America is closing a college per week due to student population declines.
Most students are coming from countries with significantly worse demographic trends. The population inversion is already here but it is being felt by schools first.
In 10 years it will be for new employees, in 40 years it will be shortages in medical care.
strict9 · 2h ago
>America is closing a college per week due to student population declines.
This is kind of misleading. There were 16 nonprofit college and university closures in 2024 [1]
I also have reservations about making predictions of what will happen in 10 years, much less 40. There are challenges relating to demographic change but it's not predetermined as you present it.
Every time someone makes a confident prediction about the future 10 or more years out all I can think of is the Population Bomb book [2]
The Population Bomb is a great reference. This was something a family member of mine was seriously worried about in her younger days.
Population is an extremely complex, dynamic system, and I don't think we have any way of actually predicting it -- all we can do is look at trend lines and make projections.
(caveat - not a social scientist; just my current opinion; etc.)
rich_sasha · 1h ago
There's a bit of a difference.
Population Bomb's core claim was about the instantaneous rate of reproduction. This is a complex stochastic process. It could drop to 0 overnight if people decide no more babies.
But population decline is easier to model mid term because you don't need to make almost any assumptions. The next 18 years of university intake are all already born and there ain't a lot of them. The only way for them is down.
Clearly, what's beyond that is hard to forecast, but even then making a pretty good forecast for the next 25 years only depends on forecasting births in the next 7 years.
saghm · 1h ago
And now less than half a century later, there are even people who are worried about falling birth rates in some places, because apparently it's concerning if we don't keep growing the population at the same rate.
FredPret · 1h ago
It is concerning when all of our major social systems are built on the idea of an growing population and a growing economy (most pressing right now is funding pensions).
Maybe we'll have a billion humans living in orbit in a century. Unsure if they'll be willing to pay Earth Tax though.
mothballed · 1h ago
US Citizens have to pay taxes even in orbit or on the ISS, or even on Mars or wherever in the universe they may be. This is fairly unique though, there's like one African dictatorship that does the same and that's about it.
amanaplanacanal · 19m ago
Immigration can easily cover that though. If you can get past the widespread anti-immigrant sentiment.
dcchambers · 53s ago
> America is closing a college per week due to student population declines.
It's interesting to see that but then also see boasts of "record freshman class sizes" at major public universities every single year (eg my Alma Mater, Wisconsin).
Is this a consolidation that is happening?
salynchnew · 1h ago
Historically, America has grown its population via immigration.
Whoops!
polski-g · 44m ago
The TFR decline of the rest of the world over the past decade has been astronomical. There simply aren't that many young people left in the world to pull from. South American countries have seen >50% declines.
allturtles · 1h ago
# of X closing / time isn't a meaningful measure of decline. You would have to subtract # closing / time from # opening / time. But even a net loss of colleges doesn't necessarily indicate a loss of students, it could be that bigger colleges are absorbing smaller ones. If you are making an argument about a decline in student population, you should just look at student population data. It's more-or-less flat since 2020 [0].
There's already a massive shortage when it comes to medical care.
jnwatson · 1h ago
In a market economy, shortages are simply a statement that the buyers value a good or service less than the market price.
Medical care shortages are mostly a function that hospitals don't want to pay nurses market rate and then treat them poorly.
The exception is doctors. The shortage there is completely driven by their guild (AMA) successfully lobbying for a restriction on the number of medical schools.
phil21 · 51m ago
> The exception is doctors. The shortage there is completely driven by their guild (AMA) successfully lobbying for a restriction on the number of medical schools.
It's not just this. It's also that the career is starting to suck.
Over half the doctors I know who I met while they were in medical school/residency are now out of the practice. They counted down the days until they had their student debt paid off and bounced to non-patient care roles outside the medical system.
The entire profession has been captured by the administrative and managerial class. Doctors have had most of their agency stripped from them, and it's an exhausting career choice for someone who generally has a ton of options at their disposal.
I expect the trend to get even worse as more and more pressure gets applied to the medical system both due to demographics and the endless march of making everything corporate.
No comments yet
mothballed · 1h ago
>The exception is doctors. The shortage there is completely driven by their guild (AMA) successfully lobbying for a restriction on the number of medical schools.
