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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave
turingbook wrote 8 hours 17 min ago:
So, three-quarters of the people remained. That's a good result.
zkmon wrote 9 hours 14 min ago:
But USA might be receiving half of the scientists trained outside. And
these might happen to be brighter and hard-working.
evanjrowley wrote 10 hours 3 min ago:
>though the US share of global patent citations to graduates' science
drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger
than the destination country share, and as large as all other countries
combined.
Perhaps it is a good thing that innovation is not encumbered by patents
as much in other countries as it has been in the US.
rdtsc wrote 11 hours 10 min ago:
> We use SED data to measure the number of PhD graduates in our focal
STEM fields who were non-US citizens at the time of graduation.
[...]
> Emigration rates across PhD cohorts correlate strongly with the
foreign national share of graduates ( = 0.86 to 0.95) [...] In all
cohorts, the 5-year (15-year) emigration rate is approximately 25%
(50%) of the foreign national share
I am not sure if they did this on purpose or not but they missed
putting that critical part in the title or right in the abstract. The
majority here are not US citizens but foreign nationals. And, most
importantly, I couldn't find where they mentioned (or maybe they don't)
that these students are studying in US on non-immigrant visas. They're
not supposed to or expected to stay after they are done studying. Some
stay if they find a company to sponsor them for an internship (Optional
Practical Training) but unless they change their visa type they're
still expected to leave for their home country.
Without that part highlighted it makes it sound like these US citizens
who were born and grew up in US, went to universities here, and then
graduated and went to work in China or Europe or something. There is a
number of those but, it's not the majority. Maybe they can study just
that cohