At this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival, a panel consisting of university presidents dismissed the idea that American universities ought to limit the amount of international students they admit.
Such concerns, sparked by the increasing amount of international students admitted by elite universities such as UC Berkeley — where international students made up roughly 9 percent of the university’s incoming freshman class for Fall 2017 — miss the point of fostering “global diversity” on college campuses.
These head administrators stressed that college admissions are not a zero-sum game between Americans and foreigners. Yale President Peter Salovey argued that international students, by contributing to university research programs, stimulate the economy, which in turn benefits all Americans. They also claim a myriad of other benefits come from admitting more international students. Carol Christ, the chancellor of UC Berkeley, made the argument that serving students from countries abroad expands American “soft power” on the international stage.
But what Christ and Salovey fail to mention is that their universities receive more tuition money per international student than per native student, a truth that applies to more schools than just Berkeley and Yale. In 2015, public universities in the U.S. received $9 billion in revenue from international students, meaning that a group which constitutes only 12 percent of the American student body makes up 28 percent of public university annual tuition revenues.
At most American universities, public and private alike, tuition rates are higher for international students than native students. It’s simply more profitable to admit the former over the latter. So, it should come as no surprise that elite institutions with ballooning deficits feel compelled to admit more international students in order to foot their bills.
This doesn’t mean that universities such as Berkeley and Yale aren’t genuinely concerned about promoting “global fluency” or increasing the academic performance of their universities by admitting more international students. A world-class education will certainly require broad and wide-ranging familiarity with the world’s peoples and cultures, many of which place a premium on academic competitiveness.
However, we should not let these legitimate reasons obscure the more pressing motivation behind the push for “global diversity” on college campuses — in a word, money. Are we not to suspect that Salovey’s ultimate concern — figuring out how to admit more students to universities already facing massive student housing crises — isn’t covering the massive operating costs of these bloated institutions?
Consumers should be especially wary of stated rationales meant to convince taxpayers to go along with a policy that will ultimately hurt our children. The more international students admitted to a taxpayer-funded university like UC Berkeley, the fewer American students that have a chance to go to one of the most elite public institutions in the world. At some point, we must make the determination as to where the benefits of “global diversity” at top universities reach a point of diminishing returns. At what point are we depriving Americans of the education they deserve?
Unfortunately for American youth, it seems as if university presidents still aren’t talking about the issue honestly. An honest discussion can’t be had unless the profit motive behind admitting international students is openly discussed. In fact, an honest discussion can’t be had unless we finally admit to ourselves that universities are no longer ivy towers for the pursuit of truth, but businesses, plain and simple.
The bottom line has become just as important — if not more important — than educating America’s brightest.