NPs are starting to get around this by getting independent or mostly independent practices in many states. The Doctors can still kick PAs in the teeth because they are usually under the medical board, but they can't do nearly as much to get their greedy claws on NPs because they are governed by a separate nursing board that nurses have more control of.
realitybitez · 1h ago
The AMA specifically restricts residency spots. They cry about medicare funding, but it is all about keeping the supply of doctors artificially low. Unlike tech, there is no free market in medicine, which is why 20% of the national gdp is consumed on healthcare while doctors drive away in BMWs to the bank
lovich · 1h ago
The doctors are not why the US pays more for medicine than other western countries. It’s also a little rich coming from a software focused board when we make equivalent or better than a lot of doctors
slipperydippery · 36m ago
It 100% is one of the reasons. We pay medical personnel way higher wages than peer states.
US healthcare is so expensive because basically every single part of it costs more than it "should", by quite a bit. Including, yes, doctors.
mothballed · 1h ago
Doctors can send men in with guns to imprison, and if they resist, kill, those who engage in their profession without going through the gates of their fiefdom, though.
In software you can be a nobody off the street, straight out of prison, if someone pays you money to write software then that is that.
The doctors cannot send in men with guns, the government can if it feels that’s against the law, and you’re not going to be killed for just “resisting”.
In the software world we also take on zero fucking liability for just building software on the street or is your circle full of people who commonly carry Software Malpractice Insurance?
FYI, the men with guns come for software engineers as well if the rich want it. Look up Sergey Aleynikov
mothballed · 49m ago
The odds of getting collared for practicing medicine without a license/credentials are orders of magnitude higher than getting collared for writing software, or even practice engineering even though that's sometimes a licensed field.
AMA is the biggest gatekeeper in getting there.
lovich · 46m ago
Yes, the odds of getting arrested for breaking the law are higher than if you don’t break the law.
Look you’re obviously against the AMA, and there’s arguments against their guild and its practices that I’m amenable to, but trying to pin the financial problems with our healthcare system on them is ludicrous given how many other large problems are in the system. Insurance middlemen are undoubtedly a bigger cost
realitybitez · 1h ago
There's already an artificial shortage when it comes to medical care.
NoMoreNicksLeft · 1h ago
We live in a country where many complain that there aren't any jobs to be had, especially jobs with good wages/salaries. It's disingenuous, or at least very confused, to state that "we have a looming, massive shortage of medical workers". These two thoughts aren't really mutually compatible. Sure, there is a training/education issue, but pretending that it's just intractable and that we have to import workers is absurd.
arghandugh · 1h ago
This is because Republican fascists overthrew the United States of America and threatened to kidnap and torture overseas students attending domestic universities.
It is unclear to me why anyone in the comments here is under another impression. These were newsworthy events.
next_xibalba · 39m ago
> overthrew
They weren't elected?
aredox · 1m ago
One man, one vote - one last time.
watwut · 24m ago
They were elected, proceeded to break the law and ignore it. Now they are trying to figure put how to get rid of the pesky voting.
psadri · 1h ago
Somewhat related data point - our local elementary school used to have 5 first grade classes a few years ago and now they are down to 3. It's a large % drop over just a few years. This is going to move like a wave through the rest of the years all the way through to university.
pbiggar · 45m ago
Not surprising. There are 3 main causes here:
- general anti-immigrant attitudes, policies, and policing (ICE)
- deportations of students exercising free speech rights (to criticize Israel)
- forcing colleges to change policies (again, to protect Israel from criticism by students and student groups)
The article is not neutral and is biased in favor of international students and universities, and critical of Trump's immigration policies.
It frames the decline in international student enrollment primarily as a problem caused by the Trump administration's policies and frames the visa restrictions as unnecessary and harmful while highlighting the cultural and economic benefits of international students.
It uses emotionally charged phrases like "awful," "very painful," and "tremendous levels of uncertainty" from student and administrator voices, which humanize the challenges but also tilt the narrative toward a sympathetic view of international students and critical of federal policy. The transcript reinforces this framing by explicitly saying the administration's actions were taken "without much evidence," a value judgment that signals skepticism of government justification.
-- The phrase "without much evidence" is the reporter's judgment, not a neutral presentation of fact. It signals to the reader that Trump’s justification is untrustworthy.
-- The verb "clamped down" is emotionally charged and suggests harsh, authoritarian behavior.
-- "What they bring to the university is this incredibly rich, diverse cultural experience..." and "...They really bring a different flavor to campus" while attributed to a university official, are presented without balancing perspectives. The article amplifies positive language about students' contributions without offering an opposing view.
