re: Trump doubles down on bringing in 500,000 Chinese students during interview with Hannity

I voted for trump 3 times. Ive finally reached the point where i dont even care anymore. Im done voting. I figure i’ll just sit back and watch the world burn

The Biden administration was on the WH lawn taking about "trans genocide" when elementary school kids killed on account of the same rhetoric hadn't been buried yet

So I do think the absence of that is notable. The Biden administration mandated use of "birthing parent" or similar in maternal materials from the US government. Probably dozens of other examples like this.

I *hope* that stuff was going to subside anyway, but I also think breaking the cycle of the long ramp up to that sort of through the looking glass rhetoric from the United States Government is really important. I don't think future administrations will be as incentivized to do it.

500,000???? Is this a joke? WTF?

quote:

---

So I do think the absence of that is notable. The Biden administration mandated use of "birthing parent" or similar in maternal materials from the US government. Probably dozens of other examples like this.

---

I'm glad all that shite is gone, for sure.


But it's just such small potatoes compared to the stuff in my previous post.

My life is much more impacted by inflation, wars, trade disruption, importing the 3rd world/china than the government creating the term "birthing parent". Maybe stuff like that is more important to some, but that's pretty far down my list of shite that needs correcting.

This is just stupid. Way to go Trump....great idea. Geez.
Colleges and farm prices wouldn't collapse. He is bought.

There are 18-20M students currently enrolled in 4-year and graduate colleges and universities across the US. 500k more Chinese students don't really move the needle in terms of taking away slots for US students, as we have already maxed out that segment and are seeing a cliff of domestic students for the next decade or so.

The more interesting part is that the total number of international students has been steady at around 1M since 2014, with 2026 now at 1.15M or so. What is more "interesting" is that, pre-COVID, the largest group was Chinese, around 380k, and that is now down to 265k, while Indian enrollment has almost doubled to 360k.

The 500k total number is a pie-in-the-sky value for both sides. China would love it for access to knowledge and a learning environment that can't be replicated in China (they have tried multiple times in higher ed and can't recreate the mindset needed to drive innovation). The US would love it because the revenue value would be around 25 billion to US colleges and universities (in a time where both state and federal funding have continued to dwindle). That would be more than 10% of all funding currently provided to colleges and universities at a time when the primary cost drivers (power, water, labor, and IT) are the areas most hit by inflationary pressures.

It will never happen in the near future because the logistics and systems needed to matriculate students to US universities in that scale, but it would have a major impact on the global higher ed market. Let's not forget that to take in the extra 150k Indian students, we are lowering the overall quality of students as we already pull the upper segment of students from India.

As someone who works with both business and STEM students, I would prefer to see an increase in international students across multiple groups while reducing the number of other international student segments. I want the best and the brightest, and we moved away from that via DEI and quotas. The sad fact is that we have pulled in all of the students from our true allies who want to come, and now it's picking from the basket of the lesser of the evils to provide revenue. As much as people want to complain about the Chinese, as a student population, they provide much more value as a whole than other segments we have been pulling from recently.

What really needs to be included in this is a major set of OPT reforms and the restructuring, if not the elimination, of H1B for entry-level positions, a drastic change in how we allow international students to do off-site paid internships, and a complete rework of how we police NIH, DOD, and other high-risk grant-funded research and student employment.

My concern is not with bringing students here for education. Many create real value through research and innovation. The sheer number of engineering and medical colleges that remain afloat thanks to institutional patents is staggering. My concern is that we increasingly bring students primarily for revenue and then allow them to enter the US workforce at a discount to American graduates. The model should be Educate. Innovate. Return home. This creates goodwill, strengthens future trading partners, and protects the integrity of the American workforce.

Fix the output mechanism, and the rest is manageable. If we refuse to do that, we should either massively reduce or even eliminate all student visas and then force state and federal governments to restore historical levels of direct percentage funding to universities. As long as public funding continues to decline as a share of institutional budgets, the international market will remain an irresistible revenue source because these students pay full out-of-state tuition.

quote:

---

Dems have f'd up over the last decade by going insane over Trump instead of kissing his arse. They would have been able to get some big policy wins while dragging Republicans even further to the left by doing so

---

The Dems blind loyalty to 2A infringement and immigration is what will keep the independent vote leaning to the right

quote:

---

Is there anything you won’t go to bat for?

---

I don't think there is anything Trump could do that would shake some people, there is no line.

quote:

---

Why do American politicians keep on thinking that China will like us and be our friends if we just keep being nice to them? I support Trump as much as any MAGA supporter but he has bumped his head on this one.

---

Because Trump is a spineless, moral less, corrupt neocon who can easily be bought out. He doesn’t give a shite about the average working class American.