Plus, state universities prefer the full tuition that [...]]]>
Plus, state universities prefer the full tuition that foreigners pay rather than the lower amounts paid by residents: in 2016 it was reported that the University of California lowered standards for more lucrative out-of-staters including non-Americans. In the fall 2018 enrollment, only 76 percent were California residents.
Interestingly, foreign students are seen by some as a wonderful affirmation of America’s educational excellence, but their presence has no value at all for US students. The university elites like to talk about the benefits of diversity, but they never mention its financial advantage from foreign students to the institution.
Below, the UC Berkeley campus where diversity is believed to be a strength. The school also has a program of support for illegal alien students — California taxpayer dollars at work.
Furthermore, as the CIS panel points out, there are larger dangers to the nation when the university money grubbers admit even America’s worst enemies from around the world. As Dan Cadman mentions in his presentation, students can get into convenient positions to steal secrets and strategies for the dear homeland. It’s crazy to make it so easy for our enemies to steal America’s important knowledge.
President Trump complains about Red China’s theft of intellectual property, and he has fought back with higher tariffs. But it would be more effective for him to end foreign student visas from China and some other places like Iran and North Korea (!).
Here’s Dan Cadman’s discussion of the national security risks associated with crazy liberal acceptance of foreign students:
]]>DAN CADMAN: The United States, by virtue of its technological prowess, by virtue of its openness, has always been a beacon to people coming to study. And that brings with it a great deal of good for the United States. There is no doubt that when people come to the U.S. and study here for a significant period of time, a matter of years, they get to know something about our society, our culture. Hopefully, that translates into a positive sense of the U.S. and its peoples. And that bodes well particularly when those individuals go back and become in their own countries leaders, political influence makers. But by the same token, because of the size of the nonimmigrant population in the United States at any one time, it poses unique questions and problems of control.
Foreign students are nonimmigrants; that is to say, temporary visitors. But unlike other temporary nonimmigrants, who may be admitted for 90 days or six months, in point of fact, when a foreign student or a research scholar is admitted to the United States they’re admitted for the duration of their status, which is to say for a period of years until their studies conclude, which might be at the undergraduate or at the graduate and postgraduate levels. What that translates to is that an individual may be here anywhere four, six, or eight years and be operating in, for U.S. society, the most open of environments, which is to say institutions of higher learning.
This can be a good thing, but the reality for government security officers is that it creates, as Mao Zedong once said, a sea in which fishes can swim. And although Mao was speaking about guerrillas among the people, it’s equally true that foreign student and exchange scholar populations, by virtue of their size, their diversity, and the openness of the campus environments, act as a perfect place in which people who are engaged in espionage or people who are of malintent can conceal themselves without any real serious possibility that they’re going to be detected, at least not until in the fullness of time. There are just too many people for government officers and government intelligence agents and counterintelligence agents and law enforcement to keep up with. And that basically is the sum and substance of the problem, or at least one dimension of the problem.
The other dimension is that over the course of the past few decades, because of the cost of higher education particularly for people who are paying at the highest levels, which international students are, it becomes very lucrative for universities to fill their campuses with people whose governments are often paying the cost of their tuition and the cost of them living in the United States for that period of time. And the consequence of that is that it has the de facto effect of over the course of time squeezing native-born citizens out of a lot of positions. And this is particularly of concern where STEM – science, technology, engineering, mathematics – subjects are concerned.
It is leading, in a sense, to an atrophying of U.S. native-born graduates in those studies. And the consequence is for industry and government afterward, including the Defense Department, the Energy Department, there is a dearth of people who they can bring on who are in a position to pass government security checks because those aren’t going to be available to foreigners. And this has caused a great deal of concern over the course of some number of years.
Touching on the concerns about espionage, it’s significant that every FBI director going back several decades, when they speak about national security concerns, has addressed the unique problems that they confront with the foreign student population. And that is because they acknowledge that functionally it’s beyond their capacity to monitor and control the number of people who come into the United States to study every year.
And by way of example, every year from 2013 to 2017 there were more than 2 million admissions per year of nonimmigrant students and exchange scholars. Now, it’s important for me to point out that an admission is not the same as a human being because, obviously, a human being could leave temporarily – say on vacation or to go visit family – and then come back. But even if you were to assume that each individual departed and came back at least once, that still means at any point in time a population of foreign students and scholars in the United States exceeding 1 million, and that’s on the low side.
It is without doubt a problem for U.S. security and counterintelligence officers to keep track. And it’s not just the number, but the diversity of the places that these individuals come from because, surprisingly, many of them come from places that are either actively hostile to the United States or are in fierce global competition with the United States for predominance, whether that’s militarily or in trade or technology.
By way of example, the International Institute for Education says that during the 2017-2018 academic year there were 363,341 Chinese students enrolled. And that’s just students; that’s not the exchange scholars. And that probably didn’t include vocational students who may be attending things like pilot school or even maritime schools of various kinds. There were almost 13,000 Iranian students here, 7.5 thousand Pakistani students, 5.5 thousand Russian students, 44,000-plus Saudi Arabian students. There were more than 10,000 Turkish students. There were even 726 Syrian students. And those are just touching the surface. In addition, you have students from Afghanistan, from Cuba, from North Korea.
And an interesting thing when you look at the Department of Homeland Security’s Statistical Yearbook, when you look for the numbers some of them are categorized as “D.” And when you look at “D,” that means “data is withheld to limit disclosure.” Why would the Department of Homeland Security exhibit an interest in withholding information about North Koreans studying in the United States? I find that curious in the extreme – and disturbing, frankly.
You have more than 18,000 Venezuelan students here, and probably a good number of those are opposed to the Maduro regime. But then a good number of them will also be advocates of the Maduro regime because one constant about governments that are particularly authoritarian or are particularly focused on what they want is that they find it in their own interests to seed the foreign student population with people who are sympathetic with their aims.
And a good example, although not the only example of that, is China, because China is very focused on where it wants to go, what it wants to achieve, where it wants to be with its global dominance. And for the Chinese government, espionage is, you might say, a family affair. Everything is geared toward accruing technological advantage. And if that means they can short-circuit the time and money on research by stealing secrets, whether that’s in the defense and military sector or in the trade secrets sector, they’re going to do it.
And not all of the people who come here by any means, of course, engage in espionage, but some do. And not all of them are government security or intelligence officers. Some of them are spies of opportunity. They are inculcated into the idea that it is patriotic for them, if given the chance, to take advantage of things that are open to them. And they are encouraged when the opportunity arises to fit themselves into niches where they’re going to have the opportunity to see those secrets that they can pass back home. And if even only one in 10 or one in a hundred people are doing this, when you have hundreds of thousands of people studying inevitably you’re going to accrue very large benefit from that.
And while I’ve talked about China, even more aggressive in that regard is Iran. And Iran, it would less likely be spies of opportunity. Iran is going to be salting its foreign student population, after it’s thoroughly vetted them, to make sure that their beliefs and interests coincide with that of the theocracy of the Islamic Republic. That is where I think the difficulty lies.
It’s compounded by the fact that in recent years, in truth, the Department of Homeland Security and even its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, walked away from any kind of meaningful enforcement and control of the student population or of the university systems that host these individuals. In theory, the federal government holds in its hand the ability to withhold or withdraw from an institution of learning the right to host foreign students. In practice, that almost never happens. And David will speak to that I’m sure, can speak to that very effectively. But the point is that unless and until something is done, this unfettered situation that we find ourselves in will remain, and that’s untenable.
