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Wednesday, April 9. 2014

Foreign Students in the US


It will come as no surprise to observers of graduate education that the
report documents the fact that foreign students make up the majority of
enrollments in U.S. graduate programs in many STEM fields...:


 At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the proportion of international students in graduate electrical engineering programs is 52.5 percent and, in computer science, 35.3 percent. At Stanford, 56 percent of graduate electrical engineering students and 43.7 percent of graduate computer science students are international.

Posted by The Barrister in Education, Our Essays at 13:04 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

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On the upside, they'll be able to understand more of the heavy-accent, foreign-born professors and they'll in their turn teach STEM with a heavy accent. From what I've been told, it is a real problem for students. Back in my day accents weren't a problem but other issues were. On professor went skydiving and announced he was going to calculate his rate of descent. Unfortunately, he broke his leg, didn't bath for weeks and that made office hours something to avoid even with the risk of failure.
#1 JKB on 2014-04-09 15:16 (Reply)
Interesting stuff. Seems to be a variety of issues.

Some of the programs listed are, uh, less than premier. So it would seem that they heavily recruit foreign students simply to keep departments in existence for some perceived recognition for the university. The real questions are whether the US is subsidizing these departments (through grants) and if so, why?

Some programs are at well regarded or state flagship institutions. That's possibly a problem b/c it calls into question whether the school is truly serving the citizens of the state who support it.

When I was in grad school I saw a foreign engineering student's resume at a computer lab printer. His grades were grades were mediocre, yet he proudly listed the scholarships he was receiving. Why weren't those going to the children of the taxpayers' who funded them!?
#2 DrTorch on 2014-04-09 17:52 (Reply)
You don't get it. These guys pay full tuition no grants awards etc. schools compete for them using brokers. They go to grad school to keep visas and enhance prestige. US students don't see much benefit I grad school so the professorate is increasingly mediocre foreign guys
#3 Dirtyjobsguy on 2014-04-09 19:02 (Reply)
Most colleges hire advocates or "out-reach" representatives to solicit foreign students. What began as a way to be open to foreign students has thus become a system where foreign students get priority. They do not hire out-reach representatives for straight white males but they often hire them for women, illegal aliens, minorities and other favored groups.
Additionally state colleges and community colleges want foreign students because they do a little double dipping. That is the state usually subsidizes the tuition of students especially in-state students. The system they use to do this is a less then perfect head counting and foreign students are counted along with in-state and out of state students even though a foreign student pays full tuition. The end result is the state gets money for every student based on a head count and full tuition from foreign students and thus are double dipping. I can't speak to how every state handles this but it happens in my state so the schools reallly want those foreign students to get the extra cash.
And the last factor is that between the out-reach representative and NGO type organizations the foreign students are often provided housing and other amenities that you and your children won't be offerred and this makes it easier for a foreign student to enroll.
Basically your taxes are paying the college to offer incentives to both the foreign students and the colleges to bump citizens who apply in favor of foreign students.
#4 GoneWithTheWind on 2014-04-09 22:10 (Reply)
An awful lot of spelling and grammatical errors from you brilliant yanks.

-"On professor". It's "One"
-"didn't bath". It's "bathe".
-"children of the taxpayers'". "Taxpayers" is not possessive and the single quote is incorrect.
-"who funded them!?". Two punctuation marks is wrong. Pick one.
-"pay full tuition no grants awards". Needs commas.
-"schools compete for them". Capitalize "schools", or, for the love of God, put in a comma where needed.
-"don't see much benefit I grad school". It's "in grad school".
-"the professorate". It's the "professoriat". "Professorate" means the rank, office, or term of office of a professor. It does not mean professors as a group or class.
-"so the schools reallly want". Really has three "L"s? Really?
-"won't be offerred". Offered has two "R"s? Really?

Without quoting errors directly, there are more missing commas, the word "that" seems to be a mystery to you and concision and precision are absent, u. s. w. Don't know what u. s. w. means, do ya? It's a mystery, n'est ce pas? Oh sorry, that was a pure insult, it's not fair to expect modern Americans to continue to know and understand references in foreign languages as their fathers did. I'm grateful they can grunt out "Big Mac and fries".

Proper writing, sophisticated analysis, logical thought, knowledge of foreign languages: More jobs that most Americans won't do.

No wonder American colleges enroll foreigners. They care, they have a great depth of knowledge, they pay attention to detail, they work hard. And they talk funny. Did you know that both Einstein and Wernher von Braun had funny German accents? Edvard Teller was a Hungarian who studied at the University of Leipzig, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Karlsruhe. Damn those sneaky Germans for edumacating a funny sounding Hunky. All of the "fathers of the hydrogen bomb" wound up in the US but were dirty, stinking, foreigners and hard to understand.
#5 Fred Z on 2014-04-10 00:24 (Reply)
"who funded them!?". Two punctuation marks is wrong. Pick one.

