Psyc. screening of foreign university students?

rebornFixer

Pros and cons of doing a complete psychological evaluation of prospective students before letting them come to North America to study? Heck, pros and cons of doing this with domestic students as well?

I can think of many pros AND cons, but I'd like to hear peoples' opinions. I'll post mine later.

Worth a discussion, I think. I know, it means not thinking about guns for a moment.

gue_barium

reborncareerist wrote:

Pros and cons of doing a complete psychological evaluation of prospective students before letting them come to North America to study? Heck, pros and cons of doing this with domestic students as well?

I can think of many pros AND cons, but I'd like to hear peoples' opinions. I'll post mine later.

Worth a discussion, I think. I know, it means not thinking about guns for a moment.

Con- foreign students could be refused and come back as terrorists after America pulls out of Iraq.
con-domestic students could be refused and come back to the campus with a gun.


i'm kidding of course.

gue_barium

reborncareerist wrote:

Pros and cons of doing a complete psychological evaluation of prospective students before letting them come to North America to study? Heck, pros and cons of doing this with domestic students as well?

I can think of many pros AND cons, but I'd like to hear peoples' opinions. I'll post mine later.

Worth a discussion, I think. I know, it means not thinking about guns for a moment.

Seriously, by 18 years of age, a person's temperament is proabably the same as it's ever been. A criminal background check is about the only thing I think could be done.

soulsinging

reborncareerist wrote:

Pros and cons of doing a complete psychological evaluation of prospective students before letting them come to North America to study? Heck, pros and cons of doing this with domestic students as well?

I can think of many pros AND cons, but I'd like to hear peoples' opinions. I'll post mine later.

Worth a discussion, I think. I know, it means not thinking about guns for a moment.

not really worth any discussion. it's a stupid idea. why not give psych evals to every student? why not make like ahnimus and just do everyone's brain scans? we can lock them up before they commit a crime based on the statistical probability they might. how many foreign students actually commit crimes when they get here? one kid snaps and now you want to enact a ridiculous and reactionary response that aims to prevent a crime that will probably never happen again?

dkst0426

What good would a psychological evaluation of any prospective student do if the factors that cause the student to crack and act out happen after they arrive at school?

gue_barium

dkst0426 wrote:

What good would a psychological evaluation of any prospective student do if the factors that cause the student to crack and act out happen after they arrive at school?

Exactly.

boxwine_in_hell

reborncareerist wrote:

Pros and cons of doing a complete psychological evaluation of prospective students before letting them come to North America to study? Heck, pros and cons of doing this with domestic students as well?

I can think of many pros AND cons, but I'd like to hear peoples' opinions. I'll post mine later.

Worth a discussion, I think. I know, it means not thinking about guns for a moment.

Why don't we just give everyone in the world a psyche screening.

blackredyellow

I can't think of many pros at all...

The main con is alienating possible students - It just seems like another barrier for students to go through to come to our country to study. While there is that fear of terrorist getting a student visa, I think the benefits of people from countries that may hate us coming here and meeting good people and taking positive experiences back to their countries, outweigh the dangers.


And it this case, from the blurb that I read, this nutjob has been in this country legally for 15 years. It's not like the culture shock put him over the edge.

blackredyellow

soulsinging wrote:

not really worth any discussion. it's a stupid idea. why not give psych evals to every student? why not make like ahnimus and just do everyone's brain scans? we can lock them up before they commit a crime based on the statistical probability they might. how many foreign students actually commit crimes when they get here? one kid snaps and now you want to enact a ridiculous and reactionary response that aims to prevent a crime that will probably never happen again?

I can see the rejection letter...

"We are sorry that while you are qualified for admission to our fine university, our tests show that you have potential psychological issues and may snap and try to kill all of us at some point.

Thank you for your interest."

rebornFixer

Good points, especially the one about cracking AFTER school exerts its pressure. "Why not do a psyc. assessment of everyone?" is just reactionary, though. Not what I was proposing, although lots of people could probably stand to benefit.
Another is the problem of cross-cultural validity of assessment tools ...

Pros? I can think of a few that I will share. Assuming that the assessment is reliable and valid (as I said, a problematic assumption with many cultural groups), you can learn a lot about how someone's current state might affect their future functioning. We know quite a bit about the personalities of school shooters (not to mention other types of homicidal individuals), and maybe some intervention could occur before these vulnerable individuals get a chance to crack under the pressure?

Just thinking as I go ... I recognize that its damn hard to predict future violent behaviors. But does this difficulty mean it shouldn't be tried? Think hard about the costs of not doing it.

rebornFixer

soulsinging wrote:

not really worth any discussion. it's a stupid idea. why not give psych evals to every student? why not make like ahnimus and just do everyone's brain scans? we can lock them up before they commit a crime based on the statistical probability they might. how many foreign students actually commit crimes when they get here? one kid snaps and now you want to enact a ridiculous and reactionary response that aims to prevent a crime that will probably never happen again?

