Both can be (and likely are) true at the same time.

It’s great place for grad school. Very little to do other than study and lab work. Play soccer with the grad students, float on the river in the summer, shoot potato gun cannons in corn fields, but otherwise there’s nothing better to do than work on a PhD.

I’d recommend it for grad school. But then yea time to move on.

>This is good policy. Chinese students in particular seem to have terrible english language skills. An American with the same communication skills would never be admitted to a flagship university for undergrad, let alone grad school.

Surely there are better ways of dealing with this than banning an entire country? A standardized English test doesn't seem too hard to administer, for instance, and would have the benefit of being applicable to other countries.

>I'm not sure how these Chinese students are gaming the system to get admitted, but I'm glad someone is finally doing something about it.

So you're not even sure what the problem is, but you're okay with banning it? That dumber than banning them because they might be CCP spies or whatever. At least that vaguely makes sense and there are isn't really a mitigation (there's no standardized tests for non-CCP spies, for instance).

What about this policy has anything to do with English language skills? And how is this “good policy” if it penalizes important next-generation researchers even when they speak English well? I am not denying your observation re: English language skills among Chinese graduate students—it’s just unclear what this solves that checking for English language skills during the live video interview stage does not.

If you have grievances with some foreign students having terrible English language skills, regardless of how well it generalizes to the student's country, why would you complain about those students? Wouldn't you rather complain about how badly standardized tests like TOEFL are at evaluating admitted students? Or complain about how universities don't set the standard high enough? Foreign students need a good enough score on a standardized English test to study in US universities. Overall this is a confusing comment.

Those chinese also have better science and math scores. Acting like english is some super barrier is absurd jiongoism.

No buts.

The article says nothing about English language skills. It says:

'University officials have described the unwritten policy as a prudent response to the current uncertainty facing Chinese and other foreign students when they apply for visas to study in the United States. “They are telling us that these foreign students may not show up if we offer them a position,” the faculty member says. “And that could jeopardize our research.”'

My wife teachers in universities in London, and the issue of Chinese students turning up with little or no English is real, often having paid for someone else to take the required English language tests for them. She has had students write their essays in Chinese and then just copied and pasted from Google Translate, generating utterly unintelligible dross. But that is definitively not the explanation here - this is all Chinese students, proficient in English or not.

> gaming the system to get admitted

Probably money. Foreign students will almost always pay sticker price.

>Chinese students in particular seem to have terrible english language skills.

English, not english.

In 1935, Albert Einstein relocated to Princeton permanently, so it's certainly an odd choice of a year in this context.

Random graduate students won't work on classified projects. The vast majority of non-classified studies will not have any impact on national security for years to come. It's unclear what the actual risks are, beyond the general distrust of foreigners.

Realpolitik dictates that you don't start conflicts with all of your allies for literally no reason

China as the enemy is a fabricated narrative, bc culturally we seem to have a need to have another cold war, we need a "bad guy"

in reality theyre just economic rivals. But then again so are the EU.

in terms of zone of political influence the competition isnt anything crazy (except for the poor taiwanese caught in the middle) and there is no clash of political ideaologies

In my experience Chinese in China don't typically see the US as an enemy. Its a weird framing for them

The flip-side of enrolling your enemies is that they form lifelong friendships with both the local students and the country as a whole. It makes it a lot harder to hate a country once you get to know them.

Umm. The best physics work in the world was being done by European academics and admitting them then and earlier was perhaps the best thing that happened both for American science & tech as well as the ability to wage war.

What? In fact, we did make it difficult for "German grad students in Physics" to immigrate here [1].

Fortunately for us -- very fortunately -- we found a way to accommodate them and keep them on our side.

1: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/09/22/how-ivy-leagu...

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The metaphor might make more sense with US in the role that was invading on pretexts to try to recover the self image of a strange looking leader.

Then you should have a policy that says "English only during office hours", not one that says "no foreign grad students admitted".

These students had already received an acceptance letter, so possibly they already turned down other positions based on that letter.