Marc Andreessen: Foreign Enrollment At Top Universities Has Grown From 3% To A Majority Over the Past 50 Years
Investor and entrepreneur Marc Andreessen participated in the inaugural Reagan National Economic Forum and was featured in a fireside chat titled “The Case for American Optimism” alongside Joe Lonsdale, Managing Partner of 8VC.
MARC ANDREESSEN, ENTREPRENEUR: Nobody wants to talk about, but I’ve started to talk about, the intersection of DEI and immigration that has really, I think, warped, I think, our perceptions on high-skilled immigration over the last 50 years. You look at, like, the foreign enrollment rates of the top universities, which went from, you know, like, two or three or four percent 50 years ago to whatever, 27 or 30 or 50. JOE LONSDALE, HOST: Columbia’s over half, right? ANDREESSEN: 70% or whatever it is. And so there’s been this massive transformation in who gets educated, and then there’s been this massive transformation of who gets admitted through DEI, through affirmative action, and then, you know, as we now know at DEI. And again, this goes straight to the political divide in the country, which is, if your parents have a kid where I grew up, and you’ve got a smart kid, and you think you’re gonna get them into, you know, a top university in this country, like, you are fooling yourself… There is this really fundamental question, which is, like, what level of untapped talent exists in this country that a combination of DEI and immigration have basically cut out of the loop for the last 50 years, and how long can we have this, you know, story to everybody in the Midwest and the South that says, you know, sorry, you’re, you know, because of historical oppression, your kids are SOL.
