Some 400 college and university presidents belong to the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration – see here – which advocates for ever more international students.
Follow the money, and you discover the huge advantage of recruiting foreign students, who are never allowed to receive school or federal aid, and so they always pay full tuition.
Take the University of California (UC) for example:
Foreign nationals pay UC about $70,000 a year. The same school charges $27,000 to an average American student (family earns $100,000, owns their home and has $100,000 assets). That’s a total subsidy of $43,000 from the school and federal programs.
The international student’s tuition and room and board is 2.5 times an American’s, so colleges and universities vie for foreigners to increase institutional revenue.
Money, not merit, may often be making admission decisions.
All together, post-secondary institutions receive $45 billion in extra tuition fees each year by refusing American students and giving openings to international applicants.
This is not a small problem.
In 2019, the total number of international students enrolled in US colleges was 1,095,299, including:
- 431,930 undergraduate students
- 377,943 graduate students
- 62,341 non-degree students
- 223,085 Optional Practical Training (OPT) workers
The most recent statistics available show foreign students – who made up 12% of the total student population – contributed nearly 30% of all tuition revenue at public universities.
The top five US schools displacing American students with foreign students in 2019 were:
- New York University -19,605 foreign
- University of Southern California Los Angeles -16,340 foreign
- Northeastern University – 16,075 foreign
- Columbia University – 15,897 foreign
- University of Illinois/Urbana – 13,497 foreign
If you are concerned with what happens to these millions of international students after graduation, don’t worry – most of them have it made. The information industry is where many are headed, and big tech companies employ hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, who replace Americans under various government programs.
All told, Information Technology (IT) employment in the United States reached an estimated 12.1 million workers last year, growing by more than 307,000 in just 12 months.
A California lawyer, Randy Berholtz, told the San Diego Union-Tribune his experience with preferences for foreign, versus American students:
First, we are taking needed positions away from Californian and American students. My daughter’s guidance counselor at a San Diego high school told her students not to apply to UC San Diego, because she felt that even though they had top grades, they wouldn’t be accepted there, owing to its difficult admission policies.
The situation is compounded by the huge number (370,000) of international students from Communist China, Berholtz explained
Second, we are educating students from a fairly hostile communist country with which we are embroiled in a trade war, and we may eventually be involved in a major military conflict at some point.
In addition, there are many cases of China’s students, researchers and the like, who have been linked to an organized effort by that country to spy on us, and steal important inventions and other trade-secret information from American entities.
He also said that residents of other USA states are not being actively recruited, while schools seek applicants from China and elsewhere.
Third, it appears that UC admissions officers have decreased their efforts to attract other American students from outside of California in favor of students from China.
I am originally from the coal regions of Pennsylvania, where poverty rates are in the 50% to 60% range. Students from my hometown and region would love to attend UC San Diego, as well as students right here in outlying cities and communities in San Diego and the rest of California.
On a personal note, he added:
One of my daughters had very high grades from a well-known high school in San Diego, and did not get into UC San Diego. She instead was admitted to the Claremont Colleges.
My Shanghai colleague’s daughter, however, was admitted as an undergraduate into UC San Diego, which just isn’t right.
With the current Covid-19 scare, we are losing millions of jobs, many forever. It is time to prioritize Americans for remaining job openings. Those in the higher education business must help America’s “best and brightest”, and let other countries invest the time and money to take care of their own.
President Donald Trump’s recent proclamation to limit workers and students from China does not apply to undergraduate students and also allows in all graduate students, except those tied to the Chinese military or government. The move was nothing but a token effort – political optics at a time when we need insightful vision.
Next Tuesday: How the “Alliance” joined with FWD.US to put Americans last!
You can fool nearly all the people... 