It did. You don't see Kim Jong Un threatening Switzerland.
Maybe limit number of downvotes people can cast. I feel that this behavior is restricting normal discussion.
No one is opposed to wit, but this comment didn't explain anything about the context. I needed to Google to know what the point was. It still seems more like a snarky comment than a serious argument.
I could have just responded with some lazy remark saying "Want short witty comments? Twitter this way." but I'd be a jerk for that.
There’s a slight silver lining to this - up until now there’s been very little motivation to reduce those large fixed costs.
For a hacker-news friendly analogy: the risks this causes for the unis is akin to short-term financial peril in a tech firm: so what gets cut isn't what's ultimately likely to be least valuable, but what's most risky: bye, bye moonshots and general innovation.
Besides the high fixed cost the universities are faced with unprecedented open access to information via the internet. Not all what a university does can be replaced but some stuff can. A low cost competitor is taking over part of their business - and probably the most profitable one.
It is not just that Trump made entry to the US more difficult. The cost for education went up. The competition is getting stronger. And the value delivered is decreasing due to lower social mobility. Unless one is going to the very top universities the chances to move up have decreased compared with the past. This is not so say it is not worth it but relatively it is less clear and for some subjects it became very risky.
But let's say from 10 artistic programs you're down to 8 or 6. Why is it a priori a bad thing?
Schools already compete on the quality of their specific programs - one applies to Berklee for music and to Berkeley for CS, but rarely the other way around. Instead of check boxing to meet some arbitrary criteria and teach anything from Aardvark anatomy to Zulu language with questionable levels of quality, the schools can double-down on programs they do best.
(Karl Marx warned of this, as capitalism only sees value in what produces more value. Artistic and liberal arts value is harder to calculate, thus pointless)
I know plenty a scientists who'd love to create the next game-changing thing. But philosophy, governance, debate, argument, and understanding are not aspects taught in any good regard in STEM. Or should that thing even be created?
Current "liberal arts", aka feminism, SJW studies, and "who wronged me today" - those are absolutist political positions that frankly belong in a trash heap. These newer classes in specific schools only teach discord and strife. It is not the language of understanding the truth, but of victimization. They do not seek equality; instead they seek their pound of flesh.
Ive seen these arguments, especially about feminism on HN come around every 2-3 weeks, and it is the same tiring talking points. There is no meeting of the minds. There is dialectic -it just one screaming over another (with -1 mods to boot). I've avoided them as per recent because there is no resolution, and nobody seems to want any sort of meaningful change.
What I am talking of liberal arts, is that of classical liberal arts of the West and the East. It is the tools of philosophy and logic, argument and debate. It is how parties may argue and debate reasonably and uncover the truth of the matter. It is how to understand how a new invention changes society; it also shows the inventor's place in that structure.
But, of course, this would mean that the liberal arts would have to actually go back to teaching the Western canon, and not simply using their positions as educators to repudiate Western and European art and culture at any turn, to radicalize students and spew their ideological fantasies, to engage in censorship and stoke racial tensions, and, this should go without saying, stop committing acts of physical assault, such as smashing people in the head with metal bike-locks, when they disagree with you (Eric Clanton, Tariq Khan, Eric Canin..etc).
These are just suggestions of course, I'm sure the enlightened intelligentsia will find its way.
I know plenty a scientists who'd love to create the next game-changing thing. But philosophy, governance, debate, argument, and understanding are not aspects taught in any good regard in STEM. Or should that thing even be created?
If anything, when I think of liberal arts, I think of the Greats of Rome and Greece. I remember the ancients in India, or the rulers in China. I think of the discussions reported about the Roman Senate. Or how civilizations rise and fall and why. Or of social sciences, why people do certain things as a collective? This all is indeed logic and science, but with many more degrees of freedom and lack of understanding. Liberal Arts is essential to understanding the core of a problem, and not just the numbers and symbolics that it represents.
I looked at the same college a few months after that deployment, and realized I didn't want to subsidize dogmatic obedience. Since then it appears to have gone even further downhill.
...in a universe where superfluous administration is cut first, it is not.
You think you live in that universe?
Only if they aren't something that attract a crowd. I see very few colleges cutting basketball or football programs so they don't have to maintain stadiums any more.
[1]http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Ar... [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/runnin... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/why-students-foot-the-...
While it's mostly true that athletic programs as a whole are not profitable, it's also true that a majority of football and men's basketball programs are profitable[1]:
> > Between 50 and 60 percent of football and men’s basketball programs have reported net generated revenues (surpluses) for each of the nine years reported, while the dollar amount has increased slightly but steadily each year. (3.6)
> It seems uncertain that they actually use the money to fund education.
