And another thing more generally about foreign students. My son is in a graduate program w/substantial numbers of foreign students, mostly Chinese. His program went out of their way to also recruit American students too. However, large % of foreigners whether in academic programs or the workplace (think tech) have displacement effects that push smart American students away. The fact that they pay "full fare" tuition may have some benefits, but also inculcates in them a 'tude, which we also see WRT immigration. Like w/immigration generally, we need less of this.
Here in Canada the source of the problem was circa 2010 when Conservative PM Harper basically took the Romney approach of easily granting permanent residence to graduates of Canadian colleges and universities. This created a gold rush of mostly Indian students who would sign up for pretty much any program anywhere, including the Canadian equivalent of junior colleges in the middle of nowhere. Some rural colleges even set up satellite campuses in the big city run by private contractors.
The results were countless bogus foreign students who barely put up the pretence of studying and mostly focused on driving Ubers and so on. They flooded the unskilled job market and crammed into rental housing, driving up rent. A total disaster. One is currently going on trial for murdering a couple in a home invasion after less than a month in Canada. Now they are closing the barn door by taking away the promise of permanent residence after graduating. We are getting protests from these fake students, collapse in enrollment and lots of bogus refugee claims.
Lessons for the US: 1. Don’t trust colleges to uphold standards when money is involved. 2. There are a limited number of high quality students who can pay. After that point you just get immigration rackets and some real dregs, mostly from India and Pakistan. I don’t think this promise of vast numbers of Chinese students is realistic.
Yes yes yes ! This ! As a Canadian trying to swim above the reek of false Indian “students” who simply come to Mohawk college, canadore, or any place for the “education” (residence) this is a great comment.
"Who is allowed to study in [y]our country ... is inherently a matter of public policy. Yes, but of what is the decision to go to your country to study inherently a matter?
I have no strong views, but I thank you for insight into something I've not especially dwelt on. I recently read a review in The Nation, a major Kenyan newspaper, which criticises the "consultancy research" of foreign-based scholars whose colonialist viewpoints get repeated parrot-fashion in Africa "based on books authored elsewhere with little relevance to local realities ... Consultancy research is generally pre-determined. It cannot pretend to change local circumstances because, if it resolves the problem, it will erase the reason for its existence."
What Wavinya Makai is saying there about scholarship in Kenya is that Africa suffers under a colonial programme that did not cease upon the grant of independence. The solutions to Africa's problems are regurgitated from the colonial playbook.
I just wondered whether this might have a bearing on why America is keen to host Chinese scholars.
First of all the best Chinese students go to school in China where the best universities are. Our best Universities are second choice for the children of affluent Chinese parents, third choice is a nice State school somewhere that has decent academics.
English ability is measured with a TOEFL test before students are accepted to a university. After coming to the US most can read and listen to lectures at university level or they wouldn't have been accepted. When I taught in China students needed a 1500 word English vocabulary to be accepted to high school. Yes, high school. Many, perhaps most, Chinese students are fluent in 2 completely different Chinese languages, Mandarin, and either the local language in Shanghai, Hong Kong, or elsewhere, English is often their third language and many go on to learn a fourth or fifth.
Chinese make great American citizens, we should hope they stay. Chinese Americans have an extremely low rate of criminality, they have high earnings, are great at business, and best of all they adapt to becoming American easily. Chinese are ideal immigrants. One started the richest company in the world, Nvidia.
We do not need low wage uneducated laborers using social services. We would be well served to accept a million Chinese students and to do everything we can to get them to stay here.
A very valid point - which I would underline as someone who attended university in Germany: the host language you need to be able to understand the verbal tuition and to read the research materials is passive. Passive knowledge is quickly obtained. It is acquiring active language ability that is slower in coming.
You cannot just talk about "language ability" without specifying whether that is writing, reading, speaking or listening. Easiest is reading, then listening, then writing, then speaking. In my experience.
Actively speaking is near impossible it seems, except by immersion. Coming here and being forced to speak. With a very large vocabulary and years of grammar it seems to come quickly, accent is often horrid forever, but altogether plenty to take active participation in group projects. Not great as TAs or Assistant profs as no one can understand them, often the case for Indians too. The Euros, especially Germans and northern Euros, for whatever reason are often much easier to understand. I think a lot of English is some sort of German. Norman Conquest for which I'm still awaiting reparations.
After the STEM degree a lot of the work is in very small groups, collaborating over short text or verbally and writing isn't as important. Before AI even very bright Asian students had a hard time writing things and would struggle for hours on things a US undergrad could crank out in a couple hours. If it's vitally important to publish they often have collaborators to clean it up without distorting meaning.
