I have no relevant experience in academic finance, but I sincerely doubt it. The brand and reputation of the universities are what allows them to charge so much for tuition and get prestigious faculty (i.e. grant money).
International students are a boon for "good but not top" private colleges. Those lose a lot of money giving top students full rides to improve their ranking/chance at graduating a billionaire or something like that. They make it up by admitting tons of international students who pay full or near full price because back home any decent US degree is seen as amazing.
My sources are anecdotal but I went to a university like that. Some classes were 70% Chinese international.
I'd heard that seats at Harvard was going for $20 million per piece for internal students who wouldn't remotely qualify otherwise. There are always few seats like these reserved at most universities. If you do the math, that one guy basically covers the cost of his entire class.
The nature of the problem dictates it can't go on record. I can only add I've heard the same anecdotal from my international students, not necessarily about Harvard but similar higher-tier schools going for $50,000 admission, probably with more fees for a certain GPA.
The degrees for cash are sold abroad from what I've gathered. I highly doubt the money goes to Harvard directly-instead it probably pays off the service offering the degree first, with money to admissions directors, professors and whoever else needs to look the other way. It'd be hard to hide huge sums of money in the US system, but possible abroad with in-person or otherwise hidden pay offs to people on the inside in the USA.
> The brand and reputation of the universities are what allows them to charge so much for tuition and get prestigious faculty (i.e. grant money).
The effects of this issue are not widely understood by the general public. The general public think this kind of thing doesn't hurt the quality of education in the US. We know better.
Only we know because we all attended schools for science which are inundated with Chinese students, particularly at the graduate level.
The schools' reputations will not be hurt until someone sues them. I'm convinced someone in this thread could bring a case against their school and do a lot of good for the US educational system.
I'm not even sure where to start with this. I went to a fancypants-ish school in the University of Chicago which does not have a Harvard or Yale-sized endowment so they likely did care about tuition. We did indeed have a lot of Chinese undergrads and grad students. They were every bit as smart as anyone else there, so I doubt they were there because of their tuition money alone, but on their academic merits.
Also, your extension of the argument about STEM grad students doesn't make much sense because STEM grad students almost never have to pay for school, or at least didn't at the UofC. If you can fake your way through a Ph.D. physics program at a reputable university, you deserve the diploma.
I'm having a hard time reading your comment as anything other than a statement that you wish there were less Chinese students at your school just because you don't want them there. Did I completely miss your point here?
> Also, your extension of the argument about STEM grad students doesn't make much sense because STEM grad students almost never have to pay for school, or at least didn't at the UofC
At my grad department, 90 out of the 100 kids were Asian, and only 5 or so were PhD for that class year. The rest were MS and paying tuition.
> If you can fake your way through a Ph.D. physics program at a reputable university, you deserve the diploma.
Agreed :-D
> I'm having a hard time reading your comment as anything other than a statement that you wish there were less Chinese students at your school just because you don't want them there. Did I completely miss your point here?
Definitely !!! I graduated from my MS program 8 years ago. I live in Taiwan now and I love the Chinese culture and people. I don't like things that make it look bad. I admire Taiwan for its warless entrance into democracy and interesting history with China [1].
The bad parts of this story are ideas, not people. Ideas and people are separate. Hate the game, not the player. The idea that cheating is okay is one that can be criticized without attacking people for holding that idea. People face consequences for their actions. That does not make them bad people.
Besides, at a large research University, tuition is usually not the majority of their income (http://www.uiowa.edu/homepage/about-university/budget)