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Comment by nextos | Hacker News Reader

> The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities

Some EU countries offer scholarships to attract good foreign undergrads and grad students to their universities. The whole point is that they stay afterwards, and they try really hard to keep them. It's been proven to be quite economically profitable, see e.g. [1]. I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. But that would not make sense for top universities where there is a fierce competition for spots.

[1] https://www.dtu.dk/english/newsarchive/2022/11/udenlandske-s...

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> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services.

Seems like you understand the point after all :)

US tertiary education is the perfect export good: Like other intellectual property, it's almost infinitely fungible, and parents from all over the world will part with staggering amounts of money for it.

The quality is definitely high, but the markup compared to other countries' universities is something else.

It's not just money - the ability to educate the rest of the world's elites is a form of soft power.

For Master's degree it makes sense because the students pay tuition. For most PhDs, the students don't pay tuition and get an additional stipend, so it doesn't make sense. Plenty of (most?) PhD grads stay but we are currently paying international students to do their PhD and then provide very little incentive for them to stay afterwards.

Japan is very good at this. They’re essentially like “You got someone willing to pay you? Cool, come on in.” Then after 5 years you can (if you want) naturalize, and after 10 you can get permanent residency.

No random nation based limits like the US somehow has.

should we be looking to Japan for advice on how to grow an economy?

Growing the economy is no longer an option for the US, we need to worry about managing our inevitable decline and likely collapse.

I think you should be looking to them for advice on how to not grow an economy without having everyone collapse in despair.

> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on

US schools attract international students because most will pay full tuition, subsidizing costs for local students.

i.e. they're mostly not looking for good ones, just paying ones.

Not true at the PhD level

> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services.

Another reason would be to generate goodwill and potential future business relations for your country. Can be pretty valuable for your export-oriented businesses.

> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on

Exporting knowledge, culture and contacts

Colleges want international students because they pay full price and don’t get financial aid.

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