The headline of this Times story says AMID “TRUMP EFFECT” FEARS, NEARLY 40% OF COLLEGES SEE DIP IN FOREIGN APPLICANTS
Gee, that sounds awful. Foreign students are so afraid of Trump’s AmeriKKKa that they aren’t coming to US colleges any more.
But wait. Is that REALLY happening? Click on the link in the Times’ own story. Look at their source. Their source says 39% of colleges report lower rates of foreign applicants, and… 35% report HIGHER rates of foreign applicants!!!
In other words, there’s NO STORY HERE! Just a standard statistical glitch. Some schools got fewer foreigners, almost as many got more. The Times COULD just as easily have written “Most Schools have same number of foreign students or more!”
But they cherry picked data and deliberately slanted it to make Trump’s AmeriKKKa look as bad as possible.
I don’t see a lie here either. If anything, the headline makes it sound like almost 60% saw higher rates of foreign applicants, when in fact only 35% saw higher rates.
The headline, although technically accurate, is misleading due to its emphasis. I believe this is a common problem with headlines, and has relatively little to do with statistics.
I think there is some story here, even if the headline is very selective. Graduate school applications appear to be down noticeably among all foreign areas, if I am reading the graph correctly. Among undergraduate applications, those from the “middle east” (their description) seem to be the only ones that are down significantly, while those from India are up notably, even when India is mentioned as a problem area in the story.
Every single one of you would, rightfully, decry Fox News for doing the same thing. Be honest with yourself and acknowledge that it’s deliberately misleading.
Think about a headline that says “Increase in violent crime rate greatest in 50 years!” That is completely accurate (might not be actually 50, but I’m not going to look it up) and completely misleading.
I would like to know actual numbers. If the 40% that saw decreases were massive decreases, but the 35% that saw increases were small increases such that the total number is way down, that’s also a story. Are the decreases concentrated in prestigious universities? Less highly rated? Evenly distributed? Might still be a scandal, but if there is, report on that.
This is a pretty bad headline. As Astorian pointed out the rise in 35% of universities makes it a non-story. But what might be worse is how the drop is attributed to the “Trump Effect”. If the 39% drop is due to the Trump Effect what is the 35% increase attributed to? Better to just ignore that right?
I think numbers of colleges isn’t terribly significant. The size of the schools has to account for something. If Michigan State and Ohio State are both reporting drops and say Fordham and VMI are reporting increases, then the fact that half are increasing and half are decreasing is accurate but not meaningful.
It’s not so much misleading as incomplete - there isn’t enough information to put that 40% number in context. E.g. how many schools saw an increase in foreign applicants last year?
If the rate of increase was the highest in 50 years, that doesn’t seem misleading. Is it really though?
That statistic is cherry picked by Trump and his surrogates to give the impression that crime is rampant. 2016 saw something like a 10% increase in murders from 2015, which was the largest such increase in a long time. However, we live in very peaceful times so a 10% increase of a very small number is still small.
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Think about a headline that says “Increase in violent crime rate greatest in 50 years!” That is completely accurate (might not be actually 50, but I’m not going to look it up) and completely misleading.
[/QUOTE]
Pretty much these. It’s exactly what the Republican’s did throughout Obama’s administration and Trump did constantly during his campaign (ironic, that :p)…which was widely decried around here. Anyone being honest would say that this is the same thing…someone using a valid statistic to slant the story to their desired outcome. It’s pretty much the textbook example of how you lie with statistics.
The problem is that the NY TImes reported the story based on a not-detailed preliminary report, rather than waiting for the complete study to be published. Even then, if you look down the report to the horizontal bar graphs, you can get an idea of total numbers of applications divided into different areas of origin. These are still percentages but they make a clearer picture about the totals.
Yes, it’s deceptive, and yes, I’d call it a lie, by omission, at least. The tone of the article clearly implies there’s only decreases, and never mentions increases.
Thankfully, it’s a rare bit of deception by the NYT, but we should call them on it, nevertheless. As someone pointed out upthread, this is the sort of nonsense that gives Fox News it’s bad name; let’s not encourage it.
I was inclined to agree, until I read the attached report. Some quotes:
IOW, if there’s anything deliberately misleading, I think it’s from the report itself. The report discusses the decline in application through various lenses, but other than that one quote, doesn’t discuss the increase in applications.
Even then, though, it’s pretty possible that there’s confirmation bias, rather than deliberate deception, going on.
That isn’t to excuse the NYT. The report itself is not very convincing, and their reporting here is shoddy. But I’ma predict that when I google this article, I’m gonna find the rightwingosphere all atwitter over it, Nelson-Muntzing and chicken-littling about it. Here I go, googling…
The main piece of data that is missing from this discussion is what the trends of international applications were prior to Trump. These graphsseem to show that up until recently there has been a strong increase in the number of international applications. If previously 90% of institutions showed an increase in international applications, but now only 35% show an increase, with 39% showing an actual decrease, that would be a significant change.