-- "It was awful." (Romanian student), "It would have been very painful." (Indian student), and "...the key to warding off homesickness that comes from being seven thousand miles from home." humanize international students and emphasize suffering, which steers the reader emotionally toward sympathy. While valid journalism, the imbalance (little equivalent emotional content from the policy side) makes the bias overt.
-- "The loss of international students will lead to a significant downturn in innovation,” leans heavily on NAFSA (an advocacy group for international education), presenting their economic and innovation warnings as authoritative. But it doesn't feature equivalent experts who support visa tightening for security or workforce reasons.
Typical NPR writing.
pfannkuchen · 2h ago
Did NPR report the thousands of percent that it increased by over the past many years? Has university capacity kept up with those increases, or has the capacity allocation simply shifted away from Americans in order to allocate towards these other people? TFA states 15% reduction - boo hoo.
nels · 2h ago
International students are not displacing Americans; they pay tuition, often at higher rates, and help sustain universities. The real problem is that higher education has been underfunded for years, and the current administration has only made things (much) worse by cutting funding further.
Universities and research are already struggling because of poor leadership and lack of investment, not because of international students. In the 2023-2024 academic year, international student numbers only comprised ~6% of the total U.S. enrollments.
whyenot · 44m ago
Just a counterexample:
At Stanford, 36% of graduate students are international students (2024-2025 AY). While there are very good reasons for this, I think it's hard to argue that international students are not displacing US students, at least in grad school. For undergraduates, the number is 9% (2023-2024 AY). Stanford has tremendous financial resources and a main campus that is more than 12 square miles in size. They could grow the size of their student body if they wanted to.
guyzero · 24m ago
Stanford is skimming the absolute top students from around the world into its programs. There's more than enough capacity in US schools for the top 10% of US grad students and then the US gets the benefit of also getting the top 10% of other countries' grad students.
Well, that was the case up until this year.
nels · 19m ago
International students at places like Stanford are not displacing Americans. Stanford is one of the top-ranked universities in the world, so the competition pool is global by definition. There is no evidence that equally qualified Americans are rejected in favor of international students. U.S. students remain the majority in both undergraduate and graduate programs.
The real barrier for many Americans is the cost of tuition, not competition with international students. That is where government and universities need to step up with better funding and support. Also, many international students stay in the U.S. after graduating, contributing to the economy and research. The problem is underfunding and poor policy decisions at the national level, not the presence of international students.
Analemma_ · 27m ago
I'm not actually sure they could: remember we're talking about California. UC Berkeley, just a few miles northeast, tried to increase their enrollment count and was tangled in years of NIMBY lawsuits from people blocking the construction of additional student housing, using CEQA to claim that students were an environmental hazard.
mixmastamyk · 36m ago
Tuition has been increasing at a rate much greater than inflation for several decades, largely through price-insensitive loans. The idea that universities are struggling for money is not supported.
We need these Unis to cut costs and administrators. Propping up waste through courting rich foreigners is not a long-term solution.
watwut · 17m ago
Actually, yes, the state pays less per American student then it used it. That is large component of why the price went up, along with the expectation that universities act like a business.
The loans not being dischargable in bankruptcy does not help, but it was Republicans who were against those reforms.
standardUser · 1h ago
> thousands of percent
Is that you Donnie?
You could attend a university for about $10k per year in 1990. You are suggesting college now costs $210,000 per year. Thats with a 2,000 percent increase.
EDIT: Corrected so I don't look stupid.
joelwilliamson · 59m ago
That’s a 2000x increase. 2000% is 21x, so $210,000/a.
bell-cot · 54m ago
University student "capacity" is similar to Las Vegas hotel "capacity" - if they thought they could 2X the head count, without cutting their unit profit or damaging the brand, then they'd break ground on new capacity before the sun rose tomorrow.
tenuousemphasis · 2h ago
International students pay full price, unlike American students. That's why the loss is such a big deal for them and also for American students, whose education was being subsidized by international student tuition.
qzw · 2h ago
Some part of American students’ education, yes, but a large number of colleges have also used the extra money to inflate spending in other non-academic areas such as administrator salaries, athletics, resort style dorms, etc. Of course when the international money runs dry, those are not necessarily the first areas to see cutbacks.
salynchnew · 1h ago
Most states (at least in the midwest) have not kept up with their obligations when it comes to funding the historical land grand universities ("state" university, etc.).
qzw · 1h ago
A lot of state universities (not just in the Midwest) have become professional football teams with an educational institution attached. And I say this as a fan of one of those teams.
stockresearcher · 15m ago
There might be one or two exceptions, but generally the schools you are referring to are bursting at the seams with students.
