NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/soc/culture/china/35289

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From: [e-mail] (Charles Roten)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Re: L.S.U. Professor says Indians Suck !!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 26 Jan 93 23:25:44 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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Organization: The COBE project ???  Organized ?!?!?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!
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In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (Ya-Gui Wei) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
>(YOSSARIN ARAM) writes:

>>       Though the article in the newspaper was not totally justified
>>       nor was the CEP article we should accept some of the facts at
>>       its face value with out reading between the lines:
>>       Asians are taking over the gradute schools in the US.
>>       The Asians accept lower salaries and wages which results in
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>       undercutting.
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^

Nope.  Wrong.  The stipends TAs get in fields like mathematics suck
whether or not they are citizens.  The money is not there, and the
supply of teachers, whether native or foreign, GREATLY exceeds the
demand.  What happens next is an easy exercise.

>>                     Some of them have problems of communicating with
>>       the natives, the Chinese are bad bad bad.

>The Chicago Tribune ran a series of articles, in response to the recent
>Zoe Baird saga, on the issue of immigrants (legal or otherwise) "taking
>jobs from Americans" by working as nannies and in other domestic
>services. I found the following quote of one of the immigrant workers
>very revealing: "Never before have I seen an American doing my kind of
>job."

Thats right.

But it goes further than that.  Immigrants who work in this country,
legally or otherwise, _create_ _as_ _many_ _jobs_ _as_ _they_ _consume_.

An economy is not a zero-sum game.  This is the point folks who make
the assertion that 'they are taking our jobs' miss completely.

Suppose John J. Immigrant lands a job in the U.S..  Where will he live ?
He surely will not commute to his country of origin !  The apartment he
rents is one that would be vacant were he not here.  The car he has to
buy is one more than the market would absorb before he arrived.  The same
logic extends to all his dealings with American markets.  Multiply him by
thousands, and markets come into existence that were not there before.
The demand for things like housing grows, and given a reasoanably healthy
financial sector, so does the number of housing and apartment starts.

>The American undergraduate student body has the right to complain to
>school administrators about the quality of education they are getting.
>But they have no right to blame their trouble on the foreign TAs. If
>they really want TAs who speak excellent English, they should blame
>their older fellow Americans for not being interested in Math and
>Science but rather crowd into subject areas where they can make quickie
>money like law, business and medicine.

>While the American students were busy chasing the quickie cash, the
                                                                 ^^^
>Math department is having a lot of recruiting headaches. Even though
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>the admission standard is much higher for foreign graduate students
>than for Americans, they still can't find enough qualified Americans
>who are interested in the area. They have a serious supply problem.
                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>What is the Math department to do?  They can either admit foreign
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>students and offer than TAship, or they can close down the graduate
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>programs and cancel the Math classes (they can't find anybody to teach
 ^^^^^^^^
>them!).  I suppose the undergraduate student would be more happy not
>having math classes to take than having to take them from foreign TAs?

Ya-Gui hit the nail pretty squarely on the head here .. though a math
department hard up for staff _could_ find teachers for its basic courses
from the population os U.S. citizens more easily than one might imagine.
I've seen it done.  But the graduate program is the real point of
contention here.

You want to know where the 'blame' for the increasingly foreign-
dominated graduate programs should go ?  I'll tell you where ..

   --- The !&%%$#*&%! university Deans and Department Heads ---

It works like this.

5 years ago, I was an assistant professor newly arrived at Mississippi
State University, to work in the Math Department.  Now, the state had
just approved the formation of a Ph.D. program in that department.
There was much rejoicing in the halls and offices .. a Ph.D. program
confers prestige on a department and makes grants easier to get, at
least in theory.  Never mind the fact that the faculty, for the most
part, were not qualified to advise Ph.D. candidates sweating out their
thesis work .....

But there was this one little problem .....

At that time, there were 150 math Ph.D. programs on U.S. universities.
But there were only enough academic positions to absorb the output of 50
or so.  Hence, the conditions of employment stank.  So did salaries.  Then
there were the 'joys' of job searches where 60 letters _might_ turn up one
lonely offer.  And departmental politics which made Republican Rome's look
open, kind, and honest.  Morale was very often lousy, and untenured
faculty lived in constant fear of their careers.  In fact, things are
pretty much the same today.

Now, American kids are generally turned off to math early, due to our
lousy primary and secondary school systems.  But the ones who are not,
are also not fools.  So they avoid the (artificially inflated) math
graduate programs like the Black Death crossed with AIDs.

So the question: 'where are we going to find the students ?' arose in a
faculty meeting one fine day.  The department head smiled, and said: 'Oh,
we'll just recruit them from the PRC'.

The basic problem is that there are just TOO MANY GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN
U.S. UNIVERSITIES !!  Especially in math and physics, where the job
market is slim in academia and damned near nonexistent outside it.  To
make matters more absurd, many of these programs are marginal at best.

But don't expect this to change any time soon.  The faculty, and _most_
_especially_ the deans and department heads, who fought for these programs
the hardest, will_NEVER_ willingly part with them.

>The whole business of complaints about immigrants "undercutting
>American salaries" is obscene.

It is also inaccurate, when it comes down to professional and academic
employment.  I am a USDA-certified American citizen.  And my stipend as
a TA was so small I couldn't afford a car.  That is just how it is in a
graduate program in mathematics, that's all.

 [rest deleted]

--
Charles Roten | Hughes-STX, Incorporated |
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