[mlnj]

>US colleges openly and actively discriminate against US citizens for grad school spots for 2 or 3 decades now.

Isn't this just because foreign students pay more than citizens? Isn't this just capitalism and the free market efficiently allocating resources?

Something about 'having the cake and eating it too'.

[jakeydus]

Not just that, universities (especially smaller research universities) love having grad students whose research is paid for. China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil (less so now than in the past), Qatar, and others have all had programs for years where they paid the tuition and research costs of students at universities. Why would the university not pick that over a local kid who the university has to pay for out of their own coffers?

[bonsai_spool]

> Not just that, universities (especially smaller research universities) love having grad students whose research is paid for.

> Why would the university not pick that over a local kid who the university has to pay for out of their own coffers?

Universities don't pay for research - and departments usually don't pay for research either.

At the margin, a professor will prefer someone who has her own funding, but that person also needs to be competent, so I doubt the national schemes you are citing have made an impact on who gets into graduate school.

[gottorf]

To be fair, not many parts of the US higher education system can be accurately described as free markets or capitalism.