I strongly disagree with the position put forward here, especially on budgetary grounds. The suggestion that universities should reduce the number of foreign students in order to keep public funding is completely exactly backwards. The reason most of these schools are recruiting foreign (and tuition-paying) students is because legislatures all over the country have reduced funding to "public" school to the point that they have no choice but to seek this revenue to survive. Penn State, for example, a public university mentioned in the podcast, gets something like 7% of its budget from the state. The rhetoric in this podcast suggests reducing that even further if the universities don't provide for the American public. How about giving the public universities enough resources to carry out their public mission? Then they wouldn't need to recruit foreign students. They also wouldn't need to hike tuition to the point that it is out of reach to many Americans. The "problem" of too many foreign students should be solved by the state legislatures by funding their own institutions.
I strongly disagree with the position put forward here, especially on budgetary grounds. The suggestion that universities should reduce the number of foreign students in order to keep public funding is completely exactly backwards. The reason most of these schools are recruiting foreign (and tuition-paying) students is because legislatures all over the country have reduced funding to "public" school to the point that they have no choice but to seek this revenue to survive. Penn State, for example, a public university mentioned in the podcast, gets something like 7% of its budget from the state. The rhetoric in this podcast suggests reducing that even further if the universities don't provide for the American public. How about giving the public universities enough resources to carry out their public mission? Then they wouldn't need to recruit foreign students. They also wouldn't need to hike tuition to the point that it is out of reach to many Americans. The "problem" of too many foreign students should be solved by the state legislatures by funding their own institutions.