What’s really scandalous is that the growth of foreign students is substantially higher at public universities — those are the institutions supported by residents’ taxes.\:
California has been one of the [...]]]>
What’s really scandalous is that the growth of foreign students is substantially higher at public universities — those are the institutions supported by residents’ taxes.\:
California has been one of the worst offenders of opening wide its university doors to foreign students who conveniently pay full freight, unlike the state kids that the institution is supposed to serve. In 2016, the state auditor found that the universities lowered standards for non-residents so they could be admitted and pay maximum tuition. Such policies show up in changing demographics, like at the very desirable UC Berkeley, state residents made up only 67.6 percent of the admitted class in 2016 — meaning a whopping 32.4 percent of the admitted freshmen a year ago were not Californians.
The chart below is a couple years old, but it shows the trend of fewer state residents being served by their university.
Here’s the Pew memo:
]]>New foreign student enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities doubled since Great Recession, Pew Research, November 20, 2017
Nearly 364,000 foreign students with F-1 visas were newly enrolled at a U.S. college or university in 2016, double the number at the outset of the Great Recession, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained through a public records request.
From 2008 to 2016, the number of new foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities increased 104% – far outpacing overall college enrollment growth, which was 3.4% during the same period, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The increase was most pronounced at public colleges and universities, which faced budget cuts during the Great Recession and began to rely more heavily on tuition from foreign students.
In the years immediately preceding the Great Recession, growth in the number of new foreign students was more modest, increasing by 20% from 2004 to 2007, but still outpaced overall U.S. enrollment, which rose 7.2% over the same period.
Below are some key facts about foreign students studying in the United States. You can also explore the demographic characteristics of international students who pursued associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from 2004 to 2016 with our new foreign student fact sheet.
About this analysis
Since the Great Recession, the number of new foreign students enrolled at public colleges and universities has grown faster than at private schools. Enrollments among new foreign students at public higher education institutions grew 107% from 2008 (100,956 students) to 2016 (209,217 students). By comparison, private schools experienced a 98% increase in new foreign students, with enrollment growing from 72,953 in 2008 to 144,697 in 2016.
During this time, overall enrollment declined by less than 1% at public schools and increased 22% at private schools.
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In fact, the California system of higher education is so poorly run that it has stooped to deliberate unfairness to admit more non-residents with their fat tuition checks and register fewer state residents — just the population it is supposed to serve. In 2016, the state auditor slammed the University of California for lowering standards to admit more non-residents. Young Californians must wonder why they should study hard to make good grades and high test scores when the system actively works against them. Diversity is valued, but excellence isn’t.
Years of complaints from California parents and students finally convinced the all-powerful regents to respond a tiny bit, according to a May 18, 2017 article in the Los Angeles Times: UC regents approve first limit on out-of-state and international student enrollment which specified:
Regents voted to cap nonresident undergraduate enrollment to 18% at UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside and UC Merced. Four campuses that already exceed that level — UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and UC Irvine — will be allowed to keep but not increase the higher percentage they enroll in 2017-18.
Nonresidents currently make up 16.5% of the system’s 210,170 undergraduates.
So the “reform” from the regents let the most popular schools — UCLA and UC Berkeley — off the hook.
Below, UC Berkeley is one of the most desirable schools. In 2016 state residents made up only 67.6 percent of the admitted class — meaning a whopping 32.4 percent of the admitted freshmen a year ago were not Californians.
Interestingly, Inside Higher Ed puts the out-of-state percentage for UC Berkeley at “more than 24 percent” — so are foreign students not counted as out of state? The numbers have gotten sketchy now that there is supposed to be a limit on non-Californians. Berkeley’s Fall Enrollment Data page has a plethora of race and other information mixed up together, probably to confuse — e.g. 24.5% white, 18.6% Chinese in 2017 plus 11.6 percent “international.”
However the bean counters slice it, Californians are getting the short end of the stick.
Plus some number of the foreigners use their presence in the country to wangle a job leading to immigration.
Anyway, here is the Los Angeles Times’ curiously upbeat position that despite the decrease of foreign students, California is still their top choice!
]]>Enrollment of first-time foreign students dips in the U.S., but California is still No. 1, Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2017
After years of rapid growth, enrollment of first-time international students in U.S. colleges and universities dipped last year amid concerns about political uncertainty, tuition increases, visa delays and reductions in scholarship money, an annual survey found.
California remained the nation’s most popular destination for foreign students, with 157,000 coming to the state in 2016-17. They made up nearly 16% of more than 1 million international students in the United States that year, according to the survey of more than 2,000 institutions released Monday by the Institute of International Education.
Alyson L. Grunder, a deputy assistant secretary of State, said the U.S. ability to attract the world’s largest number of international students was “testament to the unmatched quality of American higher education.”
But the roughly 3% decline in new foreign students in California and nationally was the first drop the institute has recorded in the 12 years it has collected such data, and the decline appears to be deepening. The institute’s separate tally of data from about 500 colleges and universities found a 7% drop in enrollment of first-time students this fall — mostly at less-selective campuses.
Institute officials were diplomatic, and repeatedly declined to pinpoint President Trump’s hard-edged attitudes toward immigration and foreign visitors from countries he considers sponsors of terrorism.
“It really is much too soon for us yet to tell what is the definitive factor,” said Allan E. Goodman, the institute’s president. He said U.S. institutions need to redouble efforts to recruit more foreign students because they enrich campuses and collectively contributed $39 billion to the U.S. economy this past year.
“It’s a very healthy … wake-up call,” Goodman said.
Growth in foreign students is slowing
Overall, the number of international students in the United States went up by 3%, signaling a slowdown in what used to be double-digit growth. Institute officials said other countries, notably Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom, are recruiting foreign students more aggressively. Trump’s travel ban and fears of crime also appeared to be factors, they said. But only 20% of institutions surveyed in the smaller sample said international students had expressed a desire to leave the country because of the social and political climate.
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It doesn’t. Hillary [...]]]>
It doesn’t. Hillary is catering to wealthy tech moguls like Mark Zuckerberg (net worth $51.4 billion) who has long supported permissive immigration to admit millions of cheap workers, a policy that benefits him directly. In fact, Zuckerberg funded and led FWD.us, a business group promoting mass amnesty and increased legal immigration to keep the firehose of cheap foreign workers flowing forever.
The numbers are worth noting, since a record number of foreign students are studying in America — nearly one million in the 2014-2015 academic year — and they are not majoring in art history.
In March of 2015, Senator Sessions chaired an important hearing that examined foreign workers displacing Americans in tech jobs, from which he observed, “American schools graduate twice as many students each year with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs to fill.”
So America has plenty of STEM workers and needs to import ZERO foreigners to take those jobs.
But Hillary Clinton would rather serve tech billionaires than look after the well-being of young Americans who have invested their time and money to have a career.
]]>Industry-Backed Clinton Plan Gives Preference to Foreign Students over American Grads,
WASHINGTON— U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued the following statement on the need to put American students first:
“Although there are more college graduates in the U.S. today than at any point in our history, many have trouble finding meaningful work in their field of study. Many are underemployed, taking jobs well below their skill level simply to make ends meet. This holds true even for those who earn degrees in the Science, Technology, Education, and Mathematics (‘STEM’) field, with prior estimates indicating that 74 percent of all STEM graduates are not working in the STEM field.
