evidence: As I wrote above, there is good reason to believe that the official numbers understate the importance of education exports. The numbers reported measure direct spending on education—tuition and the like. They do not include spending on room and board, used cars, pizza shops, or anything else college students spend their money on. Research by John Douglass, Richard Edelstein and Cecile Hoareau from 2011, "US Higher Education as an Export," reports that the estimated economic impact of higher education, taking out financial aid and adding in cost-of-living expenses, raises the direct economic impact by 43 percent. (The extra 43 percent measures direct spending only, excluding indirect effects of job creation and the like.) Unless that ratio of extract spending has changed, the total value of education exports today tops $50 billion. There is a good argument to be made that higher education is one of our most successful export sectors. We’re good at higher education, and the rest of the world flocks to our shores and pays for the chance to study in America. Just under 5 percent of college students in the United States are visiting from abroad. As argued above, this is critical for exports. It’s economically critical for something else: Foreigners subsidize American students. Foreign students are generally eligible for very little foreign aid. They pay full freight. Especially in public universities, such as the one at which I teach, those dollars are critical in replacing the money that used to be allocated by state legislatures.