First Trump came for Harvard, now he’s after the rest

[Cafeconleche]

Trump has just ordered all US embassies worldwide to stop scheduling visa interviews for foreign students with immediate effect. WTF???

@scissy you are beautifully making the important point that immigrants are generally a net asset, socially and economically.

Nowhere makes this point better than California, which is now larger than all but the economies of the USA as a whole, China and Germany, and where the contributions of immigrants are truly welcomed.

California overtook the UK several years ago.

Trump is on a mission to destroy America. Punish it hard for failing to elect him in 2020.

But the MAGA loons will continue to follow him as all they care about is "owning the libtards and elites".🙄

Starmer wants to tax universities for recruiting international students as if they were bad for us, like carbon or sugar. He’s totally capitulated to the Reform voter base.

Yup @GCAcademic . So completely short-sighted it's infuriating. But one sees it in this HE forum on MN - the sheer ignorant prejudice against international students:

They're taking my DC's university place
They don't mix
They work too hard and don't socialise, so I don't want my PFB to have to share a flat in halls with them
They don't speak proper English so it disadvantages my PFB

and so on and on.

I love my international students. They work really hard, and they treasure what they learn with us. They regularly articulate how much they appreciate the opportunities the UK HE system gives them to study in ways not available in their home countries. They bring a much needed international perspective and diversity to our student body.

And they subsidise all the domestic students (well, in England, anyway).

I thought Canada had also dramatically cut down on international student numbers. Obviously some will still get in so great your son has but much reduced numbers?

though I suspect the USA and Canada have different reasons. I think some Canadian universities are even introducing an out of province quota???

This is what dd and her Canadian bf are telling me anyway. She got rejected from Carlton so might be a bit sore.

I'm not going to say that they won't, but just say to every sane person here - vote strategically so they cannot. And vote!

Although I don't vote Conservative, one of them was on Radio 4 the other day saying what I feel about Farage - he makes up promises that are what people want to hear but that have no real substance in terms of where the money to fund them is going to come from. He'll probably announce some tree-burning scheme to boost GDP...

Any influencers able to make a 'pro-Reform' image of a voting slip go viral that's had a tick put in Reform and crosses in all the others? Might slip through the net...

Don't forget that California has the highest costs of living and one of the most underfunded public education systems in the whole US. Public schooling is an absolute shit-show, sadly.

Agreed this is sadly true and not making excuses for that. Prop 13 which capped property tax increases several decades ago has much to answer for.

But California also has a good number of top (state) high schools and an excellent community college system, to say nothing of the wonderful public universities.

I think they are on the horns of a dilemma. Attempts to roll back or otherwise compensate for Prop 13 have never gained momentum.

Yes, UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego, Irvine and Davis are all considered excellent, the rest in decending order from Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz then Riverside and the last one, Merced. The Cal States have a lot of colleges but really only 1 or 2 of note (San Luis Obispo mainly).

The community college system offers an opportunity to study / transfer to the UCs but really only 19% of the CC students manage this successfully within 4 yrs. There's a very high drop out / fail rate.

Many Americans think that international students are taking up seats at desirable universities like Harvard, that rightly belong to their kids.
Similarly, some white Americans think that non-white Americans are taking up the places that rightly belong to their kids (white privilege).
Trump targets international students this time, and next time it is the non-white American students. Daniel 5:5

Trump's kid was rejected from Harvard, although one of Obama's kids amongst others got a place. That is thought to be why he is going after Harvard.

I loathe Trump and oppose this damaging and cruel policy.

And yet, I find it hard to summon much sympathy for these institutions.

When they thought their politics was ascendant elite US colleges ran ideological litmus tests for employment, enforced partisan speech codes, and practiced illegal race-based admissions. They’ve increasingly framed their role as political, eschewing institutional neutrality.

They’re now having politics done to them, and it’s suddenly illegitimate?

(Yes it is illegitimate, and was on both sides)

My newsfeed on Facebook now contains an offer from a Chinese university for anyone currently at Harvard and needing to go elsewhere.

Other countries will benefit from Trumps stupidity. It will backfire.

OPs son, as long as they are enrolled at a legitimate public university doing a proper degree, is fine and will have absolutely no problems with a visa etc.

The issue is that Canada experienced a dramatic increase (by an order of magnitude) in the number of international "students" we admitted for a few years. These "students" suddenly appeared as a result of the unintended consequences of a couple of unrelated changes in immigration regulations, and COVID issues. Large numbers came on student visas but never intended to study and simply got jobs and planned to stay until they qualified for permanent residency. They were aided by unscrupulous agents overseas who "helped" with the paperwork in return for a large proportion of the money that these immigrants would earn and the setting up of "private colleges" where the visas were issued through for a "tuition fee" but were often just a rented room in a suburban strip mall never visited by their "students".
The provincial quota system we currently have in place limits student visas to students of legitimate universities and colleges and makes the educational institutions police the system to ensure that the students have housing and student services and actually attend and... learn things.

The out-of-province quota is unrelated. The Francophone government of Quebec was trying to limit the number of non-francophone (french-speaking) Canadian students that are coming to the province as they believe that they "dilute" the Quebecoise culture. They are currently backing away from that position while trying not to lose face.

Your dd's rejection from Carlton is unrelated - they have PALs to distribute.
I am surprised though as they should be really tempted to accept her if she is paying the higher international tuition fee. I haven't heard that they are over-enrolled.

I have obviously looked this up

Can't find any reasoning behind this

What's the arrangement for students going to America? Can they bring dependents? But even if they could, those dependents would have to pay for everything wouldn't they?

The students are collateral damage. The real target of this is the liberal institutions.

The Associate Degrees offered by many American CCs are valuable credentials in their own right. Coding qualifications, Associate Nursing degrees, etc - these can all lead after some experience to well paying jobs (for those who don’t know, nursing is much better paid in America than in the UK, particularly in the richer, bluer states). If you have a partner who earns similarly, you can have a middle class life, even in California.

I’ve not heard that. It’s a reciprocal thing with his (UK) uni.

Can he do this, legally?

As a different type of example, I have a schoolteacher friend in another prosperous blue state who is now Head of Dept and has a teaching orientated MA. She is on $120K, all according to the pay tables (ie state school, no personal negotiations though she has always got her merit rises)

There will not be any issue with your sons ability to study at a legitimate Canadian university.
(The Canadian government put a system in place to close a loophole in immigration regulations that was admitting individuals, mostly from rural India, to "fake colleges" who had no intention of studying)

Yes, if you manage to finish the Associate degree and actually graduate to one of those jobs.

As an aside, I was recently in hospital in Los Angeles. The top nurses, the RNs who earn the most, often live a 90 mins (each way) driving commute from work because they cannot afford local housing. Cost of living is such that you may well be earning what looks like a nice salary in comparison to the UK and yet you still have to live far from work, work long hours, commute long hours and have a higher cost of living.

The course she applied for apparantly has 725 applications for 100 places.

All of those applicants will apply for anywhere between 2 and 15 other courses too, so they would be lucky to fill all their spots. They won't know until after 2nd June how many applicants accept their offers and whether they are under- or over-enrolled.
What has your dd applied for? Their comp sci major usually fills....

Maybe the plan is to shut them all down and replace with 'Trump University'.
The fact the last one was closed down by law enforcement for massive fraud is complete fake news.

Trump University - Wikipedia