Should universities be taking Saudi-government funded PhD students?

[pancreas]

e.g. 1. No, obviously giving any credibility whatsoever to (one of) the most violent and repressive regimes in the world is double-plus ungood.

2. Yes, expose as many of their citizens to a comparatively civilised sort-of-democracy as possible and bank the £££s while doing it.

[jobotic]

Which ones are?

[Buelligan]

Depends what they're studying too, I suppose.  Or does it?  Morally, no, practically, I think it does.

Study love and peace and macrame, come on in, study how to build your own thermonuclear device, not really.  I think that's fair.

[Sebastian Cobb]

e.g. 1. No, obviously giving any credibility whatsoever to (one of) the most violent and repressive regimes in the world is double-plus ungood.

2. Yes, expose as many of their citizens to a comparatively civilised sort-of-democracy as possible and bank the £££s while doing it.

1. lets stop selling them weapons before we worry about whether that outweighs the benefits of 2 (to the citizens, rather than the £££ it makes the uk).

[Cuellar]

Unis are going to need all the money they can get. I say turn them all into finishing schools for the children of tech billionaires and Chinese magnates. Rename every university Hogwarts University, hire hundreds of Dumbledore impersonators to do the matriculation speeches.

[Soup Dogg]

I work in HE and it's a little... unpleasant how much we rely on shaking down wealthy foreigners or those funded by cash rich and morally bankrupt states. On the other hand, of all the disturbing and worrying things about the UK's relationship with Saudi Arabia I really don't think us training their doctors and engineers is going to keep me up at night.

[BlodwynPig]

My experience of Saudi students.arrogant.entitled.pricks..

[Shit Good Nose]

My experience of Saudi students.arrogant.entitled.pricks..

Doesn't that go for most/all students from very comfortably well-off backgrounds?

[bgmnts]

No.

Brexit means Brexit.

[Dr Trouser]

The amount of baggage that comes with a Saudi PhD student outweighs the financial income so on that basis alone no.

20M grant to build a centre for Islamic something or other -yes please! (fuck you oxford money grabbing wankers)

[drummersaredeaf]

My experience of Saudi students.arrogant.entitled.pricks..

Quite limited in critical thinking too I'm told.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

2. Yes, expose as many of their citizens to a comparatively civilised sort-of-democracy as possible and bank the £££s while doing it.

How much exposure will they have though? In our country its possible in cities to live a fairly ghettoised existence. Just as it's possible for a racist old white man to shout ignorant shit in his local pub or club without fear of reproach and with no actual contact or interaction with Muslims, any Saudi student isn't going to be doing all that much assimilating, realistically.

As an aside, my old landlady know rents out homestayers and foreign students. The last couple of Saudi kids had servants at home and had no idea about any practical aspects of independent living. They wouldn't even clean the dishes after she cooked for them. On a low level, stuff like that feeds into general attitudes about life. I believe people should clean their own mess.

The guy also pretty much refused to eat anything that wasn't chicken and rice - you can't make people like that have open minds in just a few years, no matter how far across the globe you drag them.

[pancreas]

The amount of baggage that comes with a Saudi PhD student outweighs the financial income so on that basis alone no.

20M grant to build a centre for Islamic something or other -yes please! (fuck you oxford money grabbing wankers)

Are you talking about the Said Business School? Apparently they decided the only way it could work is if they paid the professors there enormous amounts of money to teach the MBA courses. Result: they are losing money from this vaunted money-spinner. Oxford has neoliberalised itself from arsehole to mouth.

[marquis_de_sad]

My experience of students: arrogant.entitled.pricks..

Yes

Edit: SGN already said this. Sorry.

[marquis_de_sad]

Are you talking about the Said Business School? Apparently they decided the only way it could work is if they paid the professors there enormous amounts of money to teach the MBA courses. Result: they are losing money from this vaunted money-spinner. Oxford has neoliberalised itself from arsehole to mouth.

He might be talking about the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.

[Chollis]

The guy also pretty much refused to eat anything that wasn't chicken and rice

Gains

[Zetetic]

How much exposure will they have though? In our country its possible in cities to live a fairly ghettoised existence.

Particularly when you're demolishing vaguely historically-interesting bits of cities to knock up hideous gated communities targeted at foreign students.

[Pijlstaart]

Students funded by other governments are usually parachuted into faculty positions in their home nations, definitely the case for brazil/malaysia/thailand-funded students, and I assume the gulf ones too. If they're idiots, which 90% of the time they are, then that really doesn't bode well for the generations they will teach in the decades to come, and you legitimise an idiot by giving them a largely undeserved PhD. I shudder to think of some of the absolute basket-cases i've worked with who now hold lofty faculty positions, presumably spewing complete garbage. 

[BlodwynPig]

Doesn't that go for most/all students from very comfortably well-off backgrounds?

Especially Arabs. Couldn't get any of them, not one, to act as unpaid extras in my Minotaur Sieben movie.

[Johnny Yesno]

I work in HE and it's a little... unpleasant how much we rely on shaking down wealthy foreigners or those funded by cash rich and morally bankrupt states. On the other hand, of all the disturbing and worrying things about the UK's relationship with Saudi Arabia I really don't think us training their doctors and engineers is going to keep me up at night.

Same.

The last couple of Saudi kids had servants at home and had no idea about any practical aspects of independent living. They wouldn't even clean the dishes after she cooked for them.

To be fair, a lot of UK students have a servant at home called 'Mum' and don't have much idea about any practical aspects of independent living either. Young people, huh?