It seems the administration wants to curb the quality and quantity of research done by foreign students at United States universities. The administration may have tapped the best and the brightest corporate minds for inclusion in the cabinet (see: Paul O'Neil, I suppose), but it seems to have no clue on what actually happens on America's college campuses. Like, for instance, who does a lion's share of this country's cutting edge scientific and engineering research. Even though they don't know, they can find out in the linked Associated Press article. The money sentence is: "About half of graduate students in the physical sciences and engineering come from abroad." (Aside: since the faculty come from the graduate student corps, let's take a guess at what the physical science and engineering faculty population is like?)
Comments (4)
Perhaps there's an important lesson here about the use of tax dollars to fund private research. Not only is it inappropriate, but it's also going to come with strings attached.
Posted by David Nieporent | January 3, 2003 4:20 PM
Posted on January 3, 2003 16:20
Of course grant money is going to come with strings attached (I mean, the gov't just doesn't hand out the money to anybody who wants it -- requirements need to be met). The question is, what are the strings that will be attached?
I suppose that after 75 years of scientific research unparallelled in world history, foreign scholars are the problem (75 years? Think of Einstein at Princeton to the grad students working today). The administration believes that foreign scholars are the strings that need to be pulled. Is there a history of grad students spying? Of foreign faculty sabatoge?
No. They're just foreign, so let's stop them from doing what they're doing. Let's stop the scientific research. Even if it benefits this country.
Posted by Partha Mazumdar | January 5, 2003 1:24 AM
Posted on January 5, 2003 01:24
Klaus Fuchs says hello.
Posted by David Nieporent | January 5, 2003 4:26 AM
Posted on January 5, 2003 04:26
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology walked away from a $404,000 study because the government wanted to restrict participation by foreign students.
Don't you have enough faith is the correctness of your position that you deliberately obfuscate? First you make the following silly statement: "It seems the administration wants to curb the quality and quantity of research done by foreign students at United States universities." Do you really believe that military research is of better quality that non-military research? And do really think that the administration wants to limit the quantity as oppose to the type of research done by foreign students?
You know that is not the real issue. In fact you state the real issue in your comment to David. "Is there a history of grad students spying? But even here you refuse to stick to the issue by adding the following statement "Of foreign faculty sabatoge (sic)?" when that has nothing to do with the administration's position.
You also state "Think of Einstein at Princeton to the grad students working today)." How many misrepresentations can be gleaned from this one sentence. To start off with, Einstein was a faculty member not a graduate student. He was a professor in Europe. Second, he worked for a private research organization, The Institute for Advanced Studies, and not Princeton University. Third, the US government did not support research in those days. All research was privately funded. It was not until the war started that the US started to fund research directly. Fourth, while the US did fund the Manhattan Project, Einstein was not on the project. His famous letter to Roosevelt is what helped get the project started. Otherwise, he had nothing to do with it or any other war research.
Posted by Richard | January 5, 2003 10:01 AM
Posted on January 5, 2003 10:01