Quick web search:
University of Georgia - enrollment up 3%
Ohio State - enrollment up 2.3%, highest in history
University of Alabama - enrollment exceeds 40,000 for first time in history
University of Michigan - couldn’t find enrollment, but it reported a record number of applications
octopoc · 2h ago
“Subsidized” is inaccurate. A more accurate way to describe what’s been happening is that international students drove up the cost of tuition, forcing American students into debt or out of college.
The reason I characterize it this way is college tuition has skyrocketed. The same thing happens in private schools—wealthy grandparents are common enough that children without wealthy grandparents are much less likely to be able to go to private school.
alistairSH · 2h ago
Correlation != Causation. Do you have any evidence that international student enrollment is driving costs up (vs easy access to loans or other factors)?
HankStallone · 1h ago
I'm sure there's no hard "evidence" in the sense of a college administrator on video saying, "Gosh, I love these international students because they let us charge more!"
But it's just how prices work. If you're selling widgets for $5 each, and a new batch of customers come along who are willing to pay $10 for a widget, guess what your per-widget price is now. If you can't sell them all for $10, you might put the rest on sale for $5, but only after you've served all the $10 customers.
The universities are still taking some domestic and/or scholarship students too, but they're naturally giving preference to the full-paying ones.
Could there be other factors driving up tuition? Maybe, but student loans have been around for a long time, and I don't know that they've gotten a lot easier to get. Maybe the recent talk about student loan forgiveness has made some people more casual about taking on debt, assuming it will be forgiven, but that's questionable. The growth in international student enrollment is the one big obvious change.
Swenrekcah · 1h ago
It is interesting that you believe this is mainly caused by foreign students. It is a recurring theme in today’s society.
If you look at the data here [1] you can see there is a wide range of tuition costs for the top 100 universities in the USA, going as low as 6000 usd with the average in-state cost at 17,000 usd.
The most prestigious ones are more expensive. Why is that?
A very significant part is the network effect people are buying, they are hoping to either get to know well off or connected colleagues, finish a thesis under a prestigious professor or just simply to have a degree from the fancy university.
This is all in an attempt to get ahead. This effect is there regardless of any international students.
Right, you're not being subsidized if you can't get enrolled at all at the school of your choice because the school filled up with full-freight foreign students.
alistairSH · 2h ago
Many top universities in the US have ~10-15% international. Hardly "filled up" with international students.
NoMoreNicksLeft · 1h ago
15% soaks up quite a bit of the excess supply in any market.
HankStallone · 1h ago
If they're filling 10-15% of the seats, that's 10-15% of the domestic student body they would have had that's been bumped.
foldr · 1h ago
A university's capacity isn't static. The money that comes in from foreign students can pay for additional capacity. You're talking as if every university was allocated a fixed number of seats in 1955 and now we all have to fight for one.
NoMoreNicksLeft · 1h ago
>A university's capacity isn't static.
Adding capacity isn't cheap. That gets passed on to the "customers". Which also raises the price for Americans.
>The money that comes in from foreign students can pay for additional capacity.
No, the cost gets spread out among all the customers. There are no mechanisms where discriminatory pricing kicks in, and only the foreign students pay for the additional capacity.
dragonwriter · 1h ago
> There are no mechanisms where discriminatory pricing kicks in, and only the foreign students pay for the additional capacity.
Uh, state universities often have a mechanism for that, its called “out of state tuition”.
foldr · 1h ago
>There are no mechanisms where discriminatory pricing kicks in, and only the foreign students pay for the additional capacity.
There is exactly such a mechanism. The foreign students pay more!
I don't have the exact figures to crunch the numbers (and I doubt you do either), but it's pretty implausible to suggest that foreign students are somehow a loss maker for US universities. If foreign students were a net loss, then universities wouldn’t be so keen to admit them. And if they're profitable then they pay for their seats.
The US university system is an incredible national asset. There are incalculable benefits to having the world's best universities attracting the best students from all over the world. That some Americans have managed to convince themselves that this is a bad thing is enough to turn my brain inside out.
shadowgovt · 1h ago
Foreign students aren't eligible for the scholarships and in-state bonuses American students are.
foldr · 2h ago
> Did NPR report the thousands of percent that it increased by over the past many years?
