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From: matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity  (was Rising cost of textbooks)
Message-ID: <18326@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 15 Dec 88 03:56:48 GMT
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Reply-To: matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
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In article <2202@garth.UUCP> smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) writes:

>UC and CSUCS are not funded by the country, they are funded by the state.
>They were created to educate Californians for work in California. Most of
>the resident students have been living with their families in the state,
>and paying taxes, for some time and they would be loth to leave on
>graduation.
>While many of nonresident students may remain in the state, there is no
>legal way to force them to remain, so it is not as sure they will stick
>around to pay taxes for the next generation.

That word "many" is a huge understatement, Steven.  You yourself work
in the Silicon Valley, where the percentage of foreign-born engineers
is SO high.  Can you honestly look around you at the and tell me
that the word "many" is not actually "the vast majority"?

I mentioned yesterday that of the countries forming the bulk of foreign
students in engineering/CS  --  Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and India  --
only ONE of them that have gone through our program here at UCD has
gone back to his/her home country.  They ALL have been sponsored for
immigration by Silicon Valley companies, and they ALL have **stayed**
in California since that time.

Actually, it's the **other** states who should worry about these people
leaving after graduation, because most of them have California as their
eventual goal.

Moreover, one could actually argue that the people you are talking about
are paying MORE taxes than "ordinary" Californians:  There tend to be 
many more of the foreign-born couples in which both spouses work, usually 
BOTH in high-paying engineering jobs.  As you may have read in the SF 
Chronicle, the median household income in the SF Bay Area is under $30K; 
I'm sure that the median for households of former foreign students in the 
Bay Area is **triple that**.  Actually, this is a **conservative** estimate;
among foreign-born couples whom I know personally, it's substantially
higher.  Look who's buying up all the $400K, $500K etc. houses in the 
South Bay and Peninsula areas.  [So they're also paying a lot more 
property tax than do "ordinary" Californians, not just more income tax.]

>Though in some cases, foreign students are sponsorred by their government
>for the specific purpose of bringing their education back home.

This is another popular myth.  Again, there are SOME cases like this,
but most foreign students in engineering/CS wouldn't want to take the
money even if it were available, because they don't want to be beholden
to the home governments  --  they want to stay in the U.S.

Of course, that's the bad part too.  It's a shame that we are abetting
a brain drain from those countries.

    Norm