Yet, today, candidate Hillary Clinton announced that if elected president, she would ‘staple’ a green card to STEM master’s degrees and PhDs of every graduate – enabling foreign students to get green cards and thus be able to remain in the U.S. permanently and take any job. Her plan embodies a concept that has been recycled by industry year after year as ‘immigration reform,’ and would damage the job prospects of U.S. students.
Numerous, well-regarded experts in this field have rejected the narrative that there is a significant shortage of available American workers to fill positions even in the STEM labor market. In a joint op-ed, Dr. Ron Hira, Dr. Paula Stephan, Dr. Hal Salzman, Dr. Michael Teitelbaum, and Dr. Norm Matloff wrote that they were ‘compelled to report that none of us has been able to find any credible evidence to support the IT industry’s assertions of labor shortages.’ Rather, they stated that ‘there is an ample supply of American workers who are willing and qualified to fill the high-skill jobs in this country. The only real disagreement is whether supply is two or three times larger than the demand.’ They also made the following points:
- The industry-backed concept of ‘stapling a green card’ to a diploma ignores the fact that the ‘“stay rates” for visiting international students are very high and have shown no sign of decline.’
- The industry-backed concept of ‘stapling a green card’ to a diploma is driven by the industry’s ‘desire for cheap, young and immobile labor.’
It is also important to understand that the concept of ‘stapling a green card’ to a diploma puts American colleges and universities in the position of essentially selling green cards to foreign students – leading to a flood of foreign students and crowding out American students.
Young Americans graduating with master’s degrees and PhDs in these fields have sacrificed their time and energy to pursue a career in the STEM field – often at the encouragement of policymakers and national leaders – and oftentimes carry the burden of substantial student loan debt as a result. Further saturating the STEM labor market will limit their ability to obtain high-paying jobs that will allow them to pay down their debt and pursue the occupation of their choosing.
Undoubtedly, increasing high-skilled over low-skilled immigration will better serve the national interest. But there must be some limit to all categories of immigration – including high-skilled immigration. Mrs. Clinton’s industry-backed proposal is excessive, and will surely cause damage to the wages and job prospects of many young Americans.”
It seemed obvious at the time that something funny was going on when over a hundred wealthy Saudis were allowed to fly out of the US on private jets a couple days after 9/11 when all other air travel was still grounded.
Ralph Peters was on Fox News Sunday, giving the Saudis some well deserved condemnation for funding jihad terror around the world. It was sobering when he said that there was a better chance in the long term for a rapprochement with evil Iran than any real reform in Saudi Arabia.
Listening to Peters expound upon Saudi evil, I was also reminded of the tens of thousands of students from the Kingdom who are taking up much desired American college slots. That situation exists thanks to President George W. Bush who thought US educations would be a swell way to improve relations between the countries after 9/11. He got together with Crown Prince Abdullah to set up the King Abdullah Scholarship Program and announced it in 2005. Only 2,500 Saudis attended US colleges in 2005, yet by 2015 the number had exploded to over 80,000 as a result of the scholarship program.
So America is also culturally enriched by the presence of many thousands of Saudis — not all of whom are housebroken in terms of non-drooling behavior toward women and driving a car with proper care. One scholarship recipient, Khalid Aldawsari, used his presence to plot an assassination of President Bush — a Saudi expression of gratitude probably. He was convicted in 2012.
Saudi students are well represented among foreigners attending American universities:
Here’s Ralph Peters’ opinion piece about the Saudis that got him interviewed on Fox.
]]>How Saudi Arabia dangerously undermines the United States, By Ralph Peters, New York Post, April 16, 2016
Iran is our external enemy of the moment. Saudi Arabia is our enduring internal enemy, already within our borders and permitted to poison American Muslims with its Wahhabi cult.
Oh, and Saudi Arabia’s also the spring from which the bloody waters of global jihad flowed.
Iran humiliates our sailors, but the Saudis are the spiritual jailers of hundreds of millions of Muslims, committed to intolerance, barbarity and preventing Muslims from joining the modern world. And we help.
Firm figures are elusive, but estimates are that the Saudis fund up to 80% of American mosques, at least in part. And their goal is the same here as it is elsewhere in the world where Islam must compete with other religions: to prevent Muslims from integrating into the host society.
The Saudis love having Muslims in America, since that stakes Islam’s claim, but it doesn’t want Muslims to become Americans and stray from the hate-riddled cult they’ve imposed upon a great religion.
The tragedy for the Arabs, especially, has been who got the oil wealth. It wasn’t the sophisticates of Beirut or even the religious scholars of Cairo, but Bedouins with a bitter view of faith. The Saudis and their fellow fanatics in the oil-rich Gulf states have used those riches to drag Muslims backward into the past and to spread violent jihad.
The best argument for alternative energy sources is to return the Saudis to their traditional powerlessness.
I’ve seen Saudi money at work in country after country, from Senegal to Kenya to Pakistan to Indonesia and beyond. Everywhere, their hirelings preach a stern and joyless world, along with the duty to carry out jihad (contrary to our president’s nonsense, jihad’s primary meaning is not “an inner struggle,” but expanding the reach of Islam by fire and sword).
Here’s one of the memories that haunt me. On Kenya’s old Swahili Coast, once the domain of Muslim slavers preying on black Africans, I visited a wretched Muslim slum where children, rather than learning useful skills in a state school, sat amid filth memorizing the Koran in a language they could not understand. According to locals, their parents had been bribed to take their children out of the state schools and put them in madrassas.
Naturally, educated Christians from the interior get the good jobs down on the coast. The Muslims rage at the injustice. The Christians reply, “You can’t all be mullahs — learn something!” And behold: The Saudi mission’s accomplished, the society divided.
The basic fact our policy-makers need to grasp about the Saudis is that they couldn’t care less about the welfare of flesh-and-blood Muslims (they refuse to take in Syrian refugees but demand Europe do so). What the Saudis care about is Islam in the abstract. Countless Muslims can suffer to keep the faith pure.
The Saudis build Muslims mosques and madrassas but not hospitals and universities.
Another phenomenon I’ve witnessed is that the Saudis rush to plant mosques where there are few or no Muslims, or where the Wahhabi cult still hasn’t found roots. In Senegal, with its long tradition of humane Islam, religious scholars dismiss the Saudis as upstarts. Yet, money ultimately buys souls and the Saudis were opening mosques.
And jihadi violence is now an appealing brand.
In Mombasa, Kenya, you drive past miles of near-empty mosques. Pakistan has been utterly poisoned, with Wahhabism pushing back even the radical (but less well-funded) Deobandis, the region’s traditional Islamist hardliners.
Shamelessly, the Saudis “offered” to build 200 new mosques in Germany for the wave of migrants. That was too much even for the politically correct Germans, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy had as close to a public fit over the issue as toe-the-line Germans are permitted to do.
But our real problem is here and now, in the United States. Consider how idiotic we’ve been, allowing Saudis to fund hate mosques and madrassas, to provide Jew-baiting texts and to do their best to bully American Muslims into conformity with their misogynistic, 500-lashes worldview. Our leaders and legislators have betrayed our fellow citizens who happen to be Muslim, making it more difficult for them to integrate fully into our society.
In the long run, the Saudis will lose. The transformative genius of America will defeat the barbarism. But lives will be wrecked along the way and terror will remain our routine companion.
Why did we let this happen? Greed. Naivety. Political correctness. Inertia. For decades, the Saudis sent ambassadors who were “just like us,” drinking expensive scotch, partying hard, playing tennis with our own political royalty, and making sure that American corporations and key individuals made money. A lot of money.
