@NotVerySmart-- sorry but the UC and Cal State systems were not established to serve international students. The state of California is failing it’s residence. It’s shameful!
The UC system can’t conjure money out of thin air. They are getting less money from their state government, as recent years have strained its budget. The same is true of public colleges across the country, as state legislatures try and find spending cuts that won’t anger their own constituents - it’s politically not very costly to reduce funding for a university covering just a few districts and serving mostly kids between the ages of 18 and 23 who aren’t likely to vote, whereas fee hikes, cuts to HS funding, and of course taxes - the dreaded T word - are a good way to multiply legislators’ volume of hate mail tenfold and reduce their electoral prospects by a similar margin.
If the CA government slashes their funding, the UC schools need to accept more OOS and international students in order to make ends meet, because in-state tuition isn’t enough to cover the expense of educating one student. Mathematics and accounting have no national allegiance.
I also don’t feel foreign students are necessarily crowding out as many American students as some observers believe. No public university has a student body which is more than 20% international - the proportion at UCSD - and all but a handful of colleges, both public and private, are below 15%. Is it so terrible that we’re allowing 95% of the world population to take 10-15% of spots at US colleges, while paying tuition that subsidizes much lower in-state fees?
My own grandmother arrived in the US just as she was reaching college age, making her precisely the sort of immigrant you believe will leave the country upon graduation. She earned stellar marks at Ole Miss, eventually became a citizen, and retired some 15 years ago from her job as a microbiologist in NY. My grandfather earned his Masters at Columbia, and also decided to stick around. I like to think they both contributed something to our country.
As for private colleges, some will argue that they’re obligated to admit more US students - when most “international-minded” colleges still find 80% or 90% of their freshman class among US nationals, and international students need to meet a far higher standard at more selective privates - but I disagree.
@PickOne1 there are plenty of international kids(as much as there are those who want to go back) who want to stay in the US and work(therefore benefit US economics, since you seem to be grumpy that we just leave), but getting work visa is not as easy as others think.
We can’t simply say " Oh I want to stay in US and work," because lots of internatinoal kids are in non-immigrant visa, or F-1, which is meant for studying only. Once you graduate, you HAVE to go. We don’t make the laws, the Congress does. Also, I m not talking about works at restaurant, Mcdonald, dry cleaning, etc. I m talking about at least office jobs.
To get a job in US, you have to go through really really time consuming process. What’s even more absurd is that EMPLOYERS has to pay H-1B(work visa( visa application fees, and it’s significant amount money. The applicants can NOT pay those fees, and it is illegal for us to pay our employers to compensate for the cost. This significantly discourages them from going through all those visa document works. I am currently on F-1 visa and that one, too was a hassle of papers.
Not only that, the employers sort of have to prove that there aren’t other equally good domestic potential employees for this job. This makes us even more difficult to find jobs.
Yet, when we DO get jobs, there are haters who complain that foreigners “taking away our jobs” when they are just too incompetent to get jobs, anyway. Besides, H-1B jobs are for specialty jobs, so those who don’t cut won’t get it anyway
Actually, you should be mad at how the low-end outsourcing companies abuse the system to hog most of the H-1B visas, causing a shortage of H-1B visas for the truly top-end international talent graduating with master’s and doctoral degrees from US universities.
It’s not just about jobs. Having int’l students is also about projecting US “soft power”.
THE SOFT POWER 30A Ranking of Global Soft Power
http://softpower30.portland-communications.com/ranking
Recall that in China before tanks mowed the students in Tiananmen Square, the students had constructed a “goddess of democracy” that bore amazing similarity to the Statue of Liberty.
@ucbalumnus thanks for the link.
See? The top ends jobs that some people think WE are taking away apparently are open to citizens because of H1B shortage. STOP BLAMING US .
How come the congress doesn’t do a thing about this? Instead of putting stricter regulations on how many H1B spots the companies can have, they decides to shorten OPT period :(.
Congress doesn’t do anything about it bc there is little upside. They answer to US citizens who largely are not interested in increasing the H1B pool bc we see it used more often than not for “regular” jobs. Not specialty. I think people underestimate what the US workforce can’t fill in its own bc these visas are going to jobs that we can fill here.
