In the latest tit for tat going on between Trump and Beijing, education is being thrown in the mix. The influx of Chinese students to our upper-tier universities has caused the administration to take a closer look at why we allow some 360,000 Chinese students on to our campuses. The parable of giving a man a fish, and he will eat for a day, was the Obama directive toward the new world order.
Why start from scratch when you can just give countries like Iran piles of cash and unregulated nuclear growth? The second part of that parable, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime, is theoretical with our approach towards China and educating its future elite. While the Chinese have been busy with violating human rights and sanctifying the communist mandate, the U.S. has openly embraced the influx of those that seek to dominate us by educating their people and sharing with them the universities and labs that develop some of our most innovative solutions.
The debate put forth involving allowing international students to ostensibly fill seats where American students could be is defacto diversity by any means measured. The big lie is that international students bring much needed revenues to schools and their communities. Let’s take a look at the universities ranked best for Chinese students by U.S. News and World Report.
Best U.S. Universities for Chinese Students
- Columbia University – New York City, NY. …
- Princeton University – Princeton, NJ. …
- New York University (NYU) – New York City, NY. …
- Johns Hopkins University – Baltimore, MD. …
- Cornell University – Ithaca, NY. …
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Cambridge, MA. …
One would find it hard to fathom that cities like New York, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and others that host elite schools would have a hard time financially if they didn’t accept Chinese and other foreign students. Just draw a circle around each with a hundred mile radius, and I guarantee you that you will find a plethora of full-pay American students. Just look at the front page of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania.
They boast that they could fill their entire class with only valedictorians (do they have those in China?). Remember boys and girls, at Penn and the other Ivy’s, there are only 2,000 or so seats to be filled. Out of the 40,000 applicants, one would assume that you would find a full-pay American student for every spot needed.
We know there is demand, as the pathetic, parental elite bribe their way into schools that they should not be at, intellectually speaking. The financial argument for Chinese students is crap, as just postulated, so why the fuss? Diversity, stupid. University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann began her position nine years ago with a far-reaching vision: to make Penn the most inclusive university in the nation. By the way, her inclusiveness doesn’t mean your kids.
Anecdotally, walk these campuses for yourself and see that there is no shortage of our foreign friends. One can also imagine that guidance counselors across America are not sending our best and brightest to Ho Chi Minh University. I have yet to hear a high schooler say that I am going to apply to 3 reach schools, 3 safe schools (in regards to getting accepted) and a Chinese kicker.
While the Chinese have been busy stealing our Intellectual Property via higher education and through more nefarious means, we continue to roll out the red carpet to their students. Please come and study at the finest universities and laboratories in the world, and then return to your native land and use this knowledge against us. I learned that in Common Sense 101.
Editor’s note: As a former intelligence officer, I can offer a slightly different perspective. I agree that educating the top Chinese students in America is a good thing. They are exposed to our culture (in contrast to the Chinese communist, totalitarian culture), and their access to the most advanced commercial and military technology is probably not that great. We can count on a great many to be pro-American in the future.
My worry is that they will be used by the Chinese government to recruit intelligence agents among their friends, who may rise to important positions. This is a real danger, and a primary source of technology theft for China.
It’s a two-edged sword.