But they weren’t just like us. First of all, few of us could afford the kind of scotch they drank. More important, they had a deep anti-American, anti-liberty, play-us-for-suckers agenda.
And we let the Saudis exert control over America’s Muslim communities through their surrogates. No restrictions beyond an occasional timid request to remove a textbook or pamphlet that went too far.
Think what we’re doing: The Saudis would never let us fund a church or synagogue in Saudi Arabia. There are none. And there won’t be any.
Wouldn’t it make sense for Congress to pass a law prohibiting foreign governments, religious establishments, charities and individuals from funding religious institutions here if their countries do not reciprocate and practice religious freedom? Isn’t that common sense? And simply fair?
Saudi money even buys our silence on terrorism.
Decades ago, the Saudi royal family realized it had a problem. Even its brutal practices weren’t strict enough for its home-grown zealots. So the king and his thousands of princes gave the budding terrorists money — and aimed them outside the kingdom.
Osama bin Laden was just one extremist of thousands. The 9/11 hijackers were overwhelmingly Saudi. The roots of the jihadi movements tearing apart the Middle East today all lie deep in Wahhabism.
Which brings us to 28 pages redacted from the 9/11 Commission’s report. Those pages allegedly document Saudi complicity. Our own government kept those revelations from the American people. Because, even after 9/11, the Saudis were “our friends.”
(We won’t even admit that the Saudi goal in the energy sector today is to break American fracking operations, let alone face the damage their zealotry has caused.)
There’s now a renewed push to have those 28 pages released. Washington voices “soberly” warn that it shouldn’t be done until after the president’s upcoming encounter with the Saudi king, if at all.
Do it now. Stop bowing. Face reality.
If we’re unlucky, we may end up fighting Iran, which remains in the grip of its own corrupt theocracy — although Iranian women can vote and drive cars, and young people are allowed to be young people at about the 1950s level. But if fortune smiles and, eventually, the Iranian hardliners go, we could rebuild a relationship with the Iranians, who are the heirs of a genuine, Persian civilization. Consider how successful and all-American Iranian-Americans have become.
War with Iran will remain a tragic possibility. But the Saudi war on our citizens, on mainstream Islam, and on civilization is a here-and-now reality.
This trend is not new, as cash-strapped universities notice the financial resources that well-heeled foreign students offer. In fact, it was reported earlier this year that “international” students (the preferred term) are at an all-time high in American universities.
Pictured is the Berkeley campus, which currently has the highest number of foreign and out-of-state students in the UC system.
In addition, racial diversity gets special attention in today’s University of California. In the 2015 admission numbers, Asians account for 36 percent, hispanics 30 percent, whites 25 percent and blacks 4 percent. Does anyone think that all those hispanic students will graduate? It’s doubtful. A 2010 study found that fewer than half of hispanic students admitted to college manage to graduate with a four-year degree.
The university overlords complain that they need more money from the taxpayers to admit more in-state kids, but nobody in the perfunctory news reports ever suggests that a lot of money could be saved by cutting waste in the enormous bureaucracy. One place the suits could cut is the funding for “diversity:” In 2011 it was reported that UC Berkeley had an office of diversity and inclusion that spent $17 million annually. UCB is plenty diverse and doesn’t need a big bureaucracy when the state’s demography already supplies it.
And here’s a money-saving idea: charge more for useless degrees like chicano studies. The decision of what major to choose should make the kiddies consider the real world of work after graduation. And promoting anti-American subjects like leftist chicano propaganda shouldn’t be supported by California taxpayers anyway.
Also, keep in mind that the foreign students are well situated to grab an American job upon graduation, so it’s a two-fer screw job on young citizens.
]]>How foreign, out-of-state students pad UC’s shrinking budget, San Francisco Chronicle, April 9, 2015
As state funding for the University of California system has declined, campuses have plugged budget shortfalls by enrolling out-of-state and foreign students who pay more in tuition.
An analysis of enrollment and funding data shows a demographic sea change across the UC system.
About 95 percent of undergraduates enrolled in the system were California residents in 2007. That number dropped to under 87 percent in the 2014-15 academic year, as the state Legislature cut more than $810 million in funding, after adjusting for inflation. Meanwhile, international enrollment increased nearly fivefold over the same period, from 1.8 percent to 8.5 percent of the student body. The number of domestic out-of-state students grew by just under two percentage points.
As freshmen prepare to leave home and move onto campus for the 2015-16 academic year, an even higher percentage will be coming from overseas and across state lines. Non-resident admissions for the fall semester increased by about 13 percent UC-wide, with Santa Cruz, San Diego, Irvine and Davis experiencing particularly large jumps.
“I’ve already met so many international students and students from out of state,” said Mary Cozy, 18, an incoming freshman at UC Berkeley, which has the highest number of foreign and out-of-state students. “It’s nice coming together and being around people from all scopes.”
Influx’s benefits
University officials say the influx of non-Californians into the state’s premier public universities makes campuses more diverse and gives students unique learning experiences that can’t be replicated in a class or textbook. It is also a cash cow for the system.In-state tuition is $12,804 per year, and about 55 percent of in-state students are low-income and pay no tuition, while out-of-state and international students pay an additional $24,024, for a total of nearly $37,000. The fees collected from out-of-state and international students totaled an estimated $620.7 million in the 2014-15 school year, less than 9 percent of the university’s $6.9 billion core budget, which covers teacher salaries, benefits and financial aid.
Economic motivation
“We’d love to add more California students, but we need to get funding from the state to do that,” said Nathan Brostrom, UC’s chief financial officer. “Non-resident enrollment is one revenue source to help with the shortfall.”The state’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education says that California residents shouldn’t pay tuition — only a nominal fee to cover various campus-related expenditures. While the university seldom upheld the lofty goal, it did manage to keep the cost of a bachelor’s degree relatively cheap.
In 1980 the UC received about 87 percent of its core budget from the state’s general fund and 8 percent from its roughly $2,250 per-year resident tuition and fees (in 2015 dollars).
After adjusting for inflation, state funding to the system has declined by more than 30 percent since 1999 — or by about $1.2 billion. Meanwhile, the university enrolled an additional 92,600 students, opened a 10th campus — UC Merced — and has kept resident tuition steady since 2011-12.
“You’ve got a budget constraint, costs are going up, state funding is going down or staying steady, and you’re not allowed to increase tuition,” said Henry Brady, dean of UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. “We’re producing a Cadillac education for the cost of a Chevy, and the state’s saying you should do it at a motorcycle price. At some point you have to ask, ‘What’s realistic?’”
One obvious revenue stream has been supplemental fees from non-resident students.
Cal senior Kelly Kwon, 22, was drawn to the university from thousands of miles away. “The reputation of the school is really good in Korea,” she said. “I thought coming here would help me get a job, and I also wanted to learn English.”
Students like Kwon have been a boost for the university’s finances. No school has welcomed more than UC-Berkeley.
Fewer Californians at Cal
In 2007, 2.6 percent of Cal’s student body wasn’t from the United States. That number climbed to 12.3 percent last year. Student enrollment from other U.S. states nearly doubled during the same time period, from 6 to just under 12 percent.Meanwhile, the flagship campus recorded the smallest percentage of California residents out of nine UCs last year — about 76 percent. (UCSF, the 10th campus, has been excluded from the analysis because it doesn’t enroll undergraduates.)
Some worry that the uptick is pushing Californians out of their taxpayer-supported universities, which have long been a bastion of affordable and quality education for state residents.
