Simple Text Format - Systemic elimination of American Students from STEM Majors
Subject: Systemic
elimination of American Students from STEM Majors
I am writing this
letter to bring your attention to the increasing trend of foreign students
being accepted over US citizens and lawful permanent residents from 2008
onwards in the University of California system in STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Math) Majors and more and more (STEM) jobs being awarded to
non- American citizens. It is a nationwide phenomenon; the same problem is
present in universities in other states also. Even the community colleges and
state universities have been taking much larger population of foreign students
and the percentage of foreign students is much higher in prestigious private
schools. For example: around 85-90% of
students coming from India are going in STEM majors. It is not that foreign
students became more intelligent after 2008, graduating students from CA high
schools applying to UC’s are far better prepared now. Please go through this
letter to understand the main reasons behind sharp increase of foreign students
in universities across United States. As we all know the college admissions
process is not very transparent and can be easily gamed, this problem is forcing
domestic students to get STEM education in expensive private universities or
choose Non-STEM major.
UC Info center is a
very useful website published by UC’s and you can clearly see that in most
desirable campuses such as UC Berkley, UC San Diego, UCLA, and UCI, number of
foreign students in STEM majors in undergraduate level has gone up by many
folds since 2008.
At UC San Diego –
Foreign students Undergraduate students in Physical Sciences went up from 3% to
30% from 2008 to 2018.
At UCLA – Foreign
students Undergraduate students in Physical Sciences went up from 7% to 31%
from 2008 to 2018.
At University of
California Info center, you can see exactly when the foreign student population
started growing at much faster pace in University of California system. We
spent lot of time at University of California info center in extracting the
data for purpose of this study.
Even though there
might a system wide cap of foreign students established by UC’s, still in STEM
majors percentage of foreign students went up drastically from 2008 – 2018 at
various UC campuses.
I am a very active
member volunteer at my son’s middle/high schools and became aware of this trend
through fellow parents who had older kids going through the college admissions
process. I have spent around 700 plus hours of my time in researching this
subject, creating 30 plus blogposts and
posting 36 videos on you tube.
I discovered through further research that it
has become more difficult for US citizens and lawful permanent residents living
in California to get admission in University of California system especially in
the STEM majors. Possibility of getting higher paying jobs for legal US
residents is going down due to this phenomenon.
Percentage of
foreigners at graduate level is much higher when compared to same percentage at
undergraduate level due to few other reasons but we primarily focused on
undergraduate level in this study.
Primary focus of
this study was to look into various causes and implications of increase in
number of foreign students at Undergraduate level at UC’s after year 2008.
Similar trends can be observed at other great universities across the United
States. We tried our best to get as much
data as possible from government or public or very reputed websites, all the
web references have been shown at the top in the videos and also listed on the
blogpost pages. We have tried our best
to state the facts as it is and not give any opinions. This study was conducted to understand all
aspects of the issue. We used free online resources available in public domain.
We did not change any numbers or facts. We assume no responsibility or
liability for any errors or omissions in the content of these videos or
blogposts. The information contained in these videos or blogposts is provided
on an “as is” basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness or
timeliness…”
We are not against
foreign students attending US educational institutions, we want to make the
admissions process fair for domestic students.
All of the links and
sources of the documents and articles cited are on our blog posts.
Major factors for
increase of Non-US Citizen or Non-permanent resident student population are:
1. Foreign students are willing to pay the
highest tuition costs in the beginning but eventually they are able to find
work, which reduces their costs. Most of the foreign students are able to find
some sort of income generating work either legally or in unreported ways.
2. Budget cuts starting 2008 onwards and
increase in administrative, pension, and healthcare costs forced UC’s to raise
cash in other ways.
3. Extension of optional practical
training known as OPT program (unlimited OPT Visa spots for STEM majors) for
STEM majors to 3 years from one year and granting OPT after every degree such
as AA, BS, MS, PhD, which resulted in foreign students coming here at much
younger age and taking large percentage of STEM spots at undergraduate levels.
Percentage of foreign students at graduate level in STEM majors is
astronomically high. It is very easy to
get a job on OPT due to lower wages being offered to OPT candidates, prevalence
of gig economy and getting paid cash, lack of license requirement in many
professions etc., Expansion of the list of majors or study programs such as
business, accounting etc., which can qualify as STEM major thus making more
students eligible for OPT. Imagine foreign student coming here at the age of 18
and receiving three years of OPT after every degree, it assures their stay for
15-20 years. There are plenty of IT consulting companies in US which hire workers
on OPT. Large percentage of the workers in IT work as consultants, charging
American fees from clients but getting core work done in India and violate
other US labor laws.
US is awarding
around 200,000 plus OPT’s every year in addition to 85,000 H1-B’s and many other types of work visas.
4. Workers on H1-B, F-1, and OPT program
and many other types of visa categories can bring their spouses along with them
immediately after getting these types of visas and give birth to US citizens
which ultimately become eligible for free education and many other benefits through
our K-12 school system and social welfare system. Much older students have
started coming to US for higher education due to OPT extensions and awarding of
multiple OPT terms basically after every degree. Many have children in US so
children can sponsor their parents later.
OPT has become a major gateway of immigration not higher education.
5. Immigrants through DACA program
qualifying as California resident even though they are not US citizens nor
lawful permanent residents. UC’s are publishing misleading statistics,
percentage of US Citizens and lawful permanent residents is lower than the
published numbers, all students classified in CA residents category are not US
Citizens and lawful permanent residents.