No, two marks is not wrong. It’s borrowing from chess notation, used as a metaphor. Perhaps if you knew something about chess…

Proper writing, sophisticated analysis, logical thought, knowledge of foreign languages: More jobs that most Americans won't do.

Tell me another one.

They care, they have a great depth of knowledge, they pay attention to detail, they work hard. And they talk funny.

And you do! That’s even funnier than the first joke.
You don’t actually know anyone foreign students in the US, do you?

I do. I have two degrees in STEM. Only one of hundreds of foreign students I knew matches your description.
#5.1 ErisGuy on 2014-04-10 05:01 (Reply)
And you left out a comma in your second paragraph.

Your point?
#5.2 DrTorch on 2014-04-10 07:14 (Reply)
I am the worlds worst speller and not unused to criticism on my spelling. I did indeed spell really with three l's but for what it's worth I do know how to spell really it was just a stupid keyboard error from typing too fast. I have to admit I am thankful for spell correct and grammer checking software. I'm 70 years old and still can't remember all the exceptions to "i" before " except after "c". But I do suspect you have OCD. I know, that could be interpreted as me trying to be nasty but honestly I'm not. I simply don't get the obsession with spelling and grammer. True when I had to write something for work or school I had to make it correct but this is a blog not English grammer 101. I have known a few people who had this kind of "spelling OCD" and without exception they were covering up their insecurity. That is they could spell but could do little else so consoled themselves with nit picking others in a vain attempt to raise themselves up. Most, certainly not all of us, "yanks" are kind of rebellious and set our own rules. Not always a good idea I admit, but it certainly beats being OCD and nitpicking. I myself have always considered speed limits, stop signs and grammer rules to be suggestions and not the ten commandments. Yesterday I was driving a truck on the interstate and in my state the speed limit for trucks is 55 mph. But at 55 mph you are somewhat of a road hazard. So I fell in line behind an 18 wheeler at 60 mph. Much safer. Had I been OCD driving 55 mph I would have been somewhat of a hazzard to myself and others. This risk is no doubt far less for nit pickers but if you look carefully you can notice the dirty looks of the people who pass you in life. Stop being a hazard to yourself and others.
#5.3 GoneWithTheWind on 2014-04-10 11:38 (Reply)
Last time I checked, in district tuition was lowest, in state but out of district next more expensive, and from there it just went up. Schools charge more for foreign student per credit hour.
#6 Frank Frankly on 2014-04-10 01:01 (Reply)
In the US, STEM is, always has been, and likely always will be a white male activity. Moreover, only a few percent of college white males are interested in it and have the necessary intellectual ability and work ethic to succeed in it. This is by and large true of all countries that derive from Europe.

A typical non-elite STEM graduate program is probably close to 75% foreigner, much higher than the numbers quoted for Stanford and MIT. They fill our STEM graduate programs because there aren't enough white American men to do the work of externally (mostly federally) funded research projects that are the life blood of the modern university.

The overhead charged to these projects is typically 50 to 100% of direct costs. These monies fund the rest of the university's graduate programs

Foreign graduate students in STEM do not themselves pay full, out-of-state tuition. Their tuition, fees and a stipend are included in externally (usually federally) funded research projects.

Under current law, the foreign students are allowed to stay in the US for 18 months after graduation to get practical experience in their discipline. After that they are supposed to go home, and the great majority do. However, under the Senate's proposed H-1B revisions, nearly all foreign STEM graduates would get to stay in the US. The main supporters of this are the companies that infest Silicon Valley. If they succeed in getting what they want, they will crush STEM salaries not only in the electronics industry (the openly stated goal) but in all STEM disciplines. This will greatly delight all STEM companies and their owners, but it will devastate the middle class.

My former department has a majority of foreign born faculty, and recently they interviewed three people for a faculty position, two of whom were Chinese and one American. My people who author the papers in my technical journals are foreign, mostly Asian, by a very large majority.

You can complain all you want about foreigners in STEM, but they are the future.
#7 bob sykes on 2014-04-10 07:45 (Reply)
Math is hard. There are actually absolutely wrong answers, and that hurts your self-esteem. Football players and country singers don't need math, and I"m going to be one or the other (or both). Engineering and science are for the geek kids that aren't popular and whose parents weren't born here and who actually study. They get good grades! None of them know any hip-hop or rap music, play sports or are any good at video games. For God's sake, some of them can actually play the piano or violin. But all that takes practice and studying, and that's not cool. Thank God mom and dad never really make me study. They know I'm a lot less trouble when I'm playing World of Warfare.
#8 RonF on 2014-04-10 14:15 (Reply)

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