“There’s a lot of positives about having nonresident students,” said Steve Boilard, executive director of Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento. “The third-rail issue is: Are these students displacing resident students? That’s where a lot of people get riled up.”
Boilard said the displacement claim doesn’t hold ground systemwide, since UC sets enrollment targets for California students based on funding from the state. But the uptick could be making it harder for in-state residents to get into schools like Berkeley and UCLA — where competition has gotten much steeper.
Some worry that the higher-ranked campuses could follow other lauded public universities — such as the universities of Michigan, Colorado and Wisconsin — where non-residents accounted for 38 to 40 percent of enrollment in fall 2013, the most recent year data is available.
“Increasing out-of-state residents hurts the system and it hurts access,” said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento. “Lower-class families are feeling the squeeze.”
Setting limits
To keep Berkeley and UCLA accessible to Californians, UC President Janet Napolitano capped international and out-of-state enrollment at the two campuses at 2014-15 levels. California’s new budget plan also requires UC to enroll at least 5,000 additional resident undergraduates by 2016-17.Cal graduate and Korean citizen Jimin Lee, 29, said she largely ignored the controversy while a student, and Berkeley is now a home away from home. “I somehow adapted to the lifestyle here — flip-flops instead of high heels,” she said while applying for jobs at the Free Speech Cafe. “The spirit of Berkeley lives in me.”
Lee said there was an unspoken understanding that the university admitted international students partially for the money they brought — and she understands how resentment from resident students could boil up.
“I’m happy I’m not a policymaker,” she said. “It’s not whether we should move forward or not, but how to create a policy that’s both inclusive and also protective of California natives.”
CARLSON: The ongoing threat seems even more [...]]]>
CARLSON: The ongoing threat seems even more imminent. Consider there are more than a hundred thousand muslim immigrants who come to America every year legally to study in colleges and many more who come through other avenues. So do we need to make changes to our national security and to immigration policy to keep us safe?
Joining us now retired FBI Special Agent, counterterrorism a tactical operations expert Tim Clemente. Thanks for joining us this morning.
Do law enforcement agencies see the massive increase in Islamic immigration to the US as a problem?
CLEMENTE: Well it’s a problem in that there are clearly individuals like Abdulazeez come from this pool. There’s no doubt that he was the perfect profile — his age, his education as far as being in the engineering sciences — that’s kind of typical, beginning as far back as the 9/11 hijackers and it’s something we’ve seen continuously, so clearly this is a pool of individuals that need to be looked at, need to be scrutinized when their applications for visas, either student or otherwise, are being considered, and the FBI has a daunting task as it is with individuals that are already here and we consider that hundreds of thousands more are coming this next year and beyond — it is, as Director Comey said, impossible to try and keep up with that influx.
The individuals alone that we already know may be involved with terrorist groups or may be leaning in that direction that need to be watched or put on watch lists is already something that overwhelms the manpower that the bureau has.
CARLSON: So is there any coordination between law enforcement and policymakers, so you know Congress lets in a certain number of immigrants from Muslim countries every year. Colleges lobby for more student visas because they want the money. The government of Saudi Arabia for example pays for all these Saudis to study in the United States. Does anybody ask, say, the Department of Homeland Security, what do you think it is?
CLEMENTE: I don’t believe there’s much coordination at all. The fact is that the freedoms we enjoy as Americans than those we extend to foreign visitors allow certain level of, let’s say, leniency on the part of the State Department and handing out those these applications, and you don’t need a national security clearance to come into the United States to study here from abroad, and so there’s no consideration of the national security threat, unless that individual is connected to someone directly or is themselves on some kind of watch list, there really isn’t a process in the middle there to see who they are and who they might be.
CARLSON: It’s interesting just to restate: there’s a lot of money at stake here, and colleges are making of a lot of money from this this influx of students, so last year just to put this on the screen, there are a hundred and twenty seven thousand visas issued to students from majority Muslim countries. That is a huge increase.
Is that primarily the threat? I’m looking at the screen here, 53,000 from Saudi Arabia, Iran 10,000, Kuwait 7,000, Nigeria which is about half Muslim seven almost 8,000, Indonesia 7900. Is this something that that law enforcement officials are concerned about?
CLEMENTE: [. . .] It’s a concern that is very hard to deal with when the restrictions on law enforcement are that you can’t just wantonly pick out people and try and I dig into their lives because you think they might be a potential suspect, there has to be more. The way our laws are written today there has to be a reasonable suspicion in order to move forward with an investigation and that has to be developed in a way that the United States Attorney General guidelines allow for the FBI or other intelligence agencies to continue scrutinizing these individuals, with a very high bar set.
CARLSON: We’re pretty much helpless, it sounds like.
Incidentally, Carlson is a rare media personality who confronts the vital immigration component in national security. On Friday’s Special Report news show, he asked rhetorically, “Is there a connection between a massive increase in Islamic immigration to the U.S. and a massive increase of acts in Islamic terror on our soil?”
The bodies keep piling up, but the subject of enemy immigrants is verboten except by the most fearless.
Admitting large numbers of potential unfriendlies inside the gates as immigrants has national security consequences. As I reported last year:
Student Visa Fail: 6,000 Missing Are of ‘Heightened Concern’, September 2, 2014
Student visas are the perfect scam for any youngish-looking person to enter the United States for whatever reason: simply enroll in some sort of educational institution from genuine accredited universities to low-rent visa mills, then never show up for classes and disappear into stupid-open America. The current estimate is that 6,000 foreigners considered concerning have taken advantage of this “system” among 58,000 visa overstayers this year overall.
Foreign students are compliant walking wallets in the mind of the educational industrial complex, currently adding $24 billion in easy money to the economy. As a result, education administrators insist on open borders for cash-carrying foreign students.
Shortly after the 9/11 attack on America, Senator Dianne Feinstein suggested a six-month moratorium on student visas but the college cabal came down on her like a ton of transcripts. She quickly relented as long as better security was promised.
In addition, several student visa holders have been convicted of jihad-connected crimes, so it’s not like the danger is imaginary:
● Uzbek citizen Ulugbek Kodirov was convicted of a plot to murder President Obama.
● Bangladeshi jihadist Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan planned to blow up Manhattan’s Federal Reserve Bank, for which he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
● Azamat Tazhayakov, the Kazakh friend of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was convicted in 2014 of obstruction of justice for hiding evidence of the Boston Marathon bombing.
● Faisal Shahzad arrived in America as a student, got an MBA and lived a quiet life in a nice suburb, earned by working as a financial analyst. Yet in 2010, he loaded up a van with explosives and tried to blow up Times Square in New York City, and was sentenced to life in the slammer for trying to reach his jihad goal. He even recorded a “Death to America” jihad video. Assimilation is often just skin deep among Allah’s helpers.
● Saudi national Khalid Aldawsari came to the United States as a student to study chemical engineering at Texas Tech; instead he dropped out and set about building a bomb, with one possible target being the Dallas home of former President Bush. That would have been some serious karma for Bush, since in 2005 he initiated the plot, er plan to welcome thousands of Saudi students to America with the help of the Saudi king who pays the expenses of many of the scholarships.
In 2005, only 2500 Saudi students attended college in the US, but since then the doors have opened wide for the nation that sent us 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. A Wall Street Journal article (3/15/15) put the total number of Saudi students at nearly 81,000, thereby endangering all Americans, from Presidents to women students.
