Re: Students in American Universities should temper their views - Split from China thread
We need to establish three distinct buckets. The article that skhan cites says two things. First, that wealthy overseas kids will not spend their money here, and second that the best and the brightest students will stay away because of the political climate. The third issue seems to be some alarm that the color of the faces of the professors in our universities is not lilly white.
Lets take the first bucket. My sophomore year in school I lived in an 8 man suite with two kids from Bahrain, sons of the Interior Minister and the Communications Minister. The University loved them because they paid more than out-of-state fees. They were utterly crappy students, and went to the discos every night and drank. I loved them because they bought my Chevy Nova for four times what it was worth, and they seldom used the shower, so the suite did not seem as crowded as it otherwise would have. :) Other than the drunken rythmic clogging dances at 2 am and some really smelly cooking they were easy to live with. Did they contribute much to the fabric of the US? Hardly. I suspect we have more than a few guppies who fit this profile.
The elite students of the world will go where the best programs are, and that means the best funding for research. Florida State alone does over $400Million in research grants. Look at how many Nobel prizes are won every year by US scholars, and how many come out of State Institutions. So long as scholarships are there, and the research funding, the US will continue to attract the creme de la creme. I think you grossly overestimate the importance of the color of their faces. The fact that there are so many Chinese and Indian students is a strength, not a weakness. Many will stay in the US, like my daughters best friend. Her father is Mandarin Chinese, and works in underwater acousics. The US is still the only country building absolute state of the art sonar systems, and he is happier than crap living in a ranch house here in the US. His daughter will undoubtedly be valedictorian, and although he still barely speaks English, his daughter works at Banana Republic and goes to Starbucks with my daughter. America is a great country.
The only place where the US is having trouble is kids in the first bucket. The kids with a fist full of dollars who probably won't amount to much. Too many of the 9/11 attackers were here on student visas. So students from predominantly Muslim countries will get closed out. It hurts them WAY more than it hurts us. Do you think OTHER countries are THAT happy to have them come? They may take the money, but they are worried about the risks too. Most of the absolute top kids have no trouble getting in, and most of those kids are on full ride scholarships anyway, they don't have to wave around fists of dollars. In cases where we cannot accept a bright student from a Muslim country, there is always a student nearly as bright from Taiwan, China, Japan, Singapore or India who will get in. The drop in the dollar makes a US education much cheaper and widens the pool a great deal.
So all I have seen around here is a bunch of first-bucket students who somehow think that the richest most powerful country in the world should be grateful that they showed up with a fistful of daddys money. Or that somehow they are so arrogant that they believe that their brain is unique and irreplacible. Yawn.
Look around. The reason we still need engineers from overseas is that our unemployment is at 5%, not 10% like France and Germany. Russia produces worldclass scholars and thinkers, they have an excellent University system, but they have no funding, and no economic opportunities. The average worker in the Ukraine makes $300 per month, and they have an excellent university education. China produces tons of engineers, so why not outsource? They will work for a fraction of the cost. That is theory of globalization at work. It is inevitable.