An interesting article in the San Francisco Weekly tabloid by reporter Christi Hegranes provides a detailed review of proposed Commerce Department rules which could seriously damage research programs at US Universities and further discourage foreign students from coming to the US.
http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/current/news/feature.html
The rules deal with so called "dual use technology" - scientific research tools which, according to government definitions, could have both scientific and military purposes.
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According to changes recommended by the Department of Commerce, universities could soon be forced to apply for individual licenses from the federal government before they can "export" knowledge to specific students about the operation, installation, maintenance, or repair of certain equipment. But thousands of academic subjects fit into the dual use category, including computer science, mathematics, civil, mechanical and nuclear engineering and biological and chemical studies.
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More below the fold.
The impacts on foreign students attending US universities could be devastating. As one Indian Ph.D. candidate put it...."If I had to apply with the government every time I needed access to a cluster (a large set of computers used to run complex programs), it would be very painful." The student added if such regulations had been in place when he was applying for admission, he would have gone somewhere else.
The proposed regulations would make universities apply to the Bureau of Industry and Security -- an arm of the Commerce Department, for licenses for students from 12 so-called countries of concern (which includes India.) It could create a bureaucratic nightmare for universities. In 2003, Commerce reviewed fewer than 1,000 deemed export license applications, but estimates are that under the new regulations, that number could shoot to 350,000.
Universities worry that such regulations will discourage students from these countries from coming to the US (China, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan and Syria) further depriving us of one of our main strengths.... leadership in science and technology.
As the article notes, the choice of countries affected is quirky....Indian students would be subject to the rules, but Saudi Arabia, home to most of the 9/11 attackers, would not.
To get a license for a student, a university would have to go through a long application process for each piece of technology the student might use. A student who comes to a university as a freshman and plans on pursuing a Ph.D could have to apply for hundreds of licenses over a 10-year period.
Critics of the proposed rules say most of the technology involved is readily available and accessible worldwide so it will be easy for students to seek out education and employment in other countries.
Meanwhile, international student applications to US Universities are already down 30 percent. Industry leaders are issuing increasingly worried warnings about our country's lack of investment in science and technology education,
http://www.rednova.com/news/stories/2/2004/05/03/story003.html
and countries like India and China are churning out growing numbers of well-trained and motivated scientists and engineers while our own government replaces scientific truth with religious ideology, bars research in areas like stem cells, and cuts funding for education and research while giving massive tax cuts to the wealthiest of its citizens.