Most students are coming from countries with significantly worse demographic trends. The population inversion is already here but it is being felt by schools first.
In 10 years it will be for new employees, in 40 years it will be shortages in medical care.
This is kind of misleading. There were 16 nonprofit college and university closures in 2024 [1]
I also have reservations about making predictions of what will happen in 10 years, much less 40. There are challenges relating to demographic change but it's not predetermined as you present it.
Every time someone makes a confident prediction about the future 10 or more years out all I can think of is the Population Bomb book [2]
1. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/financial-healt...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
Population is an extremely complex, dynamic system, and I don't think we have any way of actually predicting it -- all we can do is look at trend lines and make projections.
(caveat - not a social scientist; just my current opinion; etc.)
Population Bomb's core claim was about the instantaneous rate of reproduction. This is a complex stochastic process. It could drop to 0 overnight if people decide no more babies.
But population decline is easier to model mid term because you don't need to make almost any assumptions. The next 18 years of university intake are all already born and there ain't a lot of them. The only way for them is down.
Clearly, what's beyond that is hard to forecast, but even then making a pretty good forecast for the next 25 years only depends on forecasting births in the next 7 years.
Maybe we'll have a billion humans living in orbit in a century. Unsure if they'll be willing to pay Earth Tax though.
It's interesting to see that but then also see boasts of "record freshman class sizes" at major public universities every single year (eg my Alma Mater, Wisconsin).
Is this a consolidation that is happening?
Whoops!
[0]: https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics
Medical care shortages are mostly a function that hospitals don't want to pay nurses market rate and then treat them poorly.
The exception is doctors. The shortage there is completely driven by their guild (AMA) successfully lobbying for a restriction on the number of medical schools.
It's not just this. It's also that the career is starting to suck.
Over half the doctors I know who I met while they were in medical school/residency are now out of the practice. They counted down the days until they had their student debt paid off and bounced to non-patient care roles outside the medical system.
The entire profession has been captured by the administrative and managerial class. Doctors have had most of their agency stripped from them, and it's an exhausting career choice for someone who generally has a ton of options at their disposal.
I expect the trend to get even worse as more and more pressure gets applied to the medical system both due to demographics and the endless march of making everything corporate.
No comments yet
NPs are starting to get around this by getting independent or mostly independent practices in many states. The Doctors can still kick PAs in the teeth because they are usually under the medical board, but they can't do nearly as much to get their greedy claws on NPs because they are governed by a separate nursing board that nurses have more control of.
US healthcare is so expensive because basically every single part of it costs more than it "should", by quite a bit. Including, yes, doctors.
In software you can be a nobody off the street, straight out of prison, if someone pays you money to write software then that is that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...
In the software world we also take on zero fucking liability for just building software on the street or is your circle full of people who commonly carry Software Malpractice Insurance?
FYI, the men with guns come for software engineers as well if the rich want it. Look up Sergey Aleynikov
AMA is the biggest gatekeeper in getting there.
Look you’re obviously against the AMA, and there’s arguments against their guild and its practices that I’m amenable to, but trying to pin the financial problems with our healthcare system on them is ludicrous given how many other large problems are in the system. Insurance middlemen are undoubtedly a bigger cost
It is unclear to me why anyone in the comments here is under another impression. These were newsworthy events.
They weren't elected?
- general anti-immigrant attitudes, policies, and policing (ICE)
- deportations of students exercising free speech rights (to criticize Israel)
- forcing colleges to change policies (again, to protect Israel from criticism by students and student groups)
It frames the decline in international student enrollment primarily as a problem caused by the Trump administration's policies and frames the visa restrictions as unnecessary and harmful while highlighting the cultural and economic benefits of international students.
It uses emotionally charged phrases like "awful," "very painful," and "tremendous levels of uncertainty" from student and administrator voices, which humanize the challenges but also tilt the narrative toward a sympathetic view of international students and critical of federal policy. The transcript reinforces this framing by explicitly saying the administration's actions were taken "without much evidence," a value judgment that signals skepticism of government justification.
-- The phrase "without much evidence" is the reporter's judgment, not a neutral presentation of fact. It signals to the reader that Trump’s justification is untrustworthy.
-- The verb "clamped down" is emotionally charged and suggests harsh, authoritarian behavior.
-- "What they bring to the university is this incredibly rich, diverse cultural experience..." and "...They really bring a different flavor to campus" while attributed to a university official, are presented without balancing perspectives. The article amplifies positive language about students' contributions without offering an opposing view.
