Question 1: Did you come to America for college?
Question 2: How important to you is an unbiased history lesson?
Question 3: How important is it that education cost the same for everybody?
Question 4: If prices were raised for one thing in the United States for international individuals, what should that be?
Question 5: Have you already begun attending school in the United States
Question 6: If you have already begun attending school, how important would it be for your tuition to stay the same price?
Question 7: What will you do with your education?
Question 8: Could you better yourself with an education in your native country?
Question 9: Is more money your motivation for learning here?
Question 10: Why do you want to learn here?
The basis of the survey was to understand whether international students, specifically from Mexico, should require paying a higher tuition fee than students born in the United States. Hispanic immigrants make up one of the largest migrant populations. They are one of the largest international groups in the school system too. It is important to understand their reasons for seeking education, what they want to do with their school, and why they did not go to school in Mexico before we make school here more expensive. Using ten multiple choice and scaled questions, I tried to understand why so many Hispanics came to America for school and if it was fair to make it more expensive for them.
I asked twelve people the questions I decided on for the analysis. This is a small sample compared to how many Mexican immigrants are in the United States. It is also small considering how many are in school or how many want to go to school here but it was a start. Every person was Hispanic. It was important that every person be Hispanic because that was what the research question was about. The people questioned were also old enough to go to college so they could think about the questions and answer them honestly. They were eighteen years old or older. It was important to get honest answers so they could be really understood. Each person was also an immigrant. They were not born in the United States. They came here later in life to work or to go to school. Some came as children and some as grownups. They gave this information on their own. The point of the survey was to decide whether to raise tuition for Mexican immigrants so it was important to hear only from them in order to understand how they felt about the American education system and why they wanted to be a part of it.
The results showed the Hispanic immigrants found education in America very important. They also found an unbiased history lesson very important too. They may find education here, but there are not many unbiased history courses in America. Everybody asked decided equal tuition for everybody going to college was the most important to them. International students who had already started going to college thought tuition staying the same rate was very important. Many thought citizenship or coming to America should be the thing that cost more money, not tuition. Half of the people asked had already started going to college in America. Many of the people questioned said they thought education in America was better because there were more resources here than in their native country. They also said they wanted to attend college in the United Stated to better themselves, and that it was possibly to do this in Mexico, but would be harder. They admitted education in the U.S. was not as much for income anymore since the country has become poorer in the past decade.
At this point, it would not be okay to decide to raise tuition costs because of a survey. The survey did not give enough information to do something like that. There were only two questions that supported doing it. People asked said they wanted a U.S. education to make themselves better, and because the resources here were better. They do not plan on giving back when they graduate. If they do not plan on giving back and want to use the resources we have it could be said we should raise tuition because we are going to lose money educating people. Typically people who use the United States college education give back to the country in some way. We could then say that though we are spending money on resources in college we earn the money back because students return to society to give back. Some international students do not plan to do this, so we may lose money. Until we can prove this is true or that Hispanic international students are causing the education system to lose money though it would not be okay to raise tuition fees for only on group and not any of the other groups.
