November 16, 2013

Bait and Switch, higher ed style

A press release from the University of Southern California:
USC leads nation in international students for 12th year 
By Merrill Balassone 
For the 12th year in a row, USC accounted for more international students than any other American institution of higher education, according to the annual Open Doors report released on Nov. 11 by the Institute of International Education. 
During the 2012-13 academic year, USC hosted 9,840 international students, according to the institute. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Purdue University were ranked second and third, respectively, in the report. 
Chinese students represented the largest segment of USC’s international population with 3,771. Students from India were the second-largest group with 1,806.

I suspect a sizable fraction of USC's foreign students have an image in their heads of what Southern California is like from viewing Baywatch reruns and the like. And then they arrive at USC in lovely South-Central L.A. ...

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Money talks and nobody walks.

Dumb rich kids go to USC.
Smart rich kids go to Stanford.
Smart poor kids go to Cal.
Dumb poor kids go to Santa Cruz.

Whiskey said...

I visited USC in the 90's. As I entered, police were cordoning off the street and marking with cones the spent brass casings from a shooting, with a car sheeted over, just about 50 yards down from the gated entrance.

The campus itself is very nice. The neighborhood is a war zone.

And Chinese media is regularly aflame with the murders by Blacks in the neighborhood of Chinese students. One day "the wrong one" will be murdered, one with pull, power, and princeling parents. If Bo Xilai and his wife could kill their court retainer, over money arguments, imagine the only child being killed.

Big Bill said...

There really ought to be some Mandarin language training camp for Chinese students coming to SoCal so the could avoid getting offed like those two Chinese dudes did in the BMW a couple years ago.

If it was in Mandarin, the local SoCal Chinese colony could give them the straight skinny on NAMs and keep them from getting killed.

Then again, the Chinese colony may be so large now that the Chinese students may already be doing it for their countrymen as a part of "Orientation Week".

Anonymous said...

I'm a USC student. I've been here for nearly 6 years now, just about to finish my MS in engineering after two bachelor's It's a completely different place than it was 20 years ago, so many of you have an outdated picture in mind.

The neighborhood isn't great, but it's not nearly as bad as commonly believed. It has improved substantially since I've been here and in the years prior. Crime actually isn't a tremendous concern anymore. Petty crime happens, but it's not something most people give much thought to.

In my time here, only three students have been murdered (total enrollment is ~40k). One student was stabbed in a fight that got out of hand, and two Chinese students were gunned down a good ways west of campus (widely known to be a shady area). Amusing aside: they were both electrical engineering grad students and were driving a white BMW. A good friend of mine also happens to be a Chinese EE grad student with a white BMW. He promptly called his family in China to assure them he wasn't one of the two.

I think the area is less dangerous than in the past for three reasons. First, blacks have largely been displaced by Hispanics in the surrounding neighborhood and throughout South Central. There are only a few predominantly black neighborhoods left in LA. South Central was possibly the most dangerous place in the country in the early 90s, but that's no longer the case. Hispanics tend to be poor and not terribly bright, but they don't share blacks' penchant for crime and anti-social behavior. In fact, their crime rates seem roughly on par with whites of the same SES.

Second, security is pretty tight these days. The neighborhood is patrolled 24/7, and you can't get on campus at night without an ID. This seems to have driven away most of the black panhandlers that were common even a few years ago. Third and finally, the factors driving the general reduction in crime across the US have affected this area as well. (In fact, I speculate that immigration induced break-up of black ghettos may have been one of those factors nationally.)

Quality of life is generally much improved. A few decades ago, most students commuted, so there was little incentive to develop the neighborhood. That's no longer the case, as virtually all undergraduates live on campus or in the immediate vicinity. Several large upscale apartment/shopping complexes have been built since I've been here and there are a number of new restaurants. It's not Westwood, but it's fine for students. LA's recently gentrified downtown is also easily accessible. The only major complaint I have is the lack of a good coffee shop.

For the record, I spent five years here without a car or even a bike (not many Angelenos can say that). I've walked the neighborhood and ridden Metro with LA's worst, so I'm not talking out of my ass.

Dumb rich kids go to USC.
Smart rich kids go to Stanford.
Smart poor kids go to Cal.
Dumb poor kids go to Santa Cruz.


