Our NY Post Op-Ed: Trump makes academia face the damning truth about foreign students
“Are American graduate schools still American?”
In what seems like lifetimes ago, I worked in immigration law. As part of that career, I worked at a handful of very large research institutions and universities where I handled all the immigration things and advised international students, scholars, and researchers on their immigration matters. Through the course of that work, I met many wonderful, talented, and truly amazing individuals. Those wonderful people aside, there were enrollment trends I found troubling even then, which have only grown worse as the years have marched onward.
During the Biden years (or whomever was really running the show), it became very clear that the same open boarders policy designed to destroy the uniqueness of Americanness was being pushed on our college campuses, especially in our grad schools.
As we discuss in our opinion editorial, the numbers speak for themselves. We’ve detailed some of that data there. It’s not the entire puzzle, but is certainly a piece of the problem many of us are racing to address — the all out destruction of our institutions with ideology opposed to what made them outstanding.
You can read our op-ed here:
Are American graduate schools still American?
That’s what President Donald Trump is asking as he takes action against Harvard University and its large international-student population.
His effort to restrict Harvard’s foreign-student visas seeks to address a growing problem in higher education: Many of our most renowned graduate schools are overwhelmingly non-American.
On Wednesday, Columbia University capitulated on the issue — agreeing in its deal with Trump to “take steps to decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment.”
The Ivy also promised to probe “international student-applicants [on] their reasons for wishing to study in the United States” — in other words, to keep out the sneaky saboteurs coming here to wreak havoc.
Significantly, Columbia’s decision signals to other top-tier schools, Harvard in particular, that it’s not worth fighting the administration over international-graduate-student enrollment.
Thankfully, the current administration seems to be keenly aware of the problem and has made preliminary moves to address it. They’re also aware of the downstream issues, such as the exploitation of H-1B visas, especially those allocated for STEM fields, that are screwing over our own talent, to be blunt.
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Can you have too much of a good thing?
Too many cooks spoil the broth
Too many foreign students spoil the college
Too many illegal immigrants spoil the country
“Nothing in excess”
Inscription at temple in Delphi
This is “Tech Girl Week” in my community, an international program I’m not really familiar with. But our dinner group this week included three teens from North African countries. Only one, the girl from Morocco, covered her hair. They are supposedly preparing for tech careers in normally male dominated fields, which probably thrills some progressive hearts. Although it is also true that the STEMS require the least proficiency in English.. All three were very fluent, however. One even writes short stories in English.
The best lesson from our meeting, however, was the presence of a Jew as one of our group. And the news that one of her daughters had married the son of another member. That came as a surprise to the Muslim teens. I think her presence was very brave of our Jewish member.
I completed my MSTEP (Medical Scientist Training/Education Program—a combined MD/PhD/Integrated Residency/Fellowship) in the mid 2010s. It’s a difficult program to enter, usually less than three to four per class are admitted every year. My particular year, there were six because there was full funding available (Oblivious was POTUS). My husband and I were the only US citizens, so 2/6 =0.333, ergo 2/3rds were foreigners. It was telling to us that none of the other MSTEP participants were even Caucasian. All of them required remediation in the most basic aspects of laboratory work, and none of them had a clue about how to formulate a hypothesis, design an experiment, or how to properly reference a paper. Hubby and I finished our work three years ahead of them, including our residencies and my fellowship. While I waited for him to finish his dissertation, I had a chance to pick up an additional fellowship in critical care medicine while practicing as an attending. Rare opportunity seldom afforded to an MSTEP. As far as I know, with the exception of my husband, the other four MSTEP participants aren’t doing anything productive except fooling around with laboratory glassware in post-docs. And it’s been well over a decade plus a few years. We moved on to treating patients instead of academics or research. Tells you the value of what those programs are, ultimately.
Well, we have the same problem in the UK.
I work at a top 10, research-led (whatever that means) UK university.
In STEM, a significant part of the problem is earlier education. If we want the best (trained) students with a good work-ethic then we need to over-recruit students from countries which have not dumbed-down their secondary education.
Of course the other problem is fees-our overseas students pay four times the fees of home students. We do not even break-even on home-student fees. In lab-based subjects the fees are about half the lab-costs (ignoring the cost of instruction).
I realise the issues will not be exactly the same in the US, but I’m willing to bet there are significant similarities.
Back in the day when I was in graduate school (40 yrs ago), there was a large fraction of foreign students back then. Most of them return home and build their countries up. Essentially, we are educating our competitors.
When I was in graduate school (30 yrs ago), a number of my classmates were notoriously lazy sons and daughters of Chinese party officials.
Second paragraph. Borders not boarders, unless you’re running a boarding house.
Where did all the editors go?
We are so fortunate to have folks like you around to pick up the nits.
My niece was the only American in her undergraduate female cohort, (STEM, she finally got the family’s PhD in chemistry) who was American. The rest were Chinese or Indian. Same through graduate school.
State schools discriminate in favor of in state versus out of state students. The logic is that the state is paying for the universities so it should benefit the taxpayers of the state. The same logic should apply to American versus foreign students. Our taxes pay for the research done at the universities so it should benefit US students.
They really need to crack down on the H1B visas also. Companies pay them less and Americans end up without jobs. I know companies are supposed to show they could not hire Americans for the job but they put the salary out there that is way out of line with the qualifications. Make them show what the average salary across the US is for that job without any H1b employees figured in and if you are not offering at least that much then you cannot have the Visas. Or better yet they have to pay H1B market salary + 10% because they are having to relocate from another country. Then Americans would make market rate and be cheaper than H1B.
Oh, the hoarers of open boarders!
Shouldn’t colleges be able to admit whoever they want? And if natives can’t make the grade, whose fault is it?
If the colleges didn’t take taxpayer money you would have an argument.
This is only one part of the issue in higher education. I have a relative who got a PhD in French from one of the very top schools in the country. She never could get a college teaching position with a future anywhere and ended up teaching at a very good public high school. I have another relative who got a STEM PhD and found post-doc compensation poor, thanks to all the competition from foreigners. This was many years ago, but I bet it is still, “Good bye and good luck” after all the education.