They don't. They use the money to fund sports programs that aren't profitable, like women's basketball. Women's basketball, in particular, cost FBS schools (in aggregate) about $1.8 million in FY 2014 (though ice hockey isn't far behind at $1.4 million).
Note that I'm not making a judgement here: I don't think we should eliminate women's basketball. But if we're going to argue about what actually costs the school money, we should at least be honest about it.
> Not to mention the fact that they basically exploit the athletes, who aren't always even given a quality education in return.
No qualms there. The NCAA's treatment of athletes is asinine and I'm quite certain we'll view this as a black mark in the history of sports.
1: http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2015%20Division%20I%...
A majority of Division I programs. Only 252 out of 674 football programs and 351 out of 1099 men's basketball programs are Division I.
Division II[1] football and men's basketball programs are universally money losers. Every single one lost money. The Division III report[2] doesn't include as much detail, but I doubt that any of them are profitable either.
[1] http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2015%20Division%20II...
[2] http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2015%20Division%20II...
I don't think many sports fans would care or even notice if you got rid of D2/3 programs. It's an interesting point when people like Ben Wallace or Chris Ivory come along, but it's mostly a non-factor.
I'm not even sure the NCAA would care, honestly, other than it being a talking point for them to claim athletes are "students first". I'm guessing it's mostly the athletes themselves who would care.
> Yeah, the problem is that they don't cut admin first.
Your basic value proposition is that admin is less important than basic research and that's getting cut.
In the article, it mainly that music, swimming, newspapers, and languages get cut. It says that they had to make cutbacks in CS but don't specify what the college did exactly.
As far as I know, there is no basic research going on in music, swimming, newspapers, and languages. CS definitely basic research, but that was glossed over. Any sort of professor who could be somewhat replaced with an adjunct is not able to perform basic research.
Well any out-of-state student would do that not just international ones. There is a deeper problem there in that these universities perhaps simply can't afford to have 10 foreign languages or gyms or sports clubs. Using international students to keep those going seems a bit of a round-about way. Since many of those are state schools, maybe seeing why the states have cut funding to the schools is more useful.
> Second, the foreign students increase the schools' reputations and can collaborate with the faculty.
Not really. Undergraduate students are minimally involved in research. (You did read the article to sew that it talks primarily about undergraduate students, right?).
> In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than the foreigners. That productivity led to discoveries that benefit everyone.
As I mentioned, the article doesn't talk much about PhDs and is mostly focused on international students. In my own undergraduate program, international students were about average or worse than American ones. The few that I knew were struggling with English and others were "struggling" with academic honesty. I won't mention which country they are from but I think people here might figure it out. Many were in school because their wealthy parents had money to send them more than say being chosen for their academic performance.
> Third, immigration: some of the foreign students would have wound up staying.
Some would have and some do. But it's not a program geared for permanent residence. There was an option to do a short internship / co-op with that visa after graduation but that was about it.
> Educated people who work hard and are ambitious enough to go overseas and stay are good for the country.
As I said, from what I have seen in this case it is mostly students who come from wealthy families. Do we need more students from wealthy international families in US? I don't know, maybe. I would rather it be based on merit, so perhaps refocus that effort towards graduate students in certain fields or who manage to do exceptionally well in their studies.
In general it seems to me you have conflated and mixed undergraduate and graduate international student groups. For the purpose of discussion there are quite distinct in how admission, tuition, research funding and self-selection works. It seems your arguments apply more to graduate students even though the article is mostly about undergraduates. You made good points in general, but for clarity, you might want to update your comment mentioning the difference.
I always found it weird that universities evolved to become sports franchises; it's at the very least orthogonal to being an institution of higher learning if not opposed to it, given that sports programs siphon money away that could be used in intellectual pursuits.
I'm a bit proud that my university does not have a (gridiron) football team; we did once but it was disbanded in the 1910s because the sport was becoming more violent.
Tell me why out of state students will pay significantly higher tuition when they can get a cheaper education in their State College? And are you saying that the State University wouldn't prefer Americans in their undergraduate programs? (please don't lob some racism/conspiracy theory: University administrators are Americans, and probably prefer Americans over others) It seems like international students are the only ones willing to pay higher out of state.
> Not really. Undergraduate students are minimally involved in research. (You did read the article to sew that it talks primarily about undergraduate students, right?).
