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From: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity
Summary: I'm sure Singapore is a nice place
Message-ID: <15759@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 13 Dec 88 04:06:04 GMT
Reply-To: bobmon@iuvax.UUCP (RAMontante)
Organization: malkaryotic
Lines: 59

I said...
>>makes a lot more sense than quotas for foreign students.  They simply
>>charge (much) higher rates for out-of-state students than for in-state
>>students.

matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes:
>
>As I said, UC does this too, and a number of other state schools that I
>am aware of do this, but it is contrary to the public interest, because
>it selects for the RICH foreign students rather than for the SMART
>foreign students.

I really don't think this is a concern.  The best (foreign) students are
also coming here, getting scholarships in their own countries (and some
financial aid here, too, in the form of teaching positions and the
like).  And even the "rich" (an extremely relative term) foreign
students are quite smart, compared to the Americans.  We shouldn't be
excluding ANY of them.  Quota systems select for one student at the
expense of another, and they select for the ones who can manipulate the
system the most skillfully.

Beating on this some more, the problem of American colleges in the past
few years has been too few applicants (especially Americans).  The "rich
foreigners" aren't taking slots away from anyone who could make any use
of them, they're just contributing to a higher-quality and more diverse
environment than the American kids are used to.  Conversely, foreigners
who've been educated in the U.S. are less likely to think of the U.S.A.
as a monolithic "Great Satan".

>Yes, part of this is cultural, but the major factor is to do well enough
>in school so as to be hired by a U.S. employer and sponsored for U.S.
>immigration.

You're agreeing with me here.  Why aren't the Americans inspired to work
as hard for that better job?  (I'm not sure they aren't; but the U.S.
notion of "hard work" at school is far different from the Japanese
notion, or the West German notion, or the Russian notion...)

>Singapore is an independent country.  [What was that you were saying about
>the quality of the schools you attended? :-) ]

Umm, heh heh heh ... Well, actually, I'd read about Singapore as a
seaport for the sailing ships of the 1800's, and never realized there
was an island-nation with the same name.  Then I spaced out about the
rejoining of HongKong (another old seaport) to China, and confused the
two....  But hey, I got the right continental shelf!  :-)

Anyway, the good school I went to taught me about Ancient Greece in the
fourth grade.  In high school one of my classmates asserted that
Columbus first touched land in Pittsburgh.  Another one had a lifelong
ambition to see Zanesville, Ohio (two counties away).  And the most
memorable moment in Civics class was when Terry stuck his pocketknife
blade in the wall socket one day (a drastic cure for boredom, but
effective).

[I may as well mention that the Mathematics Department was also the
assistant football coach and team bus driver.  We went 120 miles on a
freeway once, before Haymow finally pointed out to him that the bus'
transmission had a "High" range as well.]