Native language ability is itself learned through immersion, and learning any foreign language requires dedication as well. For each of my four foreign languages, I know there came a point where, from one day to the next, I suddenly could do it, almost without thinking. Like riding a bike or driving a car.
A Belgian friend of mine years ago would talk English very fast, but make tons of errors. The errors became his dialect, and people learned to accept them and even expect them. He could've spoken much more accurately, but that would have been slower and people lose interest if you speak slowly. Better to speak fast and wrong than slow and accurate.
You want reparations for the Norman Conquest? That, I like.
The Channel Islands are of course closer to Normandy than to England. They were Norman before England was, and the Islanders joke about how England is their conquest, whereas England maintains them as Crown Dependencies: you think you own us? We own you.
Now, there are enough trust funds in Jersey and Guernsey to make a claim for reparations worth the bother, especially with that anecdotal admission of guilt. However, it’s the “Crown Dependency” thing that would probably scupper any attempt to enforce the claim …
No, we do not need 600,000 Chinese students. I attended a Big Ten engineering school back in the early 80's before the US opened up to China. There were plenty of foreign students even then. We suffered with TAs and graduate advisors who were often unintelligible. I was too naive and timid back then. Today admin would get an earful.
I was in a graduate program that was 80% Chinese nationals.
They put up large posters like "There is only ONE China". Basically a middle finger at the USA. Btw, the school was Princeton. And you taxpayers paid for their tution, room, food, health insurance, and cash stipends.
There is nothing wrong with universities selling a valuable service, but the main reason to admit foreign students is that it is a good way to recruit immigrants that will contribute to economic growth for citizens and earlier immigrants.
Your piece is thoughtful and well-argued, but it understates the gravest risk posed by the large-scale admission of Chinese foreign students into America’s most prestigious institutions of advanced learning and cutting-edge research. While many Chinese students are genuine net contributors to U.S.-based research efforts, we cannot ignore the reality that they are here with the approval—and, in many cases, the obligations—imposed by the Chinese Communist Party. Under Chinese law, citizens are required to cooperate with state intelligence services, including the transfer of information and technology to the state upon request.
This reality fundamentally alters the risk calculus. China is not a neutral academic partner; it is our most formidable adversary in an ongoing race for geopolitical, military, and economic dominance. Academic openness—once treated as collective good—has become a strategic vulnerability when it enables the systematic extraction of sensitive research, intellectual property, and in particular, dual-use technologies.
The United States cannot afford to underestimate the threat posed by China to U.S. national security. Failing to account for this risk is not generosity or confidence—it is strategic negligence.
I have attempted to address this concern directly in my essay published on Medium.
Having been on the BOT of a liberal arts college in Southern California there's immense pressure to provide funding for those who can only go so far with loans as tuition keeps increasing. Much of how this is made up is admitting Chinese students (and a mix of foreign students who can afford the steep tuition (Nigerian, Indian). It's an important model which arguably can allow American students of lesser means to attend and graduate. It's called foreign subsidisation. Quite simple.
“Most parents still want their children to spend college making American friends and contacts, not struggling through group projects with people who barely speak English.” Really? That really says a lot about you. I mentor kids all over the country and the vast majority are really excited about the kids they’ve met from overseas. They travel with them, learn from them. Get a passport!
Why are so many of the pieces on this Substack based upon anecdotal, first-person accounts? I was looking forward to a thorough exploration of the issue.
I think the author complicated the story of all foreign students with the question about Chinese students. It seems like the answer is no but not really proven other than “China is enemy”
While I think there are some points that have merit here, I am not comfortable with the narrative of "do we need" and "America’s international student programs." At the end of the day, it is for the particular university to decide. Let Georgetown and Boston College discern based on their Jesuit values, let Harvard and MIT decide if they are a world wide institution or a New England institution or whatever.
Consider the possiblity that among these hundreds of thousands of Chinese Students are thousands that were born to Chinese mothers sent to the US by the CCR to deliver a chilld that gained American Birthright Citizenship. Returned after birth to China they are educated to hate America and return here as students and vote for our downfall by electing Progressive/Socialists. They are then the "Enemy Within" that Cicero warned us about 2000 years ago that led to the fall of the Roman Empire.
And another thing more generally about foreign students. My son is in a graduate program w/substantial numbers of foreign students, mostly Chinese. His program went out of their way to also recruit American students too. However, large % of foreigners whether in academic programs or the workplace (think tech) have displacement effects that push smart American students away. The fact that they pay "full fare" tuition may have some benefits, but also inculcates in them a 'tude, which we also see WRT immigration. Like w/immigration generally, we need less of this.
But with luck, many of those foreign students will become Americans.
Are you kidding?