Finally, here’s the scoop on the huge numbers of Muslim students flooding into America to enrich the universities and endanger the citizens:
]]>Student Visas from Muslim Countries on the Rise, 127K Last Year, By Daniel Horowitz, Conservative Review, July 17, 2015
How many more potential Islamic terrorists like Mohammad Youssef Adbulazeer are living freely in this country? And to what extent is our political class going to continue their suicidal policies?
Several months ago, we estimated that roughly 1.62 million individuals from predominantly Muslim countries have emigrated here since 9/11. We counted all of the green cards issued to foreign nationals of 43 countries with either near-100% Muslim population or an overwhelming majority of Muslims. While some of these individuals are likely non-Muslims, we noted that it is a pretty fair estimate of the number of Muslim immigrants and coincides with the Pew estimate of 100,000 million Muslim immigrants per year.
A quick search and tally of the data at the IIE for the same 43 predominantly Muslim countries reveals that 127,332 student visas were granted to students from these same countries. Our government does this every year and the trend is only growing. That means that 14% of the annual student visas are from Muslim countries, an even higher share than immigrant visas relative to the total immigrant population.
By far, the largest number of visas come from Saudi Arabia (remember 9/11?), topping out at 53,919 for the last academic year. As we noted last year, the Saudi government has unlimited funds to pay for their international students, and with no caps on F1 visas, they could theoretically send hundreds of thousands of students here every year.
Iran has sent us over 10,000 foreign students as well. What could go wrong?
Oh, and with Mohammad Youssef Adbulazeer on everyone’s mind, it’s important to note that we’ve admitted 7,288 foreign students from Kuwait for that same academic year.
No wonder Arabic is the fastest growing language on U.S. campuses.
Consider this thought for a moment: the college population is almost exclusively between the ages of 18-25. Given that 36% of American Muslims under the age of 45 believe that violence against America can be justified as part of Global Jihad, what percentage of foreign students during the prime age for Jihad coming straight from the Middle East harbor the same sentiments? In that sense, student visas from the Middle East and North Africa represent an even more direct security threat than immigrant visas.
The rapid increase in Muslim foreign students should also raise concerns in the context of the growing push to bring in more “high skilled” STEM students and workers. Liberals often blame Jihad on poverty and lack of a promising future for Muslim youth, but the reality is that many of these young Jihadis are smart and affluent with promising careers. Just look at the lifestyle of the Chattanooga Jihadi and the fact that he held a degree in electrical engineering.
A huge share of the international students from Muslim countries is enrolled in STEM fields, according to the data compiled by IIE. Seventy-nine percent of Iranian students and 42% of Saudi students were enrolled in STEM programs. So just remember when they discuss bringing in more STEM students and workers, there is a high likelihood we would be importing more security risks.
With this entire region embroiled in Islamic upheaval and the shocking success of the global cyber jihad in radicalizing Muslim youth, why in the world would we self-immolate and bring in so many potential security threats?
Below from left, the three Kazakh boys Azamat Tazhayakov, Dias Kadyrbayev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev visited New York’s Times Square, a popular terrorist target.
Naive politicians think the government should staple green cards to the diplomas of any and all foreign students with useful degrees, without considering whether they would be loyal law-abiding citizens. Instead of examining the threat to national security of admitting possibly hostile foreigners willy-nilly, Washington admitted a record number of foreign students to US campuses in 2012: 764,495. Unfriendly Red Chinese and Saudis were the most numerous.
However, there is good news today, namely the serious treatment of the Kazakh criminals with possible hard time and deportation. But wouldn’t it be better to screen foreign students more carefully before admitting them in the first place?
]]>Grand jury indicts two Kazakh students in Boston bomb probe, Reuters, August 8, 2013
A grand jury on Thursday indicted two students from Kazakhstan on obstruction of justice charges, alleging they helped hide evidence related to the April Boston marathon bombing that killed three and injured 264, the U.S. Attorney’s office for Massachusetts said.
Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both 19, were college friends of surviving bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
They are charged with removing a backpack containing fireworks and a laptop from Tsarnaev’s dorm room after the FBI released pictures of Dzhokhar and his older brother Tamerlan in an effort to learn the names of the bombers.
The pair were first charged on May 1 with conspiracy and remain in federal custody. They could face up to 20 years in prison on obstruction of justice charges, in addition to five years if convicted on conspiracy charges.
Both also face the possibility of deportation.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a gun battle with police following the release of the images while Dzhokhar, 20, is in federal custody awaiting trial on charges that could bring the death penalty.
An attorney for Tazhayakov, Arkady Bukh, said he had been trying for the past three months to persuade federal prosecutors to drop charges against his client.
“There was no motive and no order from Tsarnaev to destroy evidence,” Bukh said in a phone interview. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t convince them. At this time there is little left but to go to trial.”
Kadyrbayev’s attorneys could not be reached for immediate comment.
The New York Times has noticed the trend nationwide (posted below), [...]]]>
Here in perennially broke Mexifornia, it’s old news that state universities are admitting more foreign students paying full tuition to offset some of the bills. (See California Universities Abandon State Students.) As a result, UC Berkeley campus can sound more like Chinatown than California.
The New York Times has noticed the trend nationwide (posted below), but doesn’t mention how citizen young people get shafted as a result. Every slot taken by a rich Red Chinese national is a space not available for a citizen kid, whose parents have paid a lifetime of taxes to fund America’s educational infrastructure.
Another aspect is the widespread cheating of Chinese applicants to gain acceptance to American universities. One may assume that since universities regard foreign students as walking checkbooks, the schools will be loath to flunk out kiddies who can’t speak English, for example. So the expensive educations will be less worth the cost for Americans and the dumbing down will decrease the value of the degree.
In addition, certain Presidential candidates think that “stapling green cards to diplomas” is a fine idea. Perhaps Mr. Romney, Gingrich et al haven’t thought the policy through, since it plays havoc with limiting H-1b visas to promote citizen employment in tech and engineering fields. And given the fondness of business for a diverse-appearing workforce, white Americans will be at a disadvantage in competing with foreign graduates.
]]>Taking More Seats on Campus, Foreigners Also Pay the Freight, New York Times, Feb 4, 2012
SEATTLE — This is the University of Washington’s new math: 18 percent of its freshmen come from abroad, most from China. Each pays tuition of $28,059, about three times as much as students from Washington State. And that, according to the dean of admissions, is how low-income Washingtonians — more than a quarter of the class — get a free ride.
With state financing slashed by more than half in the last three years, university officials decided to pull back on admissions offers to Washington residents, and increase them to students overseas.
That has rankled some local politicians and parents, a few of whom have even asked Michael K. Young, the university president, whether their children could get in if they paid nonresident tuition. “It does appeal to me a little,” he said.
There is a widespread belief in Washington that internationalization is the key to the future, and Mr. Young said he was not at all bothered that there were now more students from other countries than from other states. (Out-of-state students pay the same tuition as foreign students.)
“Is there any advantage to our taking a kid from California versus a kid from China?” he said. “You’d have to convince me, because the world isn’t divided the way it used to be.”
If the university’s reliance on full-freight Chinese students to balance the budget echoes the nation’s dependence on China as the largest holder of American debt, well, said the dean of admissions, Philip A. Ballinger, “this is a way of getting some of that money back.”
By the reckoning of the Institute of International Education, foreign students in the United States contribute about $21 billion a year to the national economy, including $463 million here in Washington State. But the influx affects more than just the bottom line — campus culture, too, is changing.
