jhu72 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 09, 2021 10:17 am
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 9:16 pm
a fan wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 3:14 pm
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 2:11 pm
Maybe you could explain "give away to other countries" when these are full pay students who need to be far higher achieving than do US students to gain admission? And certainly at most of our top universities, they also need to speak and write English at a strong level as well, so are active participants with their peers in class, on research etc. Are there more such full pay students available in the US? Seems to me they subsidize the cost of educating American students.
I know you're not xenophobic, wasn't saying you are...just don't understand the "give away" aspect.
I'm saying we need some of those spots to educate our own people. 300K is a HUGE number.
To wit:
55 percent of all U.S. graduate students in mathematics, computer science and engineering are international students
That number is a big long term problem, imho, if we're trying to compete globally, UNLESS the vast majority of these students stay and work in the US as citizens.
Is that happening? I don't know, and can't find a cite for that. If these ex-foreign students are turning into US citizens and staying here? Great. No problems.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html
Let me repeat, I think you're ignoring that these are full pay students, which means that for most institutions, they're underwriting the cost for educating most of the American students.
If you've followed my other thoughts on education over the years (which I certainly don't expect you to have done), you'll recall that I feel strongly that we could and should do far more to transform our educational system, nowhere more obviously than in math and science. It's ridiculous that our system is designed to 'weed out' math and science students, 'separate the wheat from the chaff', rather than actually educating. What's the % of college freshmen intending to graduate with a math or science major degree (and that's after all the kids have been discouraged in American HS from such an objective) ? 50%? 30%?...nope, less than 10%. Less than 1 in 10 kids who actually intended to major in math or science end up doing so...Ridiculous. And it ain't because kids can't actually learn and perform at a high level...lots more on that topic...
... the woman's movement has helped with the scientific "weeding" problem, but not nearly enough and doing little if anything for males. I believe there are unrecognized differences between "natural" scientist/engineers and other students, generally unrecognized by the education profession.
If we accept that there are differences in individual's innate capabilities, and certainly such are observable physically, the question is whether such observable differences actually "make a difference" in STEM such that those who are perceived to have less "ability" are discouraged from pursuit at all. Basically, even if someone has some innate advantages in certain aspects of a STEM career, does that mean that someone with less such in that specific 'difference' can't be productive? Is it not possible that the 90% of those who had intended to major in math or science could well have been successful?
Moreover, are there other characteristics which might well outweigh the differences measured...eg what if Einstein's failure on an entrance exam had discouraged him from a career in math? Lots of students (not Einsteins!) are discouraged early on, either because of being bored or because some instance or series of instances put them behind their peers in a bulk taught classroom process, an illness, a death of family member, whatever...and from thereon, the coursework simply makes no sense given the building blocks missed...the student is perceived as slow, including their own self perception. Unless individually tutored and encouraged, they're lost.
Moreover, let's consider whether our sense of such "differences" is actually immensely biased by those doing the measuring. eg Geneva's point. Are academics really the best judges of what is necessary in industry, for instance?
About a decade ago I attended two eye opening TED talks.
One was by Freeman Hrabowski, head of UMBC, a small part of the UMD system, historically just a small, 'weak sister' to College Park, in the suburbs of Baltimore between Balt and DC. Much higher % of minority students than UMD but not an historically black institution like Morgan State. Hrabowski had been offered the top job at Harvard, but had chosen to go with UMBC, because "Harvard is like turning an aircraft carrier" and he felt he could innovate far more at UMBC. He described UMBC's philosophy, that their job was to teach, to help each student be successful, not to weed them out. He felt that every student could be successful, not just some. He talked about the the peer group project processes and industry projects that he felt were critical to bringing students into full realization of their capacities, learning from one another and learning how they could contribute in the real world and have a career. They also had/have a special scholarship for black students from the region seeking to major in STEM:
https://meyerhoff.umbc.edu; Cyber security programs, CS programs, etc.
The result? UMBC produces more minority STEM graduates who go on to MA, PHD, MD programs than any other institution in the country. Really, really low drop out rate from the STEM major chosen. Very high job placement.
They teach, not weed.
The other TED talk was by an admiral from the NAVY who talked about the dilemma the Navy had in attracting enough qualified applicants to enter their training programs to become electrical engineers on nuclear subs. Their existing force was aging out and retiring and they couldn't find enough youngsters who could pass the test for entrance. Not strong enough in math.
So, they decided to experiment with a different curriculum and training process. They took a cohort, all of whom failed the entrance exam, and trained them for 9 weeks. At the end, they out performed 15 year veterans in complex problem solving relevant to the job. Outperformed, after 9 weeks of training. And these were kids who otherwise would have been rejected as incapable. How did they do it? Team projects, individualized instruction ensuring that at each step, each individual actually learned the necessary building blocks, and using peer processes to accelerate learning versus classroom.
A bunch of takeaways.