??? No. Lots of peole who come to study, if allowed, stay and eventually become citizens.
Here in Canada the source of the problem was circa 2010 when Conservative PM Harper basically took the Romney approach of easily granting permanent residence to graduates of Canadian colleges and universities. This created a gold rush of mostly Indian students who would sign up for pretty much any program anywhere, including the Canadian equivalent of junior colleges in the middle of nowhere. Some rural colleges even set up satellite campuses in the big city run by private contractors.
The results were countless bogus foreign students who barely put up the pretence of studying and mostly focused on driving Ubers and so on. They flooded the unskilled job market and crammed into rental housing, driving up rent. A total disaster. One is currently going on trial for murdering a couple in a home invasion after less than a month in Canada. Now they are closing the barn door by taking away the promise of permanent residence after graduating. We are getting protests from these fake students, collapse in enrollment and lots of bogus refugee claims.
Lessons for the US: 1. Don’t trust colleges to uphold standards when money is involved. 2. There are a limited number of high quality students who can pay. After that point you just get immigration rackets and some real dregs, mostly from India and Pakistan. I don’t think this promise of vast numbers of Chinese students is realistic.
Yes yes yes ! This ! As a Canadian trying to swim above the reek of false Indian “students” who simply come to Mohawk college, canadore, or any place for the “education” (residence) this is a great comment.
"Who is allowed to study in [y]our country ... is inherently a matter of public policy. Yes, but of what is the decision to go to your country to study inherently a matter?
I have no strong views, but I thank you for insight into something I've not especially dwelt on. I recently read a review in The Nation, a major Kenyan newspaper, which criticises the "consultancy research" of foreign-based scholars whose colonialist viewpoints get repeated parrot-fashion in Africa "based on books authored elsewhere with little relevance to local realities ... Consultancy research is generally pre-determined. It cannot pretend to change local circumstances because, if it resolves the problem, it will erase the reason for its existence."
What Wavinya Makai is saying there about scholarship in Kenya is that Africa suffers under a colonial programme that did not cease upon the grant of independence. The solutions to Africa's problems are regurgitated from the colonial playbook.
I just wondered whether this might have a bearing on why America is keen to host Chinese scholars.
First of all the best Chinese students go to school in China where the best universities are. Our best Universities are second choice for the children of affluent Chinese parents, third choice is a nice State school somewhere that has decent academics.
English ability is measured with a TOEFL test before students are accepted to a university. After coming to the US most can read and listen to lectures at university level or they wouldn't have been accepted. When I taught in China students needed a 1500 word English vocabulary to be accepted to high school. Yes, high school. Many, perhaps most, Chinese students are fluent in 2 completely different Chinese languages, Mandarin, and either the local language in Shanghai, Hong Kong, or elsewhere, English is often their third language and many go on to learn a fourth or fifth.
Chinese make great American citizens, we should hope they stay. Chinese Americans have an extremely low rate of criminality, they have high earnings, are great at business, and best of all they adapt to becoming American easily. Chinese are ideal immigrants. One started the richest company in the world, Nvidia.
We do not need low wage uneducated laborers using social services. We would be well served to accept a million Chinese students and to do everything we can to get them to stay here.
A very valid point - which I would underline as someone who attended university in Germany: the host language you need to be able to understand the verbal tuition and to read the research materials is passive. Passive knowledge is quickly obtained. It is acquiring active language ability that is slower in coming.
You cannot just talk about "language ability" without specifying whether that is writing, reading, speaking or listening. Easiest is reading, then listening, then writing, then speaking. In my experience.
Actively speaking is near impossible it seems, except by immersion. Coming here and being forced to speak. With a very large vocabulary and years of grammar it seems to come quickly, accent is often horrid forever, but altogether plenty to take active participation in group projects. Not great as TAs or Assistant profs as no one can understand them, often the case for Indians too. The Euros, especially Germans and northern Euros, for whatever reason are often much easier to understand. I think a lot of English is some sort of German. Norman Conquest for which I'm still awaiting reparations.
After the STEM degree a lot of the work is in very small groups, collaborating over short text or verbally and writing isn't as important. Before AI even very bright Asian students had a hard time writing things and would struggle for hours on things a US undergrad could crank out in a couple hours. If it's vitally important to publish they often have collaborators to clean it up without distorting meaning.
Native language ability is itself learned through immersion, and learning any foreign language requires dedication as well. For each of my four foreign languages, I know there came a point where, from one day to the next, I suddenly could do it, almost without thinking. Like riding a bike or driving a car.
A Belgian friend of mine years ago would talk English very fast, but make tons of errors. The errors became his dialect, and people learned to accept them and even expect them. He could've spoken much more accurately, but that would have been slower and people lose interest if you speak slowly. Better to speak fast and wrong than slow and accurate.
