Friday, June 2, 2023

Challenges Facing UK Higher Education

British universities can no longer financially depend on foreign students. They must reform to survive
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/02/british-universities-foreign-students-deficits-government-higher-education
Some universities, including Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield, UCL and Imperial, rely on Chinese students alone for between a quarter and a third of their income. This means that any Beijing sanction on Britain – such as for mentioning the Uyghurs too often – could turn off this tap at source. Chinese numbers are already falling, by 4% last year, and are compensated only by soaring numbers for Indians, Nigerians, south-east Asians and 135,000 dependents. This last figure the Home Office is eager to cut.
This situation is highly unstable. The number of EU students has plummeted by more than half since Brexit. International students pay between £10,000 and £38,000 a year – the highest fees in the world – and are in effect super-taxing their own, often poor, countries to cross-subsidise UK students. 

Oxford Business College and others like it make millions, largely by recruiting immigrants. They operate in an opaque corner of the British education system.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/world/europe/oxford-business-college.html

Indian-Americans Maintain Their Grip on Spelling Bee

Thursday, June 1, 2023

America's Best Engineering Schools

2023-2024 Best Engineering Schools
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/eng-rankings
Top 10:
1. MIT
2. Stanford
3. Berkeley
4. Purdue
5. Carnegie Mellon & Georgia Tech (a tie)
7. Caltech, Michigan, & UT Austin (three-way tie)
10. Texas A&M 

Super Rich Couples Cling to Traditional Roles

Most super rich couples have breadwinning husbands and stay-at-home wives, contrasting sharply with everyone else
https://theconversation.com/most-super-rich-couples-have-breadwinning-husbands-and-stay-at-home-wives-contrasting-sharply-with-everyone-else-205353 

Kissinger - Lousy Diplomat, Good Businessman

Now 100, Kissinger has profited for four decades as a global consultant by telling clients, sponsors and the establishment what they want to hear.
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/05/henry-kissinger-centenary-triumph-businessman-diplomat
It should come as no surprise that powerful US corporations, with the intense local knowledge that this ageing resident of New York’s Upper West Side lacks, have sought him out. Why boards hire an “expert” such as Kissinger to come and deliver undergraduate commentary about the Chinese “thinking in centuries” or about Vladimir Putin being a “character out of Dostoevsky” often has nothing to do with his insight. An outside expert is usually hired not to inform but to bless a decision or to help a partner win an argument. In the case of Kissinger, this has usually been related to business investment in China and occasionally in Russia. Meanwhile, across the world, powerful interests have sought him out to explain Washington.
Despite Kissinger’s foresight often being comically wrong, such as his projection of a positive future for Russian-American relations weeks before the 2008 Russo-Georgian War or his misidentification of China’s authoritarian turn under Xi Jinping, clients have sought him out regardless. That his interviews mostly read like auto-generated prompts is in fact the strategy. The less you say the lower the risk of damaging the brand.

Related:

 

Greg Grandin on the Kissinger-era American foreign policy blunders:
http://www.thenation.com/article/how-one-man-laid-the-groundwork-for-todays-crisis-in-the-middle-east/
 
Henry Kissinger's genocidal legacy: Vietnam, Cambodia and the birth of American militarism
https://www.salon.com/2015/11/10/henry_kissingers_genocidal_legacy_partner/
 
Indefensible Kissinger: As more details come to light, the darker his deeds seem.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/indefensible-kissinger-102123/
 
Unholy Alliances: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Bangladesh genocide.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/23/unholy-alliances-3 

Is AI Fundamentally Altering the Financial World?


Dreams of Replacing Humans in Finance May Come True
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/21/dreams-of-ai-replacing-humans-in-finance-may-come-true/d00d85a2-e025-11ed-a78e-9a7c2418b00c_story.html
We’re now seeing the first academic research about the use of ChatGPT in finance. Two recent studies make GPT seem like a promising technology both to improve investment decision making and to explain its decisions. Perhaps the long-held dream of replacing humans in finance is coming true.

Turkey's Economic Challenges

UPDATE: Turkey’s Erdogan Appoints New Cabinet, Signaling Economic Shift
Turkey’s lira weakens as economists warn of Erdoğan’s ‘unsustainable’ policies
https://www.ft.com/content/246951b4-1bcd-4144-a9c9-33f9f6c3e107

Who Will Be Turkey’s Next Finance Minister? Doesn’t Matter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/01/turkey-s-next-finance-minister-can-t-fix-erdogan-s-economic-mess/b19ff32e-0033-11ee-9eb0-6c94dcb16fcf_story.html
Bobby Ghosh:
The scuttlebutt from Ankara is that former finance minister and deputy prime minister Mehmet Simsek is being lined up for the job as economic czar. But if he joins Erdogan’s new cabinet, expected to be announced tomorrow, it will mark a triumph of hope over experience.
Investors shouldn’t make the same mistake. Nor should they put much stock in the president’s vague promise to appoint a team with “international credibility” to manage the nation’s finances. Until Erdogan explicitly abjures his absurd economic ideas — the ones that have helped turn Turkey from the darling of emerging-market investors to a basket case on a par with Venezuela and Argentina — any appointments he makes should be regarded as mere window dressing.  
 
Related: