Yesterday I congratulated a high school student on being admitted to a couple of colleges she had applied to, however she said she had not heard from her first choice—The University of Washington. I cautioned her that I had heard on the radio that even if a Washington resident had a 4.0 grade point average she still may not be admitted because UW was seeking foreign and out-of-state students because they paid higher tuition rates. My wife confirmed that a recent graduate of UW told her the same thing.
A quick search reveals that this is no secret and is happening many places. State Colleges Seeking More Out-of-State, International Students Amid Fiscal Crunch | Education News, July 211, 2011
Indeed, professional recruitment of foreign students is big business and many Big Education recruiters bring in unqualified students—in China college application fraud is rampant. College controversy: Recruiters get paid for foreign students, By Alan Scher Zagier, Associated Press, November 25, 2011.
But state taxpayers pay high taxes in the expectation that they are providing education opportunities for their own and local children—not foreigners. Ironically, the young lady wanting admission is herself a child of immigrants from Taiwan—but her place may be taken by a foreign student from China.
Romney often talked about stapling a green card to the diplomas of foreign college graduates—and there is actually a "staple bill" proposed which would accomplish this. Furthermore there is another bill farther along:
"HR 3012 simply reduces the wait time for green cards now experienced by low- and high-tech workers from China and India while adding to the wait time for EB-2 and EB-3 employment-based workers from other nations. It would do this by removing the country-of-origin numerical limits after a transition period." [Big Majority of Foreign PhDs Stay in the U.S. Many Years After Degree,By David North, CIS, January 19, 2012]
The same CIS article puts the number of Chinese PhD recipients who already stay in this country at 89%.
It is well known that Americans with existing jobs are frequently replaced by foreigners—often being required to train their own replacement under threat of losing all remaining benefits. A political candidate told me that he had observed this himself at Microsoft. However, taxpayers may be unaware that their children may not only be priced out of a job after graduation, but may be pushed out before even entering college. In spite of pretensions of academics, it appears the greed of universities is equal to that of corporate employers.