I wrote about "fluency" here - it is something that you can claim, and even possess. But I defy you to define it: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/what-is-fluency
Great essay, and true.
You want reparations for the Norman Conquest? That, I like.
The Channel Islands are of course closer to Normandy than to England. They were Norman before England was, and the Islanders joke about how England is their conquest, whereas England maintains them as Crown Dependencies: you think you own us? We own you.
Now, there are enough trust funds in Jersey and Guernsey to make a claim for reparations worth the bother, especially with that anecdotal admission of guilt. However, it’s the “Crown Dependency” thing that would probably scupper any attempt to enforce the claim …
No, we do not need 600,000 Chinese students. I attended a Big Ten engineering school back in the early 80's before the US opened up to China. There were plenty of foreign students even then. We suffered with TAs and graduate advisors who were often unintelligible. I was too naive and timid back then. Today admin would get an earful.
Who is "we"? The We of the colleges that want (need?) the money? Or the We of the USA?
I was in a graduate program that was 80% Chinese nationals.
They put up large posters like "There is only ONE China". Basically a middle finger at the USA. Btw, the school was Princeton. And you taxpayers paid for their tution, room, food, health insurance, and cash stipends.
Why do we do this?
There is nothing wrong with universities selling a valuable service, but the main reason to admit foreign students is that it is a good way to recruit immigrants that will contribute to economic growth for citizens and earlier immigrants.
Your piece is thoughtful and well-argued, but it understates the gravest risk posed by the large-scale admission of Chinese foreign students into America’s most prestigious institutions of advanced learning and cutting-edge research. While many Chinese students are genuine net contributors to U.S.-based research efforts, we cannot ignore the reality that they are here with the approval—and, in many cases, the obligations—imposed by the Chinese Communist Party. Under Chinese law, citizens are required to cooperate with state intelligence services, including the transfer of information and technology to the state upon request.
This reality fundamentally alters the risk calculus. China is not a neutral academic partner; it is our most formidable adversary in an ongoing race for geopolitical, military, and economic dominance. Academic openness—once treated as collective good—has become a strategic vulnerability when it enables the systematic extraction of sensitive research, intellectual property, and in particular, dual-use technologies.
The United States cannot afford to underestimate the threat posed by China to U.S. national security. Failing to account for this risk is not generosity or confidence—it is strategic negligence.
I have attempted to address this concern directly in my essay published on Medium.
https://medium.com/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-civic-virtue-and-the/chinas-hypersonic-breakthrough-was-enabled-by-america-s-own-institutions-d351e76d89d8?sk=afb6526e9ba5b52e378439459fab65c1
I would welcome your review and any comments you may have.
Having been on the BOT of a liberal arts college in Southern California there's immense pressure to provide funding for those who can only go so far with loans as tuition keeps increasing. Much of how this is made up is admitting Chinese students (and a mix of foreign students who can afford the steep tuition (Nigerian, Indian). It's an important model which arguably can allow American students of lesser means to attend and graduate. It's called foreign subsidisation. Quite simple.
“Most parents still want their children to spend college making American friends and contacts, not struggling through group projects with people who barely speak English.” Really? That really says a lot about you. I mentor kids all over the country and the vast majority are really excited about the kids they’ve met from overseas. They travel with them, learn from them. Get a passport!
Why are so many of the pieces on this Substack based upon anecdotal, first-person accounts? I was looking forward to a thorough exploration of the issue.
Blogs just happen to be anecdotal, first-person accounts of issues, unfortunately. Or fortunately, as the case may be. I like them.
Not true. Commonplace bills itself as a magazine, which to my thinking means journalism with a certain level of depth and exploration.
Well, according to you, this one is.
I think the author complicated the story of all foreign students with the question about Chinese students. It seems like the answer is no but not really proven other than “China is enemy”
What an excellent article on such an important matter.
While I think there are some points that have merit here, I am not comfortable with the narrative of "do we need" and "America’s international student programs." At the end of the day, it is for the particular university to decide. Let Georgetown and Boston College discern based on their Jesuit values, let Harvard and MIT decide if they are a world wide institution or a New England institution or whatever.
Consider the possiblity that among these hundreds of thousands of Chinese Students are thousands that were born to Chinese mothers sent to the US by the CCR to deliver a chilld that gained American Birthright Citizenship. Returned after birth to China they are educated to hate America and return here as students and vote for our downfall by electing Progressive/Socialists. They are then the "Enemy Within" that Cicero warned us about 2000 years ago that led to the fall of the Roman Empire.
The university = The New Religion (religion of nihilism)