A generic “office job” as you say, should not qualify for those visas. They should be for rocket scientists and such!
Perhaps an appropriation for additional staff at the INS, allowing a review process to catch the outsourcing companies who currently send in 30,000 applications and hope 1/3 of them get lucky, would help. No system encourages such tactics like a lottery with little to no review of the fortunate applicants’ dossiers. This would clear the way for the people who actually do need H1B visas - and an increase in the cap might then do more than increase outsourcing.
@paul2752
H1-B visas are cynically exploited by large US companies to undercut wages for skilled American labor. Just google “Disney H1-B”.
But in defense of int’l students, you have to understand that most Americans, including educated adults on CC, have a parochial view of the world.
^ I don’t know about that. This is an enormous country. We have hundreds of millions of people, hundreds of cultures and different climates and vistas all in “one country”.
Just bc most Americans are not that interested in more and more immigration does not mean they think narrowly. They just don’t think we need more people is all.
Sorry, I should have worded better. When I (wrong)said office jobs, I meant jobs like top notch company jobs, not just small office jobs. I just don’t know how to describe this…but you know what I mean.
@HRSMom so you are saying that the reason for not fixing this is profit issue?
@paul2725
Yes. Cheap labor = profits. Companies lobby hard not to change the way it is.
It’s so ironic. I see so many giant companies “preaching” about illegal immigrant workers but uses foreign labor for profits.
The Republican legislatures don’t believe in public education, because the government cannot
run anything right and they want the state to wither away. They are eliminating business taxes for their supporters, and are cutting state income taxes. They would rather that all educational systems be run by private University of Phoenix-type systems and on-line education, or by charter-school type institutions. This then would generate more campaign dollars for them. The public college campuses have too many Democrats in them and need to be curtailed or eliminated. If they have their way, eventually all public institutions will have hardly any state funding, and will be forced to admit full-pay students, cut-back operations, close or merge, and their tuitions will be so high that only wealthy students will be able to attend. However, what is most important to these legislators are great football programs at their flagship universities and they encourage that. The university will become an appendage to the football program (look at the SEC). A majority of the public must be in favor of this because they keep voting for these people. If little Johnny or Julie with 4.0 gpas cannot get into the flagship public university because there are not enough slots due to full-pay foreign students or out-of-state students, and cutbacks, and tuition is too high, too bad. They have no sympathy from me.
^how is this political? If you needlessly bring in politics, the thread gets shut down.
One question I have, why does an international expect to be permitted to attend a school here or to be able to work here? It is very hard to get a visa, esp. if the H1B sysyem worked properly. I think they believe the hype that we can’t fill our own jobs. There are a tiny amount of those types of jobs that we can’t fill. And they are highly specialized, not just “engineers” or “doctors” or “programmers”.
Let’s play a game called “name three.” Please name three giant companies preaching about (their inability to hire?) illegal immigrant workers.
@HRSMom By that token, one might ask why an American expects to be permitted to attend a foreign school or work abroad. There are currently 7-8 million US citizens living and working abroad, in addition to tens of thousands attending foreign colleges. We can’t have our cake and eat it too.
I happen to believe it’s a good thing for citizens of all countries to venture abroad, building cultural ties and gaining perspectives beyond the narrow ones afforded someone who’s lived in one country all their life. US students are doing so to an increasing degree, and crowding out some foreign colleges’ students in the process.
Few Americans question whether the rest of the world should be accepting American students or workers. The flip side is that we, too, must be prepared to accept that many foreigners will work or study in the US. Not that accepting this is any great burden - these new arrivals have a great deal to offer our country, and should be welcomed.
We don’t “expect” to. Thats the difference. We know from our own system that it is not easy and that we may not be accepted for immigration.
If an international student actually does pay more than it costs, isn’t the school making money and is able to either expand the program or divert money to the locals? Isn’t there a possibility that excluding students who subsidize others, while opening more slots for the locals, makes it financially not feasible to continue to take that many students?
But then, why should international kids have any responsibility to indirectly pay for locals?