In 1965, Finance Minister Valerie Geskard Denning at the time reached a “death” to describe the way in which the dollar has provided the basis for the financial sovereignty of the United States. Deng said the fact that the dollar was very dominant in international transactions of the United States, which is a “heavy concession.” Since every country needed dollars to settle trade and the decline in its private currencies, foreign countries had to buy American debt, which in turn means that the United States paid less to borrow money and managed to increase the deficit in trade and budget without suffering from the usual pain. The expensive concession for the dollar was that the United States would be able to live outside its capabilities.
It has always been an open question about the period in which this privilege will continue, but President Donald Trump’s cruel policies, associated with a budget bill that will currently add trillion to the budget deficit, may be sufficient to finally remove the dollar. Annual federal deficit It really works At 6 percent of GDP, while interest rates on US Treasury bonds for 10 years have multiplied more than 4.5 percent over the past few years, increasing the cost of debt interest payments. As of the last quarter of 2024, 58 percent of global reserves It was in dollarsReducing from 71 percent in the first quarter of 1999. The dollar may remain a king, if it does not seem to have no real alternative, but thanks to the United States’ private actions, its concession has already been eroded – and with it, America’s ability to compensate for its lack of financial existence.
But the dollar is not the only concession that the United States enjoys. Since the post -war era, the best universities in America Lead. Harvard, Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, such as tick – these elite universities are the basis for American scientific excellence, which in turn has strengthened contracts of economic growth. But also, by virtue of its unparalleled ability to attract the best minds from all over the world, these schools have given the United States the educational concession for being a global academic excellence. In the same way that the dominance of the dollar allowed the United States to live beyond its capabilities, elite universities dominance may compensate for the fact that the United States, at best, is an average K-12 educational system.
Now that the concession was attacked by the Trump administration. Cutting federal financing for universities such as Colombia and Brenston and explosive agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Corporation were bad enough – but the administration The last transfer to the international righteous students from Harvard University It will be a death blow, especially if it spread to other high schools.
The ability to attract the best than the best, especially in science, is what makes Harvard Harvard, which in turn helped the United States of America. Just as the US dollar’s loss to finally pay for years of financial mismanagement, the loss of the concession of these major universities will force the country to pay contracts of educational failure.
The American flag works on foreign talents
Vox Kevin Carey’s shareholder has also wrote this week, foreign students are a major source of financial support for American colleges and universities, which will be struggled with many to stay if these students disappear. But the financial image actually reduces the extent to which the American flag depends on foreign talents, and thus depends on the best universities such as Harvard University to bring senior students and professors.
70 per cent of graduate students in the United States in electrical engineering and 63 percent in computer science – the two specialties may be the most important in winning the future – Born abroad. Nineteen percent of the total workforce in the United States in the United States Born abroad; Focus only on the workforce at the doctorate level, and this number It rises to 43 percent. Since 1901, about half of all Physics, chemistry and medicine Nobel Awards They went to the Americans, and about a third of these winners She was born abroadHer It has risen in recent decades. It is not certain that if all foreign scientists and science students are deported tomorrow, the American flag will stop.
Can students born in America enter this gap? Certainly no. This is because the elite is like the best universities in America, the country’s education system in the country was nothing but anything.
Every three years, international students’ evaluation program (PISA) is granted a representative sample of 15 -year -old students in more than 80 countries. It is the best current test to determine how country students are compared to mathematics, reading and science with their international peers.
In the latest PISA tests, conducted in 2022, US students register Less than average of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or developed countries in mathematics; On reading and science, it was a little higher than the average. Although a lot of attention has been given the right to the loss of learning because the epidemic – one of the fall of 2024 estimated that the average American student is less than the middle of the road to a full academic recovery – American students failed for their long international peers. Other wealthy countries, from East Asian countries, outperformed some small Europeans, their American peers regularly in mathematics through one full academic year.
To be clear, this image is not completely disastrous. It’s okay – American students ’performance around the center compared to their international peers. But he will not make the scientific leader undisputed in the world. A fine is far from what the United States had before.
America was a pioneer in comprehensive education, and did the same in university education through the GI bill after the war, which opened university education for the masses. By 1950, 34 percent of adults between the ages of 25 years or older I completed High school or more, compared to 14 percent in the United Kingdom and 11 percent in France. When NASA was putting people on the moon in the 1960s, the United States may have been the world’s most educated workforce to benefit from.
Since then, a large part of the rest of the world has long erupted with the United States over educational attainment, and has exceeded a number of countries. But thanks to a large part of the franchise that is elite universities such as Harvard University or the University of California, and its ability to recruit the best, no country has ever reached the United States with a transparent scientific mentality. However, excluding our foreign talent, and the American flag will seem like the performance of the K-12-fine.
It seems increasingly clear that the Trump administration wants to provide an example of Harvard, which proves its own dominance by breaking a 388 -year -old institution that has strong relationships with American strength and influence. On Tuesday, the New York Times I mentioned The administration planned to cancel all the remaining federal contracts with Harvard, while Trump himself contemplation When Harvard is redirect 3 billion dollars from grants to commercial schools.
Grants and contracts are vibrant, but they can be restored, just as faith in US dollars may be restored through SANER and a more strict budget. But if the Trump administration chooses to make the United States mainly hostile to foreign students and scientific talents, there may be no return. Politico I mentioned This week, the administration weighs everyone Foreign students applying for study in the United States to undergo a social media examination. With universities around the world Compete To make themselves alternatives to the United States, what is the star of the star from Japan, South Korea or Finland, who will choose to put their future in the hands of the Trump administration, when they can go to any other place they want?
The United States has once achieved scientific leadership because it educated its citizens better and longer than any other country. In those days for a long time, but the United States has managed to maintain its electrode position, and everything that came with it, because it supported and financed what was far from the best universities in the world. This was our privilege, as much as the dollar. Now we seem ready to destroy both.
If this passes, we will see how little remains.
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