return on their investment beyond interest on principal.

This is why they include clauses related to education, democratic participation, financial and taxation reforms, etc as a condition of receiving the aid.

You can be less cynical and think they are advocating for reforms which make these countries grow and pay back the loan otherwise they might default.

You can be more cynical and think many of these policies are detached from what is needed on ground looking at impact.

For example, opening a particular industry or providing consumable aid often distort local markets and might impact local businesses and exports through currency manipulation.

Maybe you believe onerous regulation and compliance of first world without the enforcement budget and low corruption make these places less attractive for businesses. Introducing those as condition of receiving aid might be net negative in the long run.

It all depends on how you view with your lens.

Although countries who are receiving aid like this have no choice in the matter. They are desperate for cash. Power imbalance exist and can be abused.

I respectfully disagree, as a person who probably grew less than 100 miles from you. While it is not the worst place in the world to grow up by economic standards, and may as a matter of fact be not a bad place at all, the "free college" comes with the cost of literally no job guarantee after you graduate. Most importantly, even leaving the country isn't a garden of roses, on account of the fact that most countries see the passport and deport you on account of your country of origin being a state sponsor of terrorism.

There certainly are countries that seemingly offer a lot, but before you sell Iran being a country of free academic opportunities, think twice about the fact that there is freedom of speech outside of it.

While respecting your opinion (despite the fact that you would not have the same freedom of speech without anonymity in Iran), I think it's naive to think that just providing you with free pseudo-education with no chance of real success or quality of life is what this thread is about.

It's not pseudo-education if you are in the top universities. True still even after graduating from top universities you are not granted to find a job but as I said It's not a country of free academic opportunities but this opportunities are a way to get out of the country itself. I'm not selling it rather implying that a lot of people here (including myself) don't give a damn about academics and just study to get out of here. Also there isn't any free academic opportunities here. People who get accepted to these top universities usually tend to spend a lot of money and effort studying in high school so they can have a great performance on the entrance exam. It's not like anyone who decides can get a free degree.

Another point is that I currently don't have any anonymity. There is only one "mahdi7d1" on the internet as far as I know. And my username everywhere is the same. All my friends and anyone who knows me knows of my username and remembers it (Their curiosity of what 7d1 stand for makes them remember it!) So even a normal person might be able to trace down my activities on the internet and find my real Identity.

Also I haven't said anything to be afraid of lack of freedom of speech here. Moreover there is much more freedom of speech here than people both inside and outside realize and I would like to try to see how much there is!

HN has readers from all over the world, notably the UK, Australia, and tons from India

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