The kernel of interest in research is laid during undergraduate study. US universities are in general better at promoting research during undergrad. Most undergrad programs focus more on learning than conducting research, simply because many don't even have graduate research programs of caliber. But many US universities do.
> Some would have and some do. But it's not a program geared for permanent residence. There was an option to do a short internship / co-op with that visa after graduation but that was about it.
Its not directly. But the hope is that the brightest and hard working will stay.
> As I said, from what I have seen in this case it is mostly students who come from wealthy families. Do we need more students from wealthy international families in US? I don't know, maybe. I would rather it be based on merit, so perhaps refocus that effort towards graduate students in certain fields or who manage to do exceptionally well in their studies.
You say this as if these wealthy students have no merit. Its not easy to get into US universities, especially as an international student. You have to have merit and wealth. I don't see why Universities shouldn't prefer students with both merit and wealth?
Because an out of state university with a "nothing special" program in a field will give an out of state student who is moderately strong in that field a better price via favorable financial aid (grants, better loans, etc) than an in-state university that has a strong program in that field.
Because states are different? Wouldn't you say OK, NY, CA are different states with different universities, budgets, students, cultures etc. Why is it surprising that a student from Mississippi might want to go to UC Berkeley?
> And are you saying that the State University wouldn't prefer Americans in their undergraduate programs? University administrators are Americans, and probably prefer Americans over others
Well yeah international students also incur an additional administrative cost to manage. Having lots of them also means needing to hire more staff in international students services department.
> It seems like international students are the only ones willing to pay higher out of state.
It seems not. Why is it crazy to think someone might want to go to school in a different state, and you're convinced only international students would do it? If people half way across the world want to fly out and study here paying double the tuition, why wouldn't people from other US states?
> The kernel of interest in research is laid during undergraduate study.
Not sure what you mean by "kernel of interest". OP was talking about undergraduate research as one of the top reasons US is losing out to other countries and so on. The point is there is minimal undergraduate research compared to graduate. Especially at the state colleges they are talking about. Kentucky State or Oklahoma State undergrads are not driving US research forward.
> But the hope is that the brightest and hard working will stay.
Whose hope? Not being sarcastic here just wondering. Do you think it is the US government's hope, universities or students? Maybe a combination of those? At the end of the day it is not a permanent residence track. It's H1B visas, marriages and other tracks which lead to permanent residence. Getting an F-1 and J-1 won't. Quite the opposite J-1 visas used to explicitly require students return and spend some time in their home countries with the "hope" of sharing the experience.
> You say this as if these wealthy students have no merit.
I say this because the OP implied it is pure merit. Though I think they mostly muddied the waters confusing graduate and undergraduate programs. And I didn't imply it was bad, was just wondering if that's something we want, as you said maybe we do.
> You have to have merit and wealth.
Besides passing TOEFL and showing up with a full tuition check what are the merit requirements is needed. You'd probably say high school grades, but I remember just handing them a hand written note from my high school principal which I translated myself and he signed. They didn't need SAT or ACT scores even. Maybe they do now, I didn't check.
If this is your experience, it sounds like you are baselining your opinions on less reputable U.S. universities (and there are quite a few of them around. The U.S. has over 3000 colleges.)
In most decent universities, you absolutely cannot be admitted without the right grades. In most competitive state colleges, international students actually require better (average) grades than locals for admission because they are placed in a separate, smaller pool of applicants. In-state applicants are often given priority.
It was an average state college. Not sure the "less reputable" sounds right but I guess you can put it that way. And that's mostly what the article at hand is talking about anyway.
> you absolutely cannot be admitted without the right grades.
Is the Kentucky State going to call a school in Bangladesh to verify the transcript? Wealthy people who can afford to send kids to school in US with full tuition can probably find a way to "buy" a good transcript from a local school. Maybe you meant that SAT is a requirement, then yes, it thing might have changed and it is more challenging.
Fair enough, the article does mention some very mediocre colleges. I was thinking of decent colleges like Ohio State or Iowa State.
> Is the Kentucky State going to call a school in Bangladesh to verify the transcript? Wealthy people who can afford to send kids to school in US with full tuition can probably find a way to "buy" a good transcript from a local school. Maybe you meant that SAT is a requirement, then yes, it thing might have changed and it is more challenging.
Most decent colleges admit international students based on some standardized test like the SATs, IB, A-Levels or equivalent. High school transcripts are rarely acceptable due to variability in standards.
