International Students and Privatization

The Daily Targum has an editorial today on College Budgets: Filling the Gaps, which points to a New York Times article (Taking More Seats on Campus, Foreigners also Pay the Freight) about the University of Washington's efforts to recruit international students to help make up for cuts in state support.  The writer suggests this is a good model for Rutgers, and I can tell you that Rutgers is already doing this, though on a much smaller scale than UW.  Maybe we should all ask ourselves if we agree with the Targum editorial writer, though, that this is a generally positive trend:

Still, there may be some value to be found in this trend — and the pros do seem to outweigh the cons. Yes, some in-state residents are denied certain opportunities. But on the other hand, at a time when the only other alternative for these schools seems to be cutting valuable programs and laying off instructors — or worse, raising tuition prices for all students — looking to the term bills of more international students for extra cash may be the lesser of two evils.

All we can say for sure is that both the trend and the Targum writer's reaction to it are more evidence that we have all come to accept the privatization of public education as a given.