Not this crap again!

“Bringing in foreign students is a symbol of failure, not something we should be bragging about,” Rohrabacher said.

This view is nationalistic nonsense. Being the smartest guy in the room merely by the dearth of other’s abilities is not a show of strength, but blatant weakness. To put it another way, keeping the the rest of the world poor and ignorant is not in America’s “national interest.” To put the issue in a more current perspective: What better way to prevent religious radicalization that to allow students — provided they were not co-opted in the first place — to experience the benefit of worldly, liberal institutions?

Let us look at the larger system. If allowing foreign students to study in the United States helps that given country to advance, then so be it. Look at the page on this very site dealing with the Iraq WWII manual: “The British don’t know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don’t know how to make a good cup of tea. It’s an even swap.” Instead of believing that America must perpetually work from a position of dominance, let us come to the point where we can work in the spirit of the even swap.

Joseph C., at 8:25 am EDT on July 27, 2007

Educating Foreigners

You’d think that someone smart enough to get himself elected to Congress would be smart enough to understand the value in educating international students. But no.

So here it is, one more time. Higher education is one of the best ways to practice public diplomacy, or “soft power” as some like to call it. Our culture, and its education system, happen to be quite attractive to many people, even if from time to time they find things to complain about. Don’t we all.

Bringing these folks from their home countries to our universities is a winning strategy in every respect. They tend, on the whole, to do better than our domestic students (they’re probably more motivated) and many of them stay with us. In case you hadn’t noticed (I’m talking to Rep. Rohrabacher here) the US needs skilled, well-educated people, and guess what? here they are. If they stay, they tend overwhelmingly to do well, pay their taxes, and stay out of trouble.

Those that go home are almost always very proud of their alma mater, and look on their time in the US with great fondness, despite the usual problems with the weather, the food, and the quality of TV. Like those who stay with us, they tend to do well, and rise to positions of influence. And they also turn into loyal alumni, generous donors, and generally excellent advertisements for this country. Better still, many of them turn into our business partners.

As a nation, we have a clear and strong interest in educating the rest of the world. Despite the barriers we’ve set up, they keep coming. Our problems will start, Congressman, when they stop coming.

Riall Nolan, Associate Provost and Dean of International Programs at Purdue University, at 9:55 am EDT on July 27, 2007

One of the interesting aspects of the concept of “internationalization” of american education rest on the fact that more and more foreigh institutions, and educational processes, have gained the upper hand on the american educational system with regards with producing better prepared students and a higher level of scholarship. I want to empahsize “system” as the crux of the matter in my posting. As an european born and educated individual, presently teaching in the U.S. , I would suggest that there is perhaps a greater need for an influx of foreign educators which may bring along with them novel and innovatative strategies designed to maiximize the educational success for american university students. Far too often universities and colleges systems in the U.S. are Bureaucracy ladden, where the vagaries of the Bureaucratic processes overshadow the educational context.Too much documentation which becomes often redundant and unecessary.Moreover, a true understanding of foreign credentials is necessary in order to ensure that the often “our degrees are the only ones we accept” attitude of some education institutions is brought in line with a world view of education in the global sense

edward fernandes, psychologist, at 11:15 am EDT on July 27, 2007

Rohrabacher is the only sane one here

So, let me get this straight. We’re suffering from over-population and we’ve got hundreds of thousands of unemployed science and tech workers and more hundreds of thousands of them pet-sitting and selling blue jeans, and you want to increase student visas.

After heavy lobbying and one or two admittedly bogus reports, you increased student visas and split off an additional guest-work visa specifically aimed at driving down compensation for PhDs in science and tech you then turned around and argued that it would be a terrrrrrrrible shame to send these students here on temporary visas back home after having educated them and given them access to our latest, greatest research and techniques for research. And after admitting that this policy change would drive US citizens away from graduate work in these fields because the increased compensation and job stability to be expected from the advanced degree no longer even approaches the direct, indirect and opportunity costs for earning the degree, you now whine that a lower percentage of students are US citizens. So, you falsely conclude, there’s a terrrrrrible shortage of US citizen science and tech workers.

You’re long over-due for a reality check, folks.http://www.kermitrose.com/econ.html#Summary

We should only be admitting the best and brightest, and there aren’t 600,000 “best and brightest", no, there aren’t 60,000 “best and brightest” students in the world. We shouldn’t be admitting ANYONE until they pass (and pay for, alone, with employers, or with charitable assistance) a thorough background investigation, but once they’ve made the cut and earned the degree, it should be relatively easy, with a simpler background update investigation, to get a permanent visa. It should also be far easier for US citizens to get into US grad schools, to get those assistantships, and earn those degrees than it has been in recent years, and the faculties should be shifted back to more tenure-track positions and there should be far fewer adjuncts and OPS (less body shopping).

High percentages of foreign graduate students was a goal of the H-1B visa program. The government’s National Science Foundation, in pushing Congress to establish the H-1B program back in 1989, explicitly stated that they felt that PhD salaries in science and engineering were too high, and advocated bringing in foreign students to hold down wages. It also stated that a consequence of this would be that Americans would not find PhD study financially attractive and thus would not pursue it. The NSF stated:

“A growing influx of foreign PhDs into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of PhD salaries to the extent that foreign students are attracted to U.S. doctoral programs as a way of immigrating to the U.S.A. A related point is that for this group the PhD salary premium is much higher [than it is for Americans], because it is based on BS-level pay in students’ home nations versus PhD-level pay in the U.S.A... [If] doctoral studies are failing to appeal to a large (or growing) percentage of the best citizen baccalaureates, then a key issue is pay... A number of [the Americans] will select alternative career paths... For these baccalaureates, the effective premium for acquiring a PhD may actually be negative.” http://www.nber.org/~peat/PapersFolder/Papers/SG/NSF.html http://www.nber.org/~peat/ReadingsFolder/PrimarySources/TimeLine.html Policy and Research Analysis Division of the NSFhttp://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/pres/comments/numbers.html

“A decade after lambasting the National Science Foundation (NSF) for botching a study of the science job market, Congress has asked the agency to once again take on the politically risky task of predicting how many high-tech workers the United States will need over the next decade... Nonetheless, such projections can spark a political fire-storm, as NSF learned after a 1987 study, led by Peter House, warned of a coming ’shortfall’ of several hundred thousand scientists. After the forecast proved false, law-makers questioned the agency’s reputation for dispassionate analysis (Science, 1992 February 14, p. 788).” http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol282/issue5395/s-scope.dtl1998-12-04 vol 282 issue 5395

Gene Nelsonhttp://psyche.uthct.edu/nes/wwwboard/messages/53.html

Bruce de la Vega, at 7:55 pm EDT on July 27, 2007