But you are right about Kentucky State. Its website states that it accepts "Official SAT/ACT OR TOEFL scores" from international students with their high school transcripts. This is utter garbage.
http://kysu.edu/administration-governance/student-engagement...
They often do. And admission committees learn from experience: if they admit students from a school and they don't perform well, they recruit less from that school the next year. Conversely, if they have students performing well, they will continue to admit more. There is a chain of trust.
A backwater program at a good university is going to be worse than a flagship program at a backwater university
There's only a few well known schools that attract students from all over the country. Note that we're not talking about the top 5 or even top 50. The typical example is Wright State University in Ohio. I don't think anyone from NY, CA or Texas would be interested in paying more and going to that school.
> Well yeah international students also incur an additional administrative cost to manage. Having lots of them also means needing to hire more staff in international students services department.
Look, I'm not going to argue with you for the sake of argument. Like I said before you can invent reasons. This is just so far fetched... really? Admissions officers and the International Students department is colluding to increase number of international students to increase the budget of the latter? Oh please. Gimme a break.
> It seems not. Why is it crazy to think someone might want to go to school in a different state, and you're convinced only international students would do it? If people half way across the world want to fly out and study here paying double the tuition, why wouldn't people from other US states?
Because there aren't enough US students. Why is it so hard to understand that even after so many fucking incentives, low interest loans and whatnot, many US citizens just don't want to go to college? The US has a shit ton of Universities and there is more than enough room for all students, domestic and international. And like I said before, if American students did apply, I find it hard to believe that they would not get preference over international students.
> Not sure what you mean by "kernel of interest". OP was talking about undergraduate research as one of the top reasons US is losing out to other countries and so on. The point is there is minimal undergraduate research compared to graduate. Especially at the state colleges they are talking about. Kentucky State or Oklahoma State undergrads are not driving US research forward.
Now you're conflating things. The OP was talking about research in general. Graduate research programs frequently employ undergrad researchers, to give them a taste of what research is like, in hopes that they will be interested in pursuing graduate research later. That is the "kernel of interest", and US undergraduate programs are incredibly good at accomplishing that. Many of the grad students I worked with started graduate research because they did a little research undergrad and that got them hooked. Without that taste, they might have never known.
> Whose hope? Not being sarcastic here just wondering. Do you think it is the US government's hope, universities or students? Maybe a combination of those? At the end of the day it is not a permanent residence track. It's H1B visas, marriages and other tracks which lead to permanent residence. Getting an F-1 and J-1 won't. Quite the opposite J-1 visas used to explicitly require students return and spend some time in their home countries with the "hope" of sharing the experience.
Of American society. Civilizations move forward on the back of innovation and innovation is possible only with the smartest, hard-working people living, contributing ideas to your society.
> Besides passing TOEFL and showing up with a full tuition check what are the merit requirements is needed. You'd probably say high school grades, but I remember just handing them a hand written note from my high school principal which I translated myself and he signed. They didn't need SAT or ACT scores even. Maybe they do now, I didn't check.
Again, please don't use these hand-wavy anecdotal arguments. Maybe some Universities are like that. I was rejected by basically all the undergraduate programs I applied to in the US (even after showing proof of ability to pay tuition) and was accepted only later for a Graduate Program after applying to 12 places. It. Is. Not. Easy. Its really hard and these kids who do get in, they're very smart. They also happen to have parents willing to pay. Why exactly do you want to punish them for it?
Did I say that? I thought I was agreeing with you there that universities might prefer American students in general because they _don't_ have to incur the additional admin cost. But you turned it around into universities want to get international students so they can incur the extra cost and hire more people. How does logic even make sense, do they get paid more state money if they have more admin staff?
> many US citizens just don't want to go to college? The US has a shit ton of Universities and there is more than enough room for all students, domestic and international. And like I said before, if American students did apply, I find it hard to believe that they would not get preference over international students.
Ok there aren't enough students, and universities might have to scale back.
> Now you're conflating things. The OP was talking about research in general.
Right but the article is talking about undergraduate international students and OP was talking about research setback in US in general. Yeah we can talk about general interest or kernels of interest and how some undergraduate students are involved, but that's moving the goal post. If we discuss graduate research, grants, state funds, then that's a different discussion.
> possible only with the smartest, hard-working people living, contributing ideas to your society.
Still don't see how undergraduate international students coming most likely from the wealthiest families paying full tuition to go to Kentucky State or Oklahoma State necessarily equates to a major setback in our society. There is nothing about them that's necessarily more hard working or being the smartest.