This may have been true two decades ago, but not anymore. The average SAT composite at USC and Berkeley are basically the same, ~2100. Couldn't find the Stanford number in 30 seconds of searching, but I would guess ~2250, maybe a little less. I got over 2300 with zero prep (I was profoundly lazy in high school, because I could get away with it) and came to SC in large part because they offered me a merit scholarship. I will say, however, that Berkeley's STEM departments are superior (arguably the best in the world).


Steve Sailer said...

The billboards around USC are now in Spanish, so the neighborhood's a lot safer then when the billboards were for Kools and grape soda.

Anonymous said...

Well I thought that Southern California was like Baywatch.


AKAHorace

Anonymous said...

"And Chinese media is regularly aflame with the murders by Blacks in the neighborhood of Chinese students. One day "the wrong one" will be murdered, one with pull, power, and princeling parents. If Bo Xilai and his wife could kill their court retainer, over money arguments, imagine the only child being killed." - Any wealthy, powerful, and smart Chinese have done an end run around the one child policy.

jody said...

haven't been to USC since i went to the coliseum in 2003 to see metallica. the area wasn't that great back then. could be better now that the mexicans have run the africans out of town.

there's a surprising number of international students at purdue. probably for the engineering department. this is what i was talking about in indiana. some ivy quality high schoolers there definitely take a pass on the big name east coast schools and just go to state universities instead.

jody said...

"Money talks and nobody walks."

nobody walks in LA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_UpLtGEWoY

Anonymous said...

The College of the Sequoias in Visalia has a tremendous JC football team, filled with huge, fast DLs and DBs from the south. These are mostly dudes who got scholarship offers from SEC teams but couldn't qualify academically. A friend who goes there knows a few of the football players. Apparently when they're recruited they're told Visalia is right on the beach and their time there is going to be a two year parade of hot blondes and umbrella drinks. Then they get there.

When you stop and think about how hard it would be to fail to qualify academically at LSU or Alabama, you realize why it's so easy for recruiters to trick these kids.

Anonymous said...

Any wealthy, powerful, and smart Chinese have done an end run around the one child policy.

Party members and government officials don't have a choice. Having a second child on the way is a de facto resignation. I was surprised to hear that Chinese government figures are held so strictly to this rule, but it's apparently the reality. And that's probably why China has had these superlative economic growth numbers since capitalism was phased in 3 decades ago. While corruption is pervasive, it's less so that in just about every non-Western country out there, in the sense that some rules also apply to government officials, even in the key area of how many children they can have.

Anonymous said...

Are you mocking me?

You're new here. No, he's not mocking you.

I'm Mockacus said...

Sheesh, wouldn't that be just like a USC student, hastening to comment on a post about (sort of) USC

Anonymous said...

Does anyone argue that Hispanics commit violent crimes at a rate anywhere close to blacks?

No. Nobody argues that. However, contra Unz and La Griffe, Hispanics commit a lot more crime than whites. See here.

Raybury said...

It would be interesting to know how many of these students are fresh off the flight from New Delhi as opposed to members of immigrant families that have been here a few years, but learned of benefits available by posing as new arrivals. (In possible imitation of Indonesian student Barry Soetero.)

When I relocated 8 years ago, I recall hearing that the Indian family that owned the extended stay hotel where my employer boarded me for four weeks in fact lived in the low-income apartment complex next door. Given a large enough family, someone's income can be suppressed to qualify for these things.

Discard said...

It's always important to remember that Hispanic social statistics are generally doctored in order to make them appear to be more intelligent, less violent, and less parasitic than they really are. The only real reason for Whites to prefer them to Blacks is the personal nature of most of their murders. No polar bear hunting or knockout king. They limit their hate crimes to Blacks as a rule.

rob said...

The billboards around USC are now in Spanish, so the neighborhood's a lot safer then when the billboards were for Kools and grape soda.

Are you mocking me?


I guess I can't really answer for Sailer, but it wasn't mockery.

Because the area went black -> hispanic, crime went down, and the billboard ads went from black -> hispanic.

It was a bit of a joke, but Sailer was also pointing out a way for drivers or whatever to find (and avoid) bad 'hoods.

Saying that hey, hispanics are bad, but blacks are way worse it sounds a bit like you're echoing the SWPL (for lack of better term) position: We bring in tons of Mexicans, supress wages, drive blacks out to prey on non-urban whites (the wrong kind of whites). We get docile servants! You get mugged and group-stomped, So it's a win-win!

I don't think you meant it that way all, for what it's worth.