Does US Owe the World an Education At Its Expense? 689
An anonymous reader writes "'Right now, there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in classrooms at our top universities,' President Obama explained to the nation Tuesday in his pitch for immigration reform. 'They are earning degrees in the fields of the future, like engineering and computer science...We are giving them the skills to figure that out, but then we are going to turn around and tell them to start the business and create those jobs in China, or India, or Mexico, or someplace else. That is not how you grow new industries in America. That is how you give new industries to our competitors. That is why we need comprehensive immigration reform." If the President truly fears that international students will use skills learned at U.S. colleges and universities to the detriment of the United States if they return home (isn't a rising tide supposed to lift all boats?) — an argument NYC Mayor Bloomberg advanced in 2011 ('we are investing millions of dollars [actually billions] to educate these students at our leading universities, and then giving the economic dividends back to our competitors – for free') — then wouldn't another option be not providing them with the skills in the first place?"
No hand out for me (Score:4, Informative)
I came to this country to attend university and nothing was handed out to me. I paid full tuition and all living expenses out of my pocket. So, I actually brought money in and helped the US economy. Not only that, but after getting a degree, I STAYED and became a heavily taxed US citizen. So, not sure what the point of the article is.
Re:We have the same... (Score:4, Informative)
Idiot.
All of the Mexicans immigrants know are hardworking and rarely take time off. If they were to adopt our values, they'd be much lazier. Statistically Mexicans work the hardest and the longest of all people.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/siesta-what-siesta-mexican-work-longest-hours-in-world/2011/04/27/AF3O0yTF_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
Idiot.
Re:We have the same... (Score:5, Informative)
That's a fairly stereotypical (mis)-characterisation of socialism. But socialism is not about spending the money of the bourgeoisie. 'Socialism' per se is about the social ownership (via government**) of the means of producing wealth, which is to say the elimination of the bourgeoisie as a class of owners. Please note, this is not an endorsement of such an arrangement, which it seems to me has not exactly proved its viability in the real world.*** Then again Dr. Marx himself stressed that only the US or maybe Britain had the wherewithal to pull socialism off and said that if the Russians tried the would fuck it up.
[**Which distinguishes it from 'communism' where by definition, the state has ceased to exist and wealth is somehow held directly in the hands of the community. Smacks of the mystical to me, but anyway.]
[***The softer 'pluralist' form where state produces in competition with --or the Swedish model in co-operation with --private owners has had markedly better economic and social outcomes than any and all attempts at pure state production IMO^H^H^H.]
The merely moderately educated tend to confuse socialism with the welfare state. The historical fact that the modern welfare state was devised by conservatives (most notably by Bismarck) as an anti-socialist tool, sometimes explicitly so, seems to have disappeared down the Orwellian memory hole. To be fair this is in part because western "Socialist" parties have adopted the welfare state as a means to appease their constituency while shirking (sensibly?) the introduction of the revolutionary social change which their name, and sometimes their official party platform, promises.
Let us not forget, however, that in some western countries perhaps the largest --and certainly the most unrecognised --area of welfare spending by governments since WWII have been the various tax breaks (someone else pays) and positive incentives and aimed at encouraging private home ownership. This seems the very opposite of socialistic.
Is that Daphne, or Sonic Blue? Or a darker shade?
Re:We have the same... (Score:3, Informative)
No they don't. Foreign students (outside the EU) don't get free anything in France. They pay tuition fees and hospital bills.
For students from other EU coutries it is free but you get the same deal if you go to another EU country. French students in Scotland get free Education and medical care too. Quid pro quo.