The disappearing American grad student

maybe all the Americans are in DL grad programs?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american-graduate-student-stem.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Feducation-edlife

 

It is about money. Rich foreign students.

 

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/02/college-consultant-charges-15-million-to-get-child-admitted-to-an-ivy-league-college.html

 

Many are the children of despots, and currupts families from third world dictatorships and communist countries who are finding legal ways to launder money in the USA and other first world countries. Everyone knows this.

 

Oh really? How many? If it's such common knowledge then I'm sure you can provide some citations to support your claim.

 

Why will academics try to bite the hands that keep them living the good life? The vast majority of those foreign students are not from the poor.

 

Not proof, but I was surprised to find a news story on it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/top-private-schools-unwittingly-accepting-laundered-money-wealthy-foreign-criminals-moldovan-police-a7640811.html

It is like sex tourism in the Caribbean. It is there in full view but it is not news.

 

Not just foreigners. Meyer Lansky's son, for instance, graduated from West Point.

 

A few people are writing about dictators in the classroom but not from academics. Here a a few articles.

https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/01/17/dictators-in-the-classrooms/



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8929365/Gaddafis-son-paid-LSE-tutor-4000-per-month-for-help-with-his-homework.html

 

International students in US would naturally come disproportionally from their country's elites, including despots and sub-despot officials. However, I highly doubt many of these study in STEM graduate programs; these spaces are mostly funded and used to supply the departments with research and teaching assistants. I knew a ton of fellow foreign grad students; I didn't know any of them to be a child of a "despot".
These programs are losing American grad students because, even fully funded, they are not the greatest value propositions. These are the programs taking what, 7 years? on average, to prepare one for the extremely saturated faculty job market. Graduates toil for years in postdoc and/or adjunct posts before they get a TT position (or give up). American student would much rather attend a medical school, or get into engineering, often with just Bachelor's.

 

Many of the children want to do something other than their parents, like managing the wealth and going straight legally. Crime is a dirty business. Many of the parents want their children to start a new life also. Do you ever wonder how children of bureaucratic can afford this expensive education in the West? I am also a foreigner, only a very tiny few can afford to send their children internationally based on their government salary. That is why I am opposed to AACSB going into to third work countries.

 

My sister and I both went to study in US on full support (athletic and TA, respectively). Our parents could hardly afford a plane ticket at the time; in fact I was the highest earner, as a programmer.
On the other hand, elite kids studying abroad are common (NOT studying abroad would be a shocking exception); commonly, they go to private high schools, undergrad, or business or law schools.

 

Here is an interesting story about foreign money and western education.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/9050447/Mystery-of-Cambridge-Universitys-3.7-million-Chinese-benefactors.html
When I made my initial comment, I truly didn’t realized the magnitude of the problem.
Cambridge and other British universities have received major donations from other autocracies in recent years. Saudi Arabia gave Cambridge and Edinburgh £8 million each in 2008 to establish centres of Islamic studies. Iran donated £10,000 to the University of Durham two years ago which the head of the university's Centre for Iranian Studies admitted "comes with strings attached

 

And how would you define this "problem?"

 

One need only to recall LSE having to return a million dollar donation from Gaddafi.

Nevertheless, this practice has nothing to do with STEM graduate students in US, who are predominantly Asian and almost all on financial support from universities as TA/RA cheap labour.

 

There are numerous foreign students who are struggling. Many of them are on scholarships, or their parents have sacrificed to give them an education. Many of the good scholarships are normally awarded to children from elite families.

Anyway,western universities do not need to bring foreign students on assistance for cheap TAs. Local students can do that. Foreign students are for revenue generation.

 

It may be one of the few ways left to laundry money.

 

You apparently knowa lot more about this stuff than me so maybe you can help me understand how donating money to a college = money laundering.

 

Which STEM department did you TA for?

 

Didn’t TA, not smart enough. But I did other things on campus to get by.
About twice as many Asian as white, black, or Hispanic students enter STEM fields. However, they are not necessary visa students. The bulk of the visa students is about making money.