The flava:"Financially- and academically-capable international students are essential to the health of US higher education. And we have room for many, many more. International enrollments comprise less than 5% of all students in the US, compared to 25% in Australia where the government has promoted foreign student enrollment to boost the economy."
The link to the article:
Renewable energy is another example of a profitable, job-generating enterprise in similar danger, just because a buffoon with bad hair has decided he doesn't like it.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. What is genuinely more useful to the 18-year-old whose father, grandfather, etc. were coal miners? Training him (or her) to mine coal, or to build and maintain some form of renewable-energy system? Even if coal mining weren't an especially dangerous profession, the answer seems pretty obvious to me. The latter has the possibility of leading to a working-life-long career (with appropriate retraining along the way); the former almost certainly doesn't.
DeleteAnd if the pay were decent, and training and jobs available in their present communities, I suspect a lot of people who already know how to mine coal would be willing to switch. It's not like they don't know the long-term costs of coal mining to coal miners, let alone everybody else.
Interesting article; thanks, Zooze! I know my own school is increasingly dependent on tuition revenue from international students, and I have my concerns about that (while most of them are basically "academically-capable," they do need a bit more support than the average American student, and also, because they don't work for pay, have more time to spend on their studies, and to ask for help, all of which can strain a system that has accommodated to American students who spend less time than they probably should on campus/on their schoolwork, and since one of their main purposes, in the university's eyes, is to provide revenue, it takes some persuasion to get some of the money they're bringing in channeled into supporting them). But their presence certainly *can* be a plus for all concerned, and I'm intrigued to learn which features of the U.S. system might be especially attractive to such students (and it's nice to think we might be providing a bit more breathing/thinking room to students for whom systems that require one to choose a major at 18 or even 16 don't work very well -- or at least students who fit that description *and* whose families can afford overseas tuition.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I also like the mama-and-foal image. Very sweet.