> Again, please don't use these hand-wavy anecdotal arguments. Maybe some Universities are like that. I was rejected by basically all the undergraduate programs
Ok but aren't you using the same hand-wavy anecdotal arguments? What's wrong with sharing personal experience. Thanks for sharing yours, I shared mine. You don't think that's representative that's fine. I went to college around 2000s so things might have changed since then. Also there are enough schools that everyone is going to experience something different.
Why? Give me a reason why having more smart people studying at your universities, contributing to society and research is a bad idea.
> Right but the article is talking about undergraduate international students and OP was talking about research setback in US in general. Yeah we can talk about general interest or kernels of interest and how some undergraduate students are involved, but that's moving the goal post. If we discuss graduate research, grants, state funds, then that's a different discussion.
Its not moving the goal posts as much as including more relevant points in a discussion which is certainly permissible. You don't just dismiss it simply because its "another discussion". I believe I made some excellent points about how undergraduate research has an important effect on graduate research. And cutting the former significantly affects the latter.
> Still don't see how undergraduate international students coming most likely from the wealthiest families paying full tuition to go to Kentucky State or Oklahoma State necessarily equates to a major setback in our society. There is nothing about them that's necessarily more hard working or being the smartest.
Its the admission process that selects the brightest. If you don't agree that American Universities are good at selecting the best, then you're probably right. My experience has been otherwise.
> Ok but aren't you using the same hand-wavy anecdotal arguments? What's wrong with sharing personal experience. Thanks for sharing yours, I shared mine. You don't think that's representative that's fine. I went to college around 2000s so things might have changed since then. Also there are enough schools that everyone is going to experience something different.
That's true, and I agree with your statement.
International students rates are even higher than out of state for my state uni. So you would need a greater number of newly enrolled out of state students to make up for the reduced enrollments of international students. Additionally, international students have other required costs like health insurance, etc that may also generate revenue.
We should expect more R&D from the rest of the world. China may lead the world in AI and space exploration. India in drug research. Billions of people will come out of poverty.
American students may flock to India to get a better education at a fraction of the cost.
It seems like what people really want is to encourage American kids to study science and math and they are using the boogey man stories of foreign domination and excellence to somehow play into that narrative.
But no country is dominant forever.
China yes, but is there a lot of drug research coming out of India right now? Their pharma industry seems largely based around mass-producing generics.
That's fine, why shouldn't other countries do well and achieve success. There was a story about China offering a house and a huge research budget to a Chinese national who just graduated from a US school. And people were upset and kind of negative about it, but I think it is great that China can do it.
> American students may flock to India to get a better education at a fraction of the cost.
Yeah, it would be good to see more international cooperation. And it can and should come from other countries becoming centers of research and learning.
USA is projected to grow over 3%. China is projected to grow less than 2%.
At what point does China 'catch' USA? 3020?
I think the bias has swung way too far the other way. Racism against Americans is still racism.
Also, this applies mainly to undergrads (full paying students), not PhD students who are generally fully funded.
Regarding the full-paying foreign undergrads, their tuition contributes towards the costs of the university that are shared. American students, especially at middle-ranking public schools, are hurt when schools lose their funding.
Regarding the "racism against Americans," there is no such race, and if there were one it would not explain research productivity. What would is the self-selection of who will go across the world to study something technical, the much better high schools in other countries, and in the mere fact that the rest of the world is a larger talent pool than the US. It is easy to think of reasons.
Your source on that? All the schools I’m in contact with are still as international as ever in their CS PhD departments. I’m not sure what the trends are outside of CS, but I can’t imagine they would be very different. I think you are just pulling this number out of thin air.
Research is funded quite differently from undergrad programs. Sure, fewer TAships are available, but your research funding is much more detached. DARPA and NSF aren’t going to become stingy all of a sudden.
> Regarding the "racism against Americans," there is no such race, and if there were one it would not explain research productivity.
If I claimed (without any evidence in fact) that “Indians or Chinese are less productive than Americans” I would totally be accused of racism even though both India and China are multi-ethnic. It is especially a stupid thing to say as foreign and domestic students are pretty diverse, with slackers (or dreamers) and very focused students on both sides.
So you're asking for a source when your own view is based on anecdotes? Great.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-studen...
Growth has been falling, but that wasn’t the claim that was made, which was actually ridiculous.
Furthermore, this trend predates the immigration policies of the current administration, and I suspect this trend has further strengthened.
[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/28/graduate-scho... [2] http://cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGS_GED16_Report_...
It's unproductive to dismiss a factual claim as racist. You can simply show data that disproves the parent's claim and implicitly confirm their racist tendencies towards Americans rather than screeching "racism".
