Time to focus on National Security issues, since CONgress will not.
We have many, many Nat Sec issues that CONgress COULD solve but refuses to do so.
For today, I want to talk about University R&D and Student numbers.
America has for decades brought in foreign students to study and do research here. We have even hired a number of these within our universities. However, for the last 20+ years, we have been heavily targeted by just a few nations with focus on various science degrees/research. This is more of issue for foreign-born professors. With a number of these professors, they take in mostly students from their own nations and not America or other foreign nations. For all intents and purposes, these professors are training students to take various research back to their nation and ONLY their nation. Add to that, universities are focused more on foreign students for degrees that all nations want/need.
CONgress needs to do several things to fix this:
1) require that the results of the R&D that is paid by America, remain in America. IOW, if we funded more than 50% of the R&D, then any patents AND manufacturing/usage, needs to remain here.
2) For all research grants/labs, > 50% of the students on the grants MUST be American. Not Green Cards, but American citizen, who is likely to remain here. In addition, the other 100% support for next semester.
b) 3.0-3.5 => 75%.
c) 2.5-3.0 => 50%.
d) a free application to McDonalds.
We need to make this grade based to encourage students to work at it. Note that even if they pay for the next semester, but pull their grades up, they get back on track. I further suggest that if the student comes from a poorly rated high school/school district, then for the first 2 semesters, the above scale is dropped by .5, while the student must also take remedial courses to address their short coming (i.e. math, reading, how to study, etc).
4) Ok, so what fields/trades does America need? Well, at this time, we are limited, but in the future, the needs will shift. In the mean time, the core fields will likely be hard sciences (physics, chem, bio-chem, etc), Most bio science, Math, Computer Science, Robotics, engineering, medicine (nursing, Paramedic, EMT, etc), teaching, with trades like Construction, plumbing, electrician, Police, etc. What do we NOT need? How about nearly all business, most liberal arts, Beautician, and esp. Political science.
Note that by society paying for these needed AS/BS, it will drive many more of our students into these fields, and still have relatively high paying jobs when they get out. And this is without incurring large amounts of debt.
From National Security POV, it keeps the research here, while also increasing the number of Americans in needed fields, without the severe debt that we have had in recent times.