While the University of Washington’s demographic shifts have been sharper and faster — international students were 2 percent of the freshmen in 2006 — similar changes are under way at flagship public universities across the nation: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and University of California campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles all had at least 10 percent foreign freshmen this academic year, more than twice that of five years ago. And at top private schools including Columbia University, Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania, at least 15 percent of this year’s freshmen are from other countries.
All told, the number of undergraduates from China alone has soared to 57,000 from 10,000 five years ago. At the University of Washington, 11 percent of the nearly 5,800 freshmen are from China.
A few places have begun to charge international students additional fees besides tuition: at Purdue University, it was $1,000 this year and will double next year; engineering undergraduates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had to pay a $2,500 surcharge this year.
“We’re in something akin to the gold rush, a frontier-style environment where colleges and universities, like prospectors in the 1800s, realize that there is gold out there,” said David Hawkins, the director of public policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “While it’s the admissions offices butting up against the issues most right now, every department after them, every faculty member who comes into contact with international students, is going to have to recalibrate as institutions become more international. I see a cascading list of challenges.”
They have already begun here at Washington’s flagship university, where orientation leaders last fall had to explain, repeatedly, the rigorous campus recycling practices, reinforce no-smoking rules and, at the make-your-own-sundae bar, help people get the hang of the whipped-cream cans.
But there are deeper issues, like how much latitude professors should give in written assignments.
“We recognize that people from other countries often speak with an accent,” said John Webster, director of writing at the university’s College of Arts and Science. “If we’re truly going to be a global university, which I think is a terrific thing, we have to recognize that they may write with an accent as well.”
For example, because Mandarin has one word for “he,” “she” and “it” and nothing like “a” or “the,” many Chinese speakers struggle with pronouns and articles. And English verb forms, like past participles, gerunds and infinitives, can be difficult to master, since Chinese verbs are unchanging.
Given that Chinese students’ writing will be “accented” for years, Mr. Webster believes that professors should focus less on trying to make their English technically correct and more on making their essays understandable and interesting. But he knows this could be a controversial issue, reminiscent of the Ebonics debate decades ago.
The international influx is likely to keep growing, in part because of the booming recruiting industry that has sprung up overseas. That includes the use of commissioned agents, who help students through the admissions process — and sometimes write their application essays. Amid controversy over such agents, Mr. Hawkins’s group has named a commission, to meet for the first time next month, to formulate a policy regarding recruiters.
Nationwide, higher education financing has undergone a profound shift in recent years, with many public institutions that used to get most of their financing from state governments now relying on tuition for more than half their budgets. But legislators and taxpayers still feel deep ownership of the state institutions created to serve homegrown students — and worry that something is awry when local high achievers, even valedictorians, are rejected by the campuses they have grown up aspiring to.
“My constituents want a slot for their kid,” said Reuven Carlyle, a Democrat state representative from Seattle. “I hear it at the grocery store every day, and I’ve got four young kids myself, so I get it.
“We are struggling with capacity, access and affordability,” he said. “But international engagement is part of our state’s DNA. We have a special economic and social relationship with China, and I am happy to have so many Chinese students at the university.”
Still, Jim Allen, a counselor at Inglemoor High School in Kenmore, Wash., an affluent suburb north of Seattle, said: “Families are frustrated. There aren’t as many private colleges here as in the East, and a lot of families expect their children to go to U.W.”
Unlike many other state universities, the University of Washington did no overseas recruiting before this academic year, when it staged recruiting tours in several countries. So the rapid growth in international applications — to more than 6,000 this year from 1,541 in 2007, with China by far the largest source — was something of a surprise. Last spring, another surprise was the percentage who accepted offers of admission: 42 percent decided to enroll, up from 35 percent the previous year.
“As best I can make out, it’s just word of mouth,” said Mr. Ballinger, the admissions dean. “We’re well known in China, we’re highly rated on the Shanghai rankings, and we have a lot of contacts.”
Applications from abroad present some special challenges. Because the SAT is not given in mainland China, the university does not require international students to take it. Although it does not pay recruiting agents, Mr. Ballinger said he knew many applicants hired them, so the university does not consider Chinese applicants’ personal essays or recommendations. (Yes, he also knows that some affluent applicants in the United States get extensive help from paid private counselors.)
Some in-state students said they had trouble knowing what to make of the fact that international students, on the one hand, help underwrite financial aid, and on the other, take up seats that might have gone to their high school classmates.
“Morally, I feel the university should accept in-state students first, then other American students, then international students,” said Farheen Siddiqui, a freshman from Renton, Wash., just south of Seattle. “When I saw all the stories about U.W. taking more international students, I thought, ‘Damn, I’m a minority now for being in-state.’ ”
Actually, nearly two-thirds of Ms. Siddiqui’s classmates are from Washington, but her inaccurate sense of the population was echoed by all of the three dozen freshmen interviewed — including those from other states and from China. Most, like Ms. Siddiqui, estimated that half to two-thirds of the class was international.
Ms. Siddiqui cited a psychology class in which the professor asked the 600-plus students about the nature of the families they grew up in. With clickers recording the responses, Ms. Siddiqui said, about 60 percent said their families were “collectivist,” rather than “individualist,” something she perceived as more Asian than American.
Alison Luo, who grew up in Chongqing, a major city in southwest China, had mixed feelings about the trend that she is part of.“Before I came, I saw the online chatting in China, with hundreds of people coming to the University of Washington,” Ms. Luo said. “I was kind of worried about that. I paid to study abroad, and it was almost like I was studying in China.”
The Bloomberg report below curiously frames the issue as Asian American students versus foreign Asians, particularly Chinese, but the statistics cited are worth [...]]]>
As a result of California being too stupidly broke to fund the university system adequately, state residents are being severely slashed in admissions in favor of foreign students paying much higher tuition.
The Bloomberg report below curiously frames the issue as Asian American students versus foreign Asians, particularly Chinese, but the statistics cited are worth attention.
The shrinking proportion of white students at UC (falling 29 percent in 2010 at Berkeley) gets but a single sentence in this longish piece.
The important point is that qualified California residents of all races are being shunted aside so the University can charge more money from foreigners.
In addition, some, perhaps many, of the Red Chinese students are certainly spies and come to vacuum up valuable technology and science. It’s crazy for Obama (and some Republican Presidential candidates) to say that every foreign student who earns an advanced degree should get an automatic green card, thereby welcoming ruthless Chinese spies and endangering national security.
Below, Asian students at UC Berkeley are comfortable displaying signs in Chinese, even though diverse California is home to just 3.4 percent Chinese.
]]>Lure of Chinese Tuition Squeezes Out Asian-American Students, Bloomberg News, December 30, 2011
Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) — Kwanhyun Park, the 18-year-old son of Korean immigrants, spent four years at Beverly Hills High School earning the straight As and high test scores he thought would get him into the University of California, San Diego. They weren’t enough.
The sought-after school, half a mile from the Pacific Ocean, admitted 1,460 fewer California residents this year to accept higher-paying students from out-of-state, many from China.
“I was shocked,” said Park, who also was rejected from four other UC schools, including the top-ranked campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles, even with a 4.0 grade-point average and an SAT score above the UC San Diego average. “I took it terribly. I felt like I was doing well and I failed.”
The University of California system, rocked by budget cuts, is enrolling record numbers of out-of-state and international students, who pay almost twice that of in-state residents. Among those being squeezed out: high-achieving Asian-Americans, many of them children of immigrants, who for decades flocked to the state’s elite public colleges to move up the economic ladder.
