Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ernie.Berkeley.EDU!tedrick
From: tedrick@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Tedrick)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: "Shortage" of American Grad Students
Message-ID: <29168@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 14 May 89 00:03:43 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 71

One of the latest schemes for extracting more money from
the government by public universities is the "shortage of
American grad students" scam.

The claim is that by diverting more money from tax payers
to state supported institutions this problem will somehow
be solved.

Even statists can't escape economic law. So let's analyze
the situation.

First, there is no shortage of applicants for admission to
grad school, in fact there is a surplus. Since public
universities are directly financed by the state to a large
degree, the costs to the university of educating the student
are not fully reflected in the tuition and fees the student
must pay for his education. In such circumstances, it would
be surprising if there weren't a surplus of applicants.

Since market forces don't keep the quantity of students desiring
to get into grad school in balance with the space available,
various non-economic schemes have evolved for eliminating
applicants, such as test scores, academic history, racial
quotas, and so on.

Now enter foreign students into the equation. Americans are
outnumbered by roughly 20 to 1 in population when compared
to the rest of the world. Since we allow foreign students
to come to American universities, if foreign students were
given a subsidy to come here it would be highly surprising
if the foreign students weren't able to score higher than the
American students on admissions tests. In fact, that is what
happens; foreign students pay higher fees than American students,
but not the full costs of their education. Since American 
universities are of higher quality on average than the norm,
worldwide, foreign students have a strong incentive to come
here to study. 

This is not a criticism of foreign students, certainly they ought
to act in their own best interests. It is a criticism of using
tax payers money to subsidize American institutions, allowing
them to escape the forces of economic competition. Certainly
the foreign students here are better on average than the
American students. When you are picking the cream of the crop
from a worldwide population of 6 billion (or whatever) to
compete with the cream of the crop from a population of
300 million (or whatever) it would be very strange if the
smaller group could compete on even terms.

So what is the way out? End direct subsidies of American
public schools. Since education is a public good, and students
have limited financial resources, you can retain the benefits
of education by indirect financing through tuition tax credits
for education, and education vouchers, allowing students to
choose for themselves which schools best serve their educational
needs. By allowing market competition to come into play, public
costs of supporting education will be minimized. Students will
no longer have to put up with an abusive educational aristocracy
that treats students like inferiors, while in fact this aristocracy
feeds itself on the tax money of these same students and their
parents. When these aristocrats have to earn their money by
serving the students, you can bet they will change their tune.

What is likely to happen? The self-interested class of state
financed educators and bureaucrats will continue the process 
of myth-making and obfuscation, designed to perpetuate their 
state subsidy. Endless programs for educational reform will 
be introduced, none of which will work as long as economic law 
is ignored. The tax payers will continue to support a class
of academic parasites that pretends to be a noble elite serving
lofty ends, while sucking the life-blood out of the tax payers.