America's Top Universities Scouring China's High Schools To Recruit Top Students

[Phred42]

The Reich-wing Dumbing Down of America has worked.
This is ONE of the results.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

America's Top Universities Scouring China's High Schools To Recruit Top Students
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/11/09/US_colleges_scour_China_for_top_students/UPI-93521226256390/

BEIJING, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Harvard, Stanford and other top U.S. colleges say they're actively recruiting China's best high school students and offering them full scholarships.

Recruiting the best Chinese students will help elite U.S. colleges maintain international dominance, especially in math and science, said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's admissions dean.

"There are no quotas, no limits on the number of Chinese students we might take," Fitzsimmons told more than 300 students during a recent visit to a high school in Beijing.

College applications from China have increased dramatically in recent years as the Communist country opened to the world, The Boston Globe reported Sunday, noting that's disconcerting news to U.S. students seeking a coveted spot at top colleges at home.

[shraby]

1. Why aren't they scouring our own schools for

the top students and giving them full scholarships? I have a granddaughter who is in the National Honor Society who could really really use a full scholarship, otherwise college is hardly feasible for her.

[Phred42]

2. exactly!

[skooooo]

3. For the most part..

...international students work much harder and take school much more seriously than American kids.

[Lasher]

6. So what?

I'm for Americans first.

[skooooo]

11. So here's what...

...my department depends on student workers. We're open to hiring anyone who is competent and will show up on time. Guess what? Inevitably we end up hiring international students because they will bust their asses more often than American kids. :shrug:

[Lasher]

16. With a per capita GDP of $2,483 I'm sure Chinese students will 'bust their asses' for what you pay.

I'll bet you can keep Chinese students hopping since they probably think they're getting rich. US students need not apply. You just gave me another reason to oppose US scholarships for foreign students.

But most importantly, US tax dollars should not be used to pay for free scholarships for foreign students. Your institution wouldn't be receiving US federal or state funding, would it?

[skooooo]

18. Oh whatever..

You have no idea what you're talking about. You just want to argue without considering there might be other factors involved. The fact is, many American students don't learn what they should in highschool. Meanwhile, countries like China have highschools that excel in science and math. Sorry, but those are the facts. Of course my institution receives government funding. I wasn't talking about scholarships, but work ethic. And no one says we have to hire lazy workers.

[ChromeFoundry]

22. Fact is...

you seem a little prejudice to anyone stemming from an American education. Do you really think there are no high school kids busting their asses everyday to excel? Many even harder than these Chinese students that you have labeled as "better"? If you really feel that way, you are overlooking a lot of kids that are deserving of a full ride. Don't be surprised when others look at you with prejudice. You are certainly spewing it.

[skooooo]

24. American high schools..

...are the pits. You can look at statistics. We lag behind as a rule. There are always exceptions to every "rule." Again, I was talking about what I've observed. I have no control who gets scholarships, so take it up with someone else.

[ChromeFoundry]

27. no....

SOME American High Schools are the pits. SOME are excellent.

When you wear blinder, you really are not seeing the entire picture...

You're right. I'll take it up with someone else... Maybe someone that actually CARES about the betterment of this country. You can just keep your eye on that carrot.

[skooooo]

29. What do you think the vast..

...majority of schools are like?? Are they excellent or mediocre?

Are the majority of high school kids prepared for college?? No, the majority are not. That's why there are so many preparatory classes many go through now - for writing and math. They're not taught to study and be disciplined too well. Our culture doesn't promote it. :shrug:

[ChromeFoundry]

35. what do you think the schools are like

in some town in China where everyone works in the rice paddy? Excellent???

The majority of schools in China and India are not excellent either.

[girl gone mad]

26. The funny thing is..

he or she doesn't seem to understand that the assumed stereotype is completely prejudiced.

I had many friends in college who were international students that took full advantage of this particular stereotype. One was a gifted Ukrainian math major, but he told me that he had invented several awards to pad his grad school application. Another was from India and has gone as far as to grant himself a degree from a non-existent school.

I had a TA from China who may or may not have been good at her work. None of us could ever tell because her language skills were so poor. She ended up giving us all an 'A' on our final project because she had forgotten to give us several key equations. I didn't learn anything in the class, but the professors loved her because she never complained about the excessive workloads. The language barrier kept her meek and somewhat isolated.

[skooooo]

28. I've seen people like that too...

It's not too hard to spot.

I'm sorry I pissed both of you off, but in general I think most people would agree that our highschools do not prepare students very well for college work. I know there are exceptions. American universities and colleges are the best, but our secondary education leaves a lot to be desired. Those that can and do excel are few and far between, not what you are likely to see everyday.

