NYT,pg1: U.S. Slips in Attracting the World's Best Students

[DeepModem Mom]

U.S. Slips in Attracting the World's Best Students
By SAM DILLON

Published: December 21, 2004


American universities, which for half a century have attracted the world's best and brightest students with little effort, are suddenly facing intense competition as higher education undergoes rapid globalization.

The European Union, moving methodically to compete with American universities, is streamlining the continent's higher education system and offering American-style degree programs taught in English. Britain, Australia and New Zealand are aggressively recruiting foreign students, as are Asian centers like Taiwan and Hong Kong. And China, which has declared that transforming 100 universities into world-class research institutions is a national priority, is persuading top Chinese scholars to return home from American universities....

***

Foreign students contribute $13 billion to the American economy annually. But this year brought clear signs that the United States' overwhelming dominance of international higher education may be ending. In July, (David G. Payne, an executive director of the Education Testing Service) briefed the National Academy of Sciences on a sharp plunge in the number of students from India and China who had taken the most recent administration of the Graduate Record Exam, a requirement for applying to most graduate schools; it had dropped by half.

Foreign applications to American graduate schools declined 28 percent this year. Actual foreign graduate student enrollments dropped 6 percent. Enrollments of all foreign students, in undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral programs, fell for the first time in three decades in an annual census released this fall. Meanwhile, university enrollments have been surging in England, Germany and other countries....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/national/21global.html?pagewanted=all&position=

[lovuian]

1. Actually I'm kinda glad about this

:bounce:

[DemFromMem]

4. Why?

Do you want graduate departments around the US to close? This is not a case where there are Americans busting down the doors in the science, math and engineering graduate departments departments around the US. Universities are actually having to subsidize foreign students to fill slots in these programs simply in order to keep them going.

And don't say - if we just promote these areas with Americans, they'll fill the slots. They won't.

[SemperEadem]

6. no kidding--what with ID attempting to be taught as science

Americans in the coming years won't have the basic knowledge to do more than be walfart greeters.

[AP]

8. Everyone benefits when the best and brightest come to the US in order to

realize their potential and share their ideas.

We're all poorer if our Universities no longer draw the most interesting, committed, hardest working people, regardless of where they were born.

[DemFromMem]

2. Another consequence of going overboard on security

This decline is directly related to what is going on at US consulates around the world. Students for the last few years have been admitted to programs in the US and then get stuck in security clearances that can take many months. I deal with foreign students and universities on a daily basis and know that outright denials of visas or extraordinary delays have kept many students from getting to the US. In many cases, people lose a year out of their careers because they have to abandon their plans to come to the US.

Given this reputation, many are simply opting to go elsewhere. It's not that they don't want to come here. They just make a rational decision that making plans to study in the US is just too risky or too much of a pain.

In the long run, we're going to pay a steep price. Many institutions - and I mean probably just about every graduate program in the country - depend on foreign students to keep programs going where there are not enough Americans to fill the programs. And our universities provide the fuel that keeps this country the world's economic leader.

If we don't quickly figure out a way to process student visa applications efficiently, expeditiously, in a friendly manner and in a way that ensures our security, we're going to be in trouble.

[AP]

7. Republicans generally don't like an educated public. It creates upward

pressure on wages.

If you have desperate, undereducated people willing to do anything to pay off credit card bills, you get a nice downward pressure on wages, which allows big businesses to get a bigger profit margin off their labor.

It's not just security that's causing this problem. It's a multi-pronged attack on education which includes defunding by states and shrinking grant programs and things like that.

[FreeCajun]

3. What a shock...

Group seeks law to fight 'liberal bias' at colleges

Students want Indiana Legislature to take action against leftist professors
By Steve Hinnefeld, Herald-Times Staff Writer
December 21, 2004

A debate over academic freedom on college campuses could reach the Indiana General Assembly in the 2005 session that starts next month.

The national organization Students for Academic Freedom is calling on lawmakers to adopt what it calls an academic bill of rights to protect students from indoctrination by leftist professors.

---snip---

Students for Academic Freedom, an offshoot of conservative activist David Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, uses Web sites and other methods to expose what it deems liberal bias on campuses.

more: (registration required)
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2004/12/21/new...

------------------------------------

"Liberal bias" aka not pro-war & pro-rich in this case. The kind of assault on civil liberties we've got makes us really attractive, let me tell you, especially with 44% of americans favoring the restriction of civil liberties of Muslims. So let's see... +"security", -civil rights, +racism, -freedoms = OF COURSE foreign students don't want to come to "Germany 1938, The Sequel."

[zann725]

12. OMG! This is SO scarey!

No wonder foreign students don't want to come here. Aside from probably not being fond of our Foreign policy,they're probably afraid of being "detained" as terrorist suspects. Or worse yet, actually getting an "education"...WITHOUT access to Science or other 'censored' subjects such as Human Rights or LIBERAL Arts.

And wow, Indiana is such a 'hotbed' of Liberalism?! Berkley of the Midwest, somehow I doubt!

[lebkuchen]

5. I'm reading "The European Dream"

about how the US is losing its own, to Europe. The quality of education is a factor.

[KansDem]

9. This should make Bush look smarter...

To paraphrase Thornton Mellon (Rodney Dangerfield's character in "Back to School"): "If you want to look smarter, surround yourself with stupid people..."

[lovuian]

10. Well the US universities better step up and educate US citizens

I get the feeling nobody believes the US population can not produce bright minds to learn. The Universities need to TEACH!!! The reality is students from India and China have more opportunities there than the US. The colleges there are CHEAPER!!! Our Universities are pricing themselves out of the World Market. So this gives American students an opportunity to shine. I'm all for it!!! You can't bring in potential terrorrists and teach them. We have taught them so much that now they don't need us anymore. And are using what we have taught them to compete with us military and economic wise. But I would tell them they understimate American ingenuity. Its just part of the Bush War its not just military dominance its economic and social. Welcome to Bush US and foreigners are not wanted!!!

*alittle sarcasm there*

So thus no Visas!!! Sorry!!!

[0007]

11. .....the whole country is going down hill is that so fucking

hard to understand? No one on this planet trust us! We fuck everybody we can and the easy ones twice.

[w4rma]

13. And "we" aren't even benefiting from the fucking. We are geting screwed by

the same folks screwing everyone else.

[frustrated_lefty]

14. In the University where I work

there are a total of 2 American doctoral students between the Dept of Genetics and the Gene Therapy Program. Every other student in either program is either Asian or Indian. This trend is likely to have long lasting implications. Add to that the US's laughable support of embryonic stem cell research, and that moronic chimp is setting up America for a massive brain drain when it can least afford it.

*sigh*