-- "It was awful." (Romanian student), "It would have been very painful." (Indian student), and "...the key to warding off homesickness that comes from being seven thousand miles from home." humanize international students and emphasize suffering, which steers the reader emotionally toward sympathy. While valid journalism, the imbalance (little equivalent emotional content from the policy side) makes the bias overt.
-- "The loss of international students will lead to a significant downturn in innovation,” leans heavily on NAFSA (an advocacy group for international education), presenting their economic and innovation warnings as authoritative. But it doesn't feature equivalent experts who support visa tightening for security or workforce reasons.
Typical NPR writing.
Universities and research are already struggling because of poor leadership and lack of investment, not because of international students. In the 2023-2024 academic year, international student numbers only comprised ~6% of the total U.S. enrollments.
At Stanford, 36% of graduate students are international students (2024-2025 AY). While there are very good reasons for this, I think it's hard to argue that international students are not displacing US students, at least in grad school. For undergraduates, the number is 9% (2023-2024 AY). Stanford has tremendous financial resources and a main campus that is more than 12 square miles in size. They could grow the size of their student body if they wanted to.
Well, that was the case up until this year.
The real barrier for many Americans is the cost of tuition, not competition with international students. That is where government and universities need to step up with better funding and support. Also, many international students stay in the U.S. after graduating, contributing to the economy and research. The problem is underfunding and poor policy decisions at the national level, not the presence of international students.
We need these Unis to cut costs and administrators. Propping up waste through courting rich foreigners is not a long-term solution.
The loans not being dischargable in bankruptcy does not help, but it was Republicans who were against those reforms.
Is that you Donnie?
You could attend a university for about $10k per year in 1990. You are suggesting college now costs $210,000 per year. Thats with a 2,000 percent increase.
EDIT: Corrected so I don't look stupid.
Quick web search:
University of Georgia - enrollment up 3%
Ohio State - enrollment up 2.3%, highest in history
University of Alabama - enrollment exceeds 40,000 for first time in history
University of Michigan - couldn’t find enrollment, but it reported a record number of applications
The reason I characterize it this way is college tuition has skyrocketed. The same thing happens in private schools—wealthy grandparents are common enough that children without wealthy grandparents are much less likely to be able to go to private school.
But it's just how prices work. If you're selling widgets for $5 each, and a new batch of customers come along who are willing to pay $10 for a widget, guess what your per-widget price is now. If you can't sell them all for $10, you might put the rest on sale for $5, but only after you've served all the $10 customers.
The universities are still taking some domestic and/or scholarship students too, but they're naturally giving preference to the full-paying ones.
Could there be other factors driving up tuition? Maybe, but student loans have been around for a long time, and I don't know that they've gotten a lot easier to get. Maybe the recent talk about student loan forgiveness has made some people more casual about taking on debt, assuming it will be forgiven, but that's questionable. The growth in international student enrollment is the one big obvious change.
If you look at the data here [1] you can see there is a wide range of tuition costs for the top 100 universities in the USA, going as low as 6000 usd with the average in-state cost at 17,000 usd.
The most prestigious ones are more expensive. Why is that? A very significant part is the network effect people are buying, they are hoping to either get to know well off or connected colleagues, finish a thesis under a prestigious professor or just simply to have a degree from the fancy university. This is all in an attempt to get ahead. This effect is there regardless of any international students.
[1]: https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/best-schools/us-top-10...
Adding capacity isn't cheap. That gets passed on to the "customers". Which also raises the price for Americans.
>The money that comes in from foreign students can pay for additional capacity.
No, the cost gets spread out among all the customers. There are no mechanisms where discriminatory pricing kicks in, and only the foreign students pay for the additional capacity.
Uh, state universities often have a mechanism for that, its called “out of state tuition”.
There is exactly such a mechanism. The foreign students pay more!
I don't have the exact figures to crunch the numbers (and I doubt you do either), but it's pretty implausible to suggest that foreign students are somehow a loss maker for US universities. If foreign students were a net loss, then universities wouldn’t be so keen to admit them. And if they're profitable then they pay for their seats.
The US university system is an incredible national asset. There are incalculable benefits to having the world's best universities attracting the best students from all over the world. That some Americans have managed to convince themselves that this is a bad thing is enough to turn my brain inside out.
Yep.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/26/g-s1-35654/trump-internationa...