The original claim was an anecdote generalized to everyone. They are stereotyping millions of people based off a handful they have met.
It could be true. The reverse could be true. We don't have good data. Why assume that there are differences based on background?
Yes, it was. That is, it was a claim about a matter of fact.
> How would you prove that Americans were less or more productive than foreigners?
There's a number of possible operationalizations of productivity applicable to a Ph.D. program that are measurable and by which the issue could be addressed. Usually, the first thing to do would be to challenge the party making the dubious claim to both provide their operationalization and show data supporting the characterization.
It's quite possible that after that, the result would be that it would be fair to dismiss the claim as inadequately supported (although the mere fact that a single claim asserting a difference in performance based on nationality is inadequately supported does not, in and of itself, provide more than extremely weak evidence that the claim comes from racism.)
No, the party making the fact claim made a fact claim limited to a particular program they had been in, and has, as yet, neither provided evidence (or even an operationalization) for that claim not been challenged to do so.
> They have no data.
That may or may not be the case; it's perfectly fine to dismiss the claim due to lack of data, better to challenge the claimant to provide support for the claim. Calling it racism is as unsupported as the claim itself.
> I do not think anecdotal evidence is good evidence for such a strong claim.
The fact claim made was particularly limited (about productivity in one Ph.D. program—from which no further generalization was claimed), it wasn't a particularly strong claim. That said, sure, anecdotal evidence is inadequate to support it, but then, not even anecdotal evidence was provided, only the bare claim.
> This makes the claim an opinion and not factual.
A claim on a matter of fact doesn't become anything other than a fact claim because it isn't offered with adequate support.
> Second, the foreign students increase the schools' reputations and can collaborate with the faculty. Research is a public good.
Their evidence for the claim was personal experience.
A claim about a matter of fact is not a fact. A fact needs evidence. Otherwise it's just nonsense.
"Americans" is now a race? How about Texans or Australians? If I say that I hate Australians because of their silly accents, am I now a racist? Race and national citizenship are very different concepts.
It’s illogical to claim you can be racist against diverse countries like the USA or Australia. Pretty sure the OP is more referring to xenophobia than racism.
noun
Definition of race for Students
1 : any one of the groups that human beings can be divided into based on shared distinctive physical traits
>>> 2 : a group of individuals who share a common culture or history the English race <<<
3 : a major group of living things the human race
Americans do not share a common culture or history. We share a political system that is at least in theoretically based on guaranteeing the freedom to participate in whatever culture you want, that isn't limited to people of a specific historical association (either by genetics or citizenship).
> the English race
While England does have a history and culture that traditionally was officially established by the king, Merriam-Webster's use in this example can apply when referring to historic England, the term isn't really appropriate for modern England.
However, in Merriam-Webster's defense, this mildly misleading definition might be an attrempt to keep explanations simple with references young people would know. The definition that you copied was from the "RACE Defined for Kids" section of the page. Their recommended definition at the top of the page doesn't have the same issues:
1 : a breeding stock of animals
2 a : a family, tribe, people, or nation
belonging to the same stock
b : a class or kind of people unified by shared interests,
habits, or characteristics
3 a : an actually or potentially interbreeding group within a species;
also : a taxonomic category (such as a subspecies) representing
such a group
b : breed
c : a category of humankind that shares certain
distinctive physical traits
None of that applies to "Americans" as a group of people. We are famously a "melting pot" where people from very different races (again in theory) are supposed to have the freedom to "melt" together however they desire.
edit: For a fun, snarky, and informative (with very impressive directing), see ContraPoints video "What is Race?" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY3lBKje46E )
> The Act says a "racial group" means a "group of persons defined by reference to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins."
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/racist-and-religious-h...
PS: If you guys keep downvoting me, I guess I'll be next president of the land of free! Ha ha.
First, the foreign students cross-subsidize the locals' education. There are large fixed costs to running a university and these students pay way above their marginal costs. So now the universities have fewer resources; hence cutting the newspaper funding etc.
Second, the foreign students increase the schools' reputations and can collaborate with the faculty. Research is a public good. We do not have a research system so that we can think of things for nerds to do; we have it to produce valuable knowledge. In my own PhD program, the productivity of the Americans was much lower than the foreigners. That productivity led to discoveries that benefit everyone.
Third, immigration: some of the foreign students would have wound up staying. We should want these people to stay here and have families. Educated people who work hard and are ambitious enough to go overseas and stay are good for the country.