In 2009, University of California administrators told the San Diego campus to reduce its number of in-state freshmen by 500 to about 3,400 and fill the spots with out-of-state and international students, said Mae Brown, the school’s admissions director. California residents pay $13,234 in annual tuition while nonresidents pay $22,878.
12-Fold Surge
As a result, almost 200 freshmen from China enrolled in 2011, up from 16 in 2009, a 12-fold increase. At the same time, the number of Asian-American Californians enrolled fell 29 percent to 1,230, from 1,723 in 2009. The 2009 figure is from the UC system’s office because San Diego didn’t have it available.
While the San Diego campus is accepting more Chinese students, the decline in Asian-American enrollment may be a result of the total drop in California resident admissions, and two years’ data doesn’t reflect a trend, said Christine Clark, a university spokeswoman.
“UC San Diego is committed to admitting and enrolling talented students from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds,” Clark said in an e-mailed statement.
Asian-American students fighting to distinguish themselves to college admissions officers now have to go up against Asians from overseas, said Casey Chang, a Chinese-American senior at Claremont High School in Claremont, California, east of Los Angeles. He said he has a 4.7 grade-point average and is applying to the San Diego campus for a joint undergraduate/medical-school program.
One in Five
“We’re all competing for the same goal, and the fact that they’re international makes them that much more interesting to the UCs,” Chang said.
One in five international students nationwide, or 57,000 undergraduates, came from China in 2010-11, a 43 percent increase over the previous year, according to the Institute of International Education in Washington. Colleges are more frequently tapping this pool as the surge in middle-class incomes in China coincides with steep budget cuts at U.S. state universities.
UC San Diego received $227 million from the state in the 2011-12 academic year, down from $301 million in 2007-08. Funding for the nine other University of California campuses dropped as well.
Helping to Pay
“The state is not a fully reliable partner in funding anymore,” said Scott Waugh, the provost at UCLA, where foreign enrollments have quadrupled since 2009. “If we’re going to give California residents the education they want and deserve, we need non-Californians to help pay for it.”
UCLA is increasing the size of its student body to accommodate more nonresidents, said Janina Montero, vice chancellor for student affairs.
Asian-Americans already are being displaced by University of California admissions policies that give preference to first- generation college students. The guidelines benefit low-income Latino and African-American students over middle-income Asian- Americans whose parents went to college, said Mitchell Chang, an education professor at UCLA.
“When you add this new trend on top of the political shifts, you might have a double whammy that tends to disadvantage Asian-Americans,” Chang said.
California students and their parents, Asian-Americans and others, say they’re fighting an uphill battle to enter schools that were established to provide them with an affordable education.
‘Taken Away’
Veronica Zavala’s son Brandon is a senior at Diamond Bar High School, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. As an A student and the son of taxpayers and a state employee — Brandon’s father is a prison guard — he should be able to attend a University of California school, she said.
“There’s no reason why someone from another country should come and take my son’s spot,” Zavala said.
U.S. universities are expanding their ties to China and increasingly looking to China for financial support. At least a dozen private and public colleges are opening Chinese campuses with funding from Chinese municipalities. A Chinese government affiliate has spent millions of dollars to establish Confucius Institutes for Chinese language and culture at 75 American schools, including UCLA.
UCLA has received Chinese funding for its Confucius Institute since 2007, with the most recent grant of $320,000 for teacher training in Mandarin and for studying ways to integrate Eastern and Western medicine, according to the university.
The University of California’s state appropriation has been cut 28 percent — almost $1 billion — since 2007-08 and faces a midyear $100 million cut this year.
Enrollment of Chinese and other international students are surging at state universities across the U.S.
Washington, Michigan State
At the University of Washington in Seattle, the number of in-state students in the freshman class declined by almost 500 between 2007 and 2011, even as the school enrolled more total students. The percentage of out-of-state students surged to 34 percent of the freshman class from 19 percent over that same period, with more than half from overseas. Almost two-thirds of the international students are from China.
Washington residents pay $10,346 in tuition and fees while nonresidents pay $27,830.
At Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Chinese undergraduate enrollment soared 23-fold in five years, to 2,217 in 2011 from 94 in 2006. Total international enrollment almost tripled to 3,402 in the period and now makes up close to 10 percent of undergraduates.
Office in Beijing
Michigan State opened an office in Beijing in 2008 to improve recruiting efforts, said James Cotter, director of admissions. Student applications are vetted by the staff in Beijing, he said.
The increase in nonresident students comes as Michigan’s high-school population is expected to decrease 20 percent over two decades, so local students aren’t being squeezed out, Cotter said.
Park, who graduated from Beverly Hills High School in June, thinks he would have been admitted to UC San Diego if it hadn’t reduced the number of slots for California residents. His combined math and verbal SAT score of 1340 exceeded the university’s average of 1233. His older brother was admitted to the school in 2009 with lower test scores, Park said.
“It’s kind of unfair,” said Park, who played volleyball and basketball in high school and took eight advanced placement classes, all with the aim of getting into an elite university. While he dreamed of attending Berkeley, his guidance counselor told him that San Diego was a realistic goal.
“I feel I met the university’s standards to get in,” he said. “I expected to get in.”
’13th Grade’
Instead, Park is taking classes at Santa Monica College, a two-year community college he once mocked as “13th grade.” He’s reapplying to the UCs this fall as a transfer student.
While it cut in-state freshman enrollment, UC San Diego increased the number of resident transfer students from California community colleges to 2,340 from 1,624 over two years, said Brown, the admissions director.
“The University of California has been the major vehicle for social mobility for the Asian-American community,” said Don Nakanishi, a retired UCLA professor who ran the school’s Asian American Studies Center for 20 years. The campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego are among the most selective public colleges in the U.S., admitting less than 40 percent of all undergraduate applicants.
About 43 percent of all undergraduates at Berkeley are Asian-American, compared with 16 percent at Harvard University and Yale University and 23 percent at Stanford University.
Nonresident Plans
To boost revenue, the University of California system plans to increase nonresident enrollment to 10 percent from 6.6 percent of all undergraduates, said Nathan Brostrom, the University of California’s executive vice president of business operations. Much of that increase will be at Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego, the campuses with the greatest appeal to out-of-state students, he said.
Berkeley enrolled 96 Chinese students in 2010, up from 55 in 2009. In the same period, the number of Asian-American freshmen who enrolled at Berkeley dropped 22 percent to 1,116, the lowest since 1995. Enrollment of white students at Berkeley also fell 29 percent as total admissions of state residents dropped.
While California and other state universities admit foreign students for legitimate educational reasons, some may be abdicating their responsibility to educate their own citizens, said Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute.
‘Revenue Chasing’
“At what point is this not diversifying the student population and just becomes another form of revenue chasing?” said Callan, who is based in San Jose, California. “We’re in some danger of simply taking whoever can pay the most.”
At UC San Diego, Chinese students say they are viewed skeptically by other students who think they’re only there because they pay more, said Zijin Xiao, 20, a freshman from Shenzhen, China.
“They think ‘The foreign students, they admit some who are not fit, maybe they’re not good at academics,'” Xiao said. “It makes me upset.”
She and fellow Chinese students say they are comforted by the large number of their compatriots at the university, which makes the transition to a new country easier.
Xiaojing Pang, 22, a communications major from Guangdong province who goes by Celia, said the cost of San Diego’s tuition is a burden, though she understands the tradeoff.
“I need the education and they need my money,” she said.