[Lasher]

39. Then some government support should be diverted from higher to secondary education.

If "American colleges and universities are the best and our secondary education leaves a lot to be desired," as you say, then we need to move funding support to high schools. This is particularly true since US government money supports learning institutions that have enough fiscal latitude to increasingly grant scholarships and benefits of student work programs to foreign nationals. We need to invest our finite resources where they can promote the most advantages for US citizens, don't you think?

[skooooo]

49. Absolutely!

I'm sure we agree more than this discussion would imply. Funding of education has decreased steadily for a long time, and unfortunately a lot of our students suffer because of that.

[Lasher]

51. Actually I believe a college education should be free to all US citizens.

Just like K through 12.

[OhioChick]

31. Let's go over those "Science and Math" FACTS...

The Science Education Myth

Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support.

Political leaders, tech executives, and academics often claim that the U.S. is falling behind in math and science education. They cite poor test results, declining international rankings, and decreasing enrollment in the hard sciences. They urge us to improve our education system and to graduate more engineers and scientists to keep pace with countries such as India and China.

Yet a new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, tells a different story. The report disproves many confident pronouncements about the alleged weaknesses and failures of the U.S. education system. This data will certainly be examined by both sides in the debate over highly skilled workers and immigration (BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07). The argument by Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), and others is that there are not enough tech workers in the U.S.

The authors of the report, the Urban Institute's Hal Salzman and Georgetown University professor Lindsay Lowell, show that math, science, and reading test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.

More: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2007/sb20071025_827398.htm

[ChromeFoundry]

36. Interesting....

Funny how you always hear "crickets" when you find a study that tells them they really don't know what they are talking about.

[skooooo]

50. That's one study...

And I believe there are others that would refute that.

[skooooo]

52. On the other hand

Newsweek Education

U.S. Drops Out of Global Math Test
The United States has quietly withdrawn from an international study comparing math and science students.
U.S. Drops Out of Global Math Test
istockphoto.com
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Peg Tyre
Newsweek

Aug. 9, 2007 - Americans took note when Bill Gates said last spring that American schools needed to beef up science and math standards if the country was going to maintain a competitive edge in the new century. So did Congress, which last week approved legislation called the America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science) Act, which carves out a whopping $43.6 billion for science education and research.

So why did the federal government quietly decide last year to drop out of an international study that would compare U.S. high-school students who take advanced science and math courses with their international counterparts?

The study, called TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) Advanced 2008, measures how high-school seniors are doing in algebra, geometry, calculus and physics with students taking similar subjects around the globe. In the past, the American results have been shockingly poor. In the last survey, taken in 1995, students from only two countries—Cyprus and South Africa—scored lower than U.S. school kids.

Conspiracy theorists suggest that the U.S. government withdrew from the study without making any announcement because it anticipated another poor showing. “Maybe they don’t want to hear more bad news,” says John Ewing, executive director of the American Mathematical Society.

Federal officials deny the charge. Mark S. Schneider, the commissioner for the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, says the decision was made after a number of other countries—Australia, Germany and Finland—also decided not to participate. That left Armenia, Iran, Italy, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Slovenia and Sweden in the study. “We looked at the countries who are participating, our scarce resources and our overextended staff,” says Schneider, “and we decided to give it a pass.”

The test, which would have been administered to about 4,000 high-school seniors, would have cost the federal government between $3 million and $10 million, Ewing says. The National Science Foundation, which is independent but funded by the government, declined to fund the exam as well.

Advocates for math and science education say they’re dismayed. ‘It’s pennywise and pound foolish,” says Ewing. “It is crucial that we know what our most talented students can do and how we are serving them. I can’t think of anything more important that having data on how you are training your future mathematicians and scientists.”

Advocates for the study are looking for private funders to step in and pay for the test. Patsy Wang-Iverson, who works for the Gabriella and Paul Rosenbaum Foundation in Stockton, N.J., a nonprofit organization that supports math advancement, has been approaching other foundations for money to sponsor the two-and-half-hour test. “We need this money in the next month so that Educational Testing Services can begin the crucial work needed to get the test off the ground.” If she can come up with the money, schools in individual states and consortiums of states will be approached to participate in the study. Are you listening Bill Gates?

[OhioChick]

54. Anything with "Bill Gates" in it's text is a joke...

Pimping CONgress for more H-1B's.....hiring on the cheap. We all know how that goes in Corporate Amerika.

[skooooo]

55. ok..

...well the thing you posted is a "joke" too. I guess we're even. Yawn.

[OhioChick]

56. Whatever....

:eyes:

[w4rma]

60. You sound racist, skooooo. (nt)

[JVS]

32. That's part of it. Academic programs hate labor costs.

[skooooo]

33. Because they don't have any money! most of them!

[JVS]

34. Maybe they should get some fucking work ethic then.

The professors seem well off enough. There's usually enough wine and cheese to go around at their functions.

[surrealAmerican]

48. While I agree that US students should be as eagerly ...

... recruited, this isn't about tax dollars. These are private institutions, with ample funds of their own.

[BearSquirrel2]

9. Yes they do but ...

Yes they do ... but do you really think this represents a typical sample of "foreign" students. Do you you really think they select fuck ups to send across the world for studies?

[skooooo]

12. Why should we take any "fuck ups?"

Hey America WAKE THE FUCK UP! You snooze, you lose!!!

[Alcibiades]

41. It's all about class

Chinese students are told that if they work hard, they can get ahead. Lots of US kids learn the opposite lesson: that their parents cannot afford college, so there's no point in trying to even do well enough in high school to get in. Going to college in the US often has more to do with whether a kid's parents themselves went than with grades or aptitude.

Some of the kids you call "fuckups" can actually achieve, and I know this because I was one. I was a fuckup precisely because I was told by my parents that college wasn't for people like me, and that the college fund I had told had been started never actually existed. I also had a shitty guidance counselor who understood nothing about college loans, scholarships or admissions. It was only after working in a college town and realizing I was smarter than 99% of the students I drank with that I returned to school, got a BA, an MA and then a Ph.D.

Our high schools can certainly do better, but that's no reason to write our kids off. There are millions of kids who are underachievers not because they cannot actually perform academically, but because we have an educational system that screens some people in on the basis of race and class, and screens other people out. We could do a much better job of reaching out to kids who have the potential to succeed: for example, we could look for kids who have poor grades in high school but good test scores. We don't have to go all the way to China to find bright young people who would become productive members of society if given half a chance.

[skooooo]

53. I agree with what you say, but...

Many underachievers can do just fine, but they have to catch up. There's nothing wrong with that. But when that underachiever is competing against someone who hasn't goofed off in high school, who do you think the universities are going to want in their schools? I don't write people off who spend time and put effort in studying, but most kids to not see value in that because our society tells them that beauty and having money is more important.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for a society or people in the society who are just lazy. Public libraries are free. If you want to achieve and learn, you will find a way.

After that, it IS society's responsibility to help people who can't afford to go to college - either by bringing the cost down, or paying for tuition, or whatever. That problem is more easily solved than trying to convince young people that it is to their advantage not to play video games 5 hours a day. :shrug: Students (and parents) themselves need to take responsibility too.

[Alcibiades]

63. I understand

I was addressing the point that many of the folks who we might consider underachievers are so because of factors that are beyond their control. For example, my high school had zero AP classes, which I understand the kids and the colleges nowadays see as essential.

I've had to deal with my share of slacker, underachieving students in courses I've taught, most of whom underestimate the opportunity they have been given. I do think that, for every one of those kids, though, there's a kid who deserves a chance who for some reason has not gotten one. I mention this because we don't need to go to China to find deserving kids who are capable of doing the level of work demanded of them by places such as Ivy League universities.

[rockymountaindem]

61. Is there no end to the scorn that is heaped upon "American kids"?

For instance, everybody questioned whether we would break away from the XBox long enough to vote, and yet we did and helped put Obama on top. All the time we hear on this site and in public complaints about the poor quality of my generation, when it is *us* who have to compete for starting-level jobs with people 20 and 30 years our senior. Why? Because the generations currently in power have messed things up so badly nobody can get a job. *We* are expected to complete multiple unpaid internships before we have enough "experience" to get a paid position anywhere in the professional world. I've done three. Everybody I know has done internships of some kind. In my parents' time it was possible for people with a high school education to just go out and get a good paying job that would support an independent lifestyle. Now that's damn near impossible. It used to be possible for people with college degrees to join the workforce and get on the job training. Now we're expected to pay for all our own training in college and through unpaid internships.

Honestly, it's not so good to be in this generation. I'm really tired of hearing how all my friends who I know, who work their asses off to comply with the new rules of the workforce, are somehow not good enough. I'm tired of hearing how our parents' generation, who entered the workforce with ease but have now brought us to the current point of disaster, is somehow looking down on us. Lastly, I'm tired of hearing that foreign students work harder because they have some mystical appreciation for hard work that we seemingly don't. Maybe we could have a little respect, hmm?

[skooooo]

13. Has she applied??

Where there's a will, there's usually a way.

[SoCalDem]

17. Wealthy Chinese pay full price & the colleges get to keep their "endowments"

and not "waste" it on tuition for deserving US students..:grr:

[OhioChick]

19. You got it! n/t

[BlooInBloo]

47. Because Americans are stupid....

This has been another episode of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.

[tunacan]

4. "There are no quotas, no limits on the number of Chinese students we might take"

That's very smart. Who's to say that the top US college educated Chinese will decide to stay in the US, become US citizens and maintain the brain power here? How does that help with "international dominance"?? Use the money to help students already in this country, dang it. There are so many kids with brains in this country already who could make better use of the scholarship.

[Overseas]

5. Seven years of an anti-science administration have held us back.

The Bush Administration and Republican attempts to dumb down the population and devalue science have worked to the extent that we don't produce enough science and math stars.

I'll bet Obama will be dedicated to reversing that trend. He understands that whatever the Republican party thinks it may need by way of dumbed-down people to vote against their own interests and choose the GOP, we need smart people to keep up with our international competitors in globalized business.

[arcadian]

7. So much for National Security.

Ahh fuck it all, $$$ win out over integrity as usual.

[ryanmuegge]

8. It's time to start protecting our economny and having a sense of nationalism.

[Juche]

10. I'm drawn on the issue

On one hand the new technologies and ideas produced at MIT, Caltech, Harvard, etc. will hopefully create jobs and industries here at home. If the new technology remains the property of the school and the professor, it'll boost US competitiveness.

However alot of foreign students will likely go back to China after graduation, plus they are not always the best teachers due to the thick accents.

I knew several people in college who did amazing research and should've gotten free rides through college, but didn't.

[Romulox]

14. Public universities in my state are using taxpayer dollars to open campuses in Dubai.

Which is much worse, imo.

[Liberal_in_LA]

57. yep.

[Progressive_In_NC]

15. That's funny, when I had my interview at Harvard, I was told I didn't have a chance to get in

unless I was a legacy or my parents could make a substantial donation to the university. Being a poor white male with a 5.8 GPA (on a 6.0 scale) and a 1490 SAT, I now understand what she meant. But there are no limits on the number of of Chinese students they could take?

WTF?

[ChromeFoundry]

20. Capitalism loves to exploit Communism. n/t

[OhioChick]

21. Yep. n/t

[ellisonz]

42. Big Time.

[girl gone mad]

23. Yup..

1540 here. Perfect math, Graduated in the top .5% of all HS seniors. I didn't even get a reply from many of the top schools I applied to.

It gives one the sense that they want the American middle class to fail and to be forced to compete with hundreds of millions of international students for whatever scraps the elites are willing to throw our way.

[ChromeFoundry]

25. Your bank account was not big enough

If you only had one the size of Daddy Bush...

[carlyhippy]

30. oh that is just great

I have a kid that has had a 4.0 GPA on a 4. scale for the past 5 years of school...scholarships? ha, she had one offered for 700.00 last year, nothing this year. She isn't in sports, clubs, sororities, etc...she is too busy studying to learn and make good grades...amazing and very disappointing.

[Azlady]

37. Corporate Greed -

Has spread over to our colleges & universities. I believe the Dean of Ohio State was given a hefty pay raise, now earning $802,000.00 plus a real nice bonus. Lets get that money where it belongs... paying for education of American students.
Thank you

[ChromeFoundry]

38. yep...

college and university is just another name for corporation anymore.

[KillCapitalism]

62. Yeah, and they're pretty much diploma mills nowadays.

It really isn't that tough, and just takes average intelligence to complete an undergrad degree in most cases.

I double majored in Information Systems Technology & Criminal Justice at a very good state university and graduated cum laude. You might think I had to try really hard to accomplish that, but the truth is I didn't. I had a good number of courses that I took, especially Gen Eds, that I put very little effort into. If I knew that a professor never took attendance, I would maybe only show up for that class once every other week.

[OhioChick]

40. Agreed. n/t

[Phred42]

43. And so we train and educate a country we will have to fight some day

or Bow too.

[OhioChick]

44. Yep. n/t

[Phred42]

45. Higher Education is a NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE

Let's start treating it as such

:grr:

[OhioChick]

46. That it is.

Chinese hack into White House network

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3588725&mesg_id=3588725

[trashcanistanista]

58. Cheap labor. Plan and simple.

They may excell in math and science but they do not excel in critical thinking and tend to bend every which way in the face of authority. They probably are less likely to join a labor union or demand a living wage. I speak from past experience working in scientific research. The Chinese Phd's made less than American research assistant's with BA's. Notice they are not recruiting from places like France, Germany, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Canada or Mexico. There are smart high school students in every country.

[opihimoimoi]

59. Them Chinese will soon come to USA to raid our schools as they had raided our Industrial Base

Bush and his GOP have gotten unintended results when they went into brainwashing for stupidity..They have OUTDUMBED THEMSELVES..right into oblivion...

Losing 2 elections in a row should give them a hint...but they cling to Obsolete issues and philosophies...they are obstinate no end...

This is why we need brains,,,....which them Chinese have been Focusing on for 30 years...

They are growing Brains while we stifle ours...ain't that a B