Any idea is worth at least some thought. And its just a fucking proposal. I posted it as such. Don't get your knickers in a knot. I wish I was so confident in saying that this will never happen again.

Ms. Haiku

I'm surprised that this could even be considered. How humilating for someone to go through that. From a practical standpoint, the administrative costs to taxpayers would be enormous.

A murderer doesn't kill because he is from out of the country, he kills because he wants to. He is like others born within the United States who want to kill, and either succeed or fail.

rebornFixer

Ms. Haiku wrote:

I'm surprised that this could even be considered. How humilating for someone to go through that. From a practical standpoint, the administrative costs to taxpayers would be enormous.

A murderer doesn't kill because he is from out of the country, he kills because he wants to. He is like others born within the United States who want to kill, and either succeed or fail.

Why is it so surprising to at least consider the possibility? These assessments are not intended to be demeaning. Many people get them. That's not the goal.
In fact, at least one American university requires ALL prospective grad students to do psychological symptom testing before admisssion.

Once again, this is just something I wanted to toss out there. Not saying I would jump right in and implement.

gue_barium

reborncareerist wrote:

Good points, especially the one about cracking AFTER school exerts its pressure. "Why not do a psyc. assessment of everyone?" is just reactionary, though. Not what I was proposing, although lots of people could probably stand to benefit.
Another is the problem of cross-cultural validity of assessment tools ...

Pros? I can think of a few that I will share. Assuming that the assessment is reliable and valid (as I said, a problematic assumption with many cultural groups), you can learn a lot about how someone's current state might affect their future functioning. We know quite a bit about the personalities of school shooters (not to mention other types of homicidal individuals), and maybe some intervention could occur before these vulnerable individuals get a chance to crack under the pressure?

Just thinking as I go ... I recognize that its damn hard to predict future violent behaviors. But does this difficulty mean it shouldn't be tried? Think hard about the costs of not doing it.

If Psychology were so good as to be able to segregate these kind of "personalities", it would have succeeded by now.

rebornFixer

Ms. Haiku wrote:

A murderer doesn't kill because he is from out of the country,

Oh yes, and agreed, at least in this case.

rebornFixer

gue_barium wrote:

If Psychology were so good as to be able to segregate these kind of "personalities", it would have succeeded by now.

But it actually IS pretty good at predicting violent behavior, at least when the right tools are used. Maybe not in a school context, which of course is a huge problem. One would need to research the possibility of using these tools as part of university admissions.

I'd like to also mention another serious potential con, which is basic civil liberties violations. Is this one, do you think?

gue_barium

reborncareerist wrote:

But it actually IS pretty good at predicting violent behavior, at least when the right tools are used. Maybe not in a school context, which of course is a huge problem. One would need to research the possibility of using these tools as part of university admissions.

I'd like to also mention another serious potential con, which is basic civil liberties violations. Is this one, do you think?

I wouldn't know, legally. Ask onelongsong, he's a lawyer.

Ms. Haiku

reborncareerist wrote:

Why is it so surprising to at least consider the possibility? These assessments are not intended to be demeaning. Many people get them. That's not the goal.
In fact, at least one American university requires ALL prospective grad students to do psychological symptom testing before admisssion.

Once again, this is just something I wanted to toss out there. Not saying I would jump right in and implement.

It reminded me of what immigrants possibly went through to get into this country at the turn of last century. Their teeth were checked, eyes were checked, it just seemed very demeaning and xenophobic.

redrock

reborncareerist wrote:

Why is it so surprising to at least consider the possibility? These assessments are not intended to be demeaning. Many people get them. That's not the goal.
In fact, at least one American university requires ALL prospective grad students to do psychological symptom testing before admisssion.

Once again, this is just something I wanted to toss out there. Not saying I would jump right in and implement.

A company I worked for used a kind of 'profiling' assessment. Tests created by very knowledgeable people, I assume. Given by employees of the company and interpreted by the likes of me who had 1/2 day training on how to do it. How useful/reliable can that be? It WAS fun!

rebornFixer

Ms. Haiku wrote:

It reminded me of what immigrants possibly went through to get into this country at the turn of last century. Their teeth were checked, eyes were checked, it just seemed very demeaning and xenophobic.

I see your point, and perhaps the possibility should have been framed as assessing of EVERYBODY ... Given that the vast, vast majority of school shooters are in fact American-born and raised.

mammasan

I don't think the answer is pychological screening but mere observation. I don't know much about this case in VT, a lot of the facts are still missing, but in older cases, like Columbine, the students where exhibiting a lot of anti-social behavior and signs of not really being emotional syable. Had school officials and especially their parents been more aware or observant there is a possibility that the killings could have been prevented.

I don't mean to blame the parents, maybe they just didn't know what signs to look for, but there are definetly signs that a person exhibits before commiting such an irrational act.