6. Fraud in foreign credentials being
submitted to universities and lack of proper screening methods for foreign
education credentials at UC’s and other educational institutes
7. Exponential growth of educational
consultancy businesses and easy availability of higher education loans in Asian
countries are resulting in massive fraud in college admissions process such as
forging transcripts, credentials, references, resumes, applications,
application essays etc., educational consulting and tutoring is a 45 billion
industry in relatively poor country such as India and it is much bigger industry
in China. Our universities have
extremely limited source resources devoted to screening of applicants. As per
the data from global cities initiative report (joint project of Brookings
Institute and JP Morgan Chase), students from ten cities in the world are
almost 22% of foreign student population in US due to awareness and
availability of foreign education consultants in these cities.
8. Number of engineering colleges in
certain countries like India has grown 100 times over last 25 years resulting
in abundance of students who are willing to get out of India with any possible
way. A large percentage of these engineering colleges have very limited
resources to provide education, corrupt system allows these colleges to get
operational licenses. Employability of Indian educated engineers is less than
7% in India. Other countries are
exploiting our weaknesses to send more students here. Cost of education also
went up in India and other countries which led students to find all possible
ways to get out of there. India has reservation system in educational
institutes and most of the government jobs are given based on caste, ethnic
background and other factors. American
universities do not verify that students got admissions in general category or
reserved categories. Quotas in jobs and admissions to colleges at every level
for public entities including teaching jobs in public institutes, and
availability of fake degrees is very easy. There is no creativity in Indian
education system, education system is extremely corrupt. Quality of life has
gone down in India and other South East Asian countries due to horrible
pollution, lack of clean water, unhygienic living conditions, and adulteration
of food chain. People are desperate to leave their countries. Even a small country such as Nepal is sending
tens of thousands of students every year to US now. In India, corruption and
crime is widespread and backlog of judicial cases is up to 320 years as they do
not have enough courts and magistrates/judges.
9. Parents from Countries such as China,
Korea and other countries are dropping their kids in CA with local guardians at
much younger age and these kids are ultimately going to colleges here, many of
these receive free K-12 education here. Birth tourism from Asian countries has been
going on for decades.
10. Lack of guidance and even misguidance by
high school and college counselors to high school students in CA. Double
standards while screening domestic students versus foreign students for
admission into UC system. Opportunities for extracurricular activities, sports,
arts, and other activities are extremely rare in schools in a country like India
yet universities are accepting more foreign students.
11. School Districts do not check the
residency status frequently enough which results in enormous additional burden
for school districts as people abuse the free K-12 education system. Some
school districts in CA such as Death Valley school district are spending
$70,000 per year on each pupil enrolled.
12. Illegal immigrants, tourists, visa
overstays, asylum, and people on many other visa categories
intentionally arriving in the US for having their children born here to take
advantage of US citizenship by birth privilege and get many other benefits such
as free K-12 education. Giving a birth to child in United States is one of the
top priorities of workers on H1-B, OPT and workers in many other categories who
are not married to US citizen spouses.
There are many more
factors increasing the foreign students over Americans but this is being kept
brief. Other factors responsible for much higher percentage of foreign students
at graduate level are shorter waiting period to get permanent residency after
PhD, professors using students as cheaper research workers, dissecting one
research publication in to multiple, professors need to publish papers in order
to get their tenure, ethnic preference of students etc.,
Students graduating
from our CA high schools are much more academically ready for college; tuition
fees for domestic students have gone up yet the odds of securing a spot in good
majors such as STEM are decreasing every year.
https://foreignstudentsgrowth.blogspot.com/2018/09/stem-job-market-in-usa-stem-jobs-growth.html
As a concerned
parent and US citizen, I am requesting following solutions;
1. OPT should be only for one year and one
time only and not after every degree.
2. We need to institute proper screening
checks prior to granting admissions to foreigners to cut back on fraud in
college application process. Whatever written in the application package needs
to verified or foreign students need to be tested academically prior to
starting school in USA.
3. Need better screening methods before
granting immigrant visas or any other types of visas. Get rid of birth
citizenship as this is the biggest loophole which people on many visa
categories exploit to get resources from this country.
4. We need to establish a database of
fingerprints of students, students take classes and exams for each other, and
online education system is full of loopholes.
5. Eliminate double standards in college
admissions, and stop discrimination against domestic students.
6. Institute proper counselling and
guidance procedures at our educational institutes.
7. Need to adjust seats in various
disciplines as per the job market trends, we cannot provide subsidized
education for majors which might only have hobby value.
8. Strengthen our community college
education system to provide opportunities for vocational education. Vocational
education opportunities are very limited.
9. Provide opportunities of higher
education to those who are legally eligible to work in this country.
10. Many countries are benefitting with our
extensive research budget, we are educating foreign students who might be
selling out intellectual property to other nations. We need to spend money
wisely.
11. Encourage additional home schooling and
self-learning opportunities for high school students who wish to graduate with
STEM specializations. We need to give much more weightage to proctored tests
than those to assignments.
12. We need to check the residency
requirements in our K-12 schools every year to ensure students receiving free
education and other benefits do qualify by law for those benefits. Issuing
vouchers for education to legal citizens is another way to curb fraud.
Our laws should be
amended for only allowing US citizenship to those children born to at least one
parent who is already a US citizen, restricting foreign student admissions back
to pre-2008 levels, and reforming the DACA program. These are my suggestions to place American
citizens as first choice rather than second during University of California
admissions as well as during job placement.
I appreciate your
response on this issue, or if you have any better methods for us to do outreach
or solutions, I would appreciate knowing what they are.
Sincerely,
Mark
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