At the beginning of this year, Singapore expanded its preschool subsidies and improved its support for assisted reproduction and fertility treatments. The goal: more Singaporean children. According to the World Bank (via the Wall Street Journal), Singapore has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world at about 1.14 children per woman as of 2018. This is down from about 3 in 1970, when the government was actually worried about the opposite problem -- too many children.
Of course, this trend is not unique to Singapore. This is generally the way the winds are blowing in the developed world. Young people are spending more time on education, career, and travel. And they're delaying marriage (or not getting married). On top of this, family-sized housing has become fairly expensive in most big cities. The fastest solution is to ramp up immigration, but many countries, including Singapore, have concerns about what this does to the "national identity."
So there seems to be a preference for throwing money at the problem and promotional material with slogans like this one: "Have three, or more if you can afford it."
Chart: WSJ
Applications to American business schools, including MBA programs, have fallen for five straight years according to this recent WSJ article.
Compared to last year, business school applications to US schools are down about 9.1%; whereas they have been rising in other parts of the world. If you look at the change in applications from international students, the drop is even more significant -- about 13.7%.
Here are two charts from the WSJ:
I went to graduate school in the United States. After I graduated I was given, if I remember correctly, 90 days to leave the country. The US wasn't a good place for professionals in architecture and/or real estate at that particular time, and so I did exactly that. I left the country.
Lately, I've been having a number of informational coffee meetings here in Toronto where I have been connecting with highly intelligent and educated people who have moved to this city in search of success. They couldn't get a visa in the US and so they decided to, instead, move to the greatest city in the world.
These are people from Brazil to Bangladesh. These are people who are young (late 20's), who have multiple masters degrees, who are hungry to get ahead, and who have a strong, if not perfect, command of English (or French).
I have been finding this fascinating. As I sit and drink my coffee, I can't help but think to myself, "This is what a merit-based immigration system looks like."
At the beginning of this year, Singapore expanded its preschool subsidies and improved its support for assisted reproduction and fertility treatments. The goal: more Singaporean children. According to the World Bank (via the Wall Street Journal), Singapore has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world at about 1.14 children per woman as of 2018. This is down from about 3 in 1970, when the government was actually worried about the opposite problem -- too many children.
Of course, this trend is not unique to Singapore. This is generally the way the winds are blowing in the developed world. Young people are spending more time on education, career, and travel. And they're delaying marriage (or not getting married). On top of this, family-sized housing has become fairly expensive in most big cities. The fastest solution is to ramp up immigration, but many countries, including Singapore, have concerns about what this does to the "national identity."
So there seems to be a preference for throwing money at the problem and promotional material with slogans like this one: "Have three, or more if you can afford it."
Chart: WSJ
Applications to American business schools, including MBA programs, have fallen for five straight years according to this recent WSJ article.
Compared to last year, business school applications to US schools are down about 9.1%; whereas they have been rising in other parts of the world. If you look at the change in applications from international students, the drop is even more significant -- about 13.7%.
Here are two charts from the WSJ:
I went to graduate school in the United States. After I graduated I was given, if I remember correctly, 90 days to leave the country. The US wasn't a good place for professionals in architecture and/or real estate at that particular time, and so I did exactly that. I left the country.
Lately, I've been having a number of informational coffee meetings here in Toronto where I have been connecting with highly intelligent and educated people who have moved to this city in search of success. They couldn't get a visa in the US and so they decided to, instead, move to the greatest city in the world.
These are people from Brazil to Bangladesh. These are people who are young (late 20's), who have multiple masters degrees, who are hungry to get ahead, and who have a strong, if not perfect, command of English (or French).
I have been finding this fascinating. As I sit and drink my coffee, I can't help but think to myself, "This is what a merit-based immigration system looks like."
There are a couple of possible explanations for this. Tech is/has been hot. I would imagine that space has been absorbing many people who would have historically gone to do an MBA.
But perhaps more significantly, stricter immigration policies are making it harder for international students to come to the US. At the same time, top tier alternatives are emerging around the world, such as in China.
China exports more business school students than any other country and they are by far the largest international student base in the US. But the numbers are coming down. At the peak in 2015, the US issued nearly 275,000 student visas to people from China. By 2017, that number had more than halved to 112,817.
Out of curiosity, I decided to look up the class profile for the most recent Rotman MBA cohort (my alma mater). 70% of the class was born outside of Canada. That's not surprising.
Charts: WSJ
There are a couple of possible explanations for this. Tech is/has been hot. I would imagine that space has been absorbing many people who would have historically gone to do an MBA.
But perhaps more significantly, stricter immigration policies are making it harder for international students to come to the US. At the same time, top tier alternatives are emerging around the world, such as in China.
China exports more business school students than any other country and they are by far the largest international student base in the US. But the numbers are coming down. At the peak in 2015, the US issued nearly 275,000 student visas to people from China. By 2017, that number had more than halved to 112,817.
Out of curiosity, I decided to look up the class profile for the most recent Rotman MBA cohort (my alma mater). 70% of the class was born outside of Canada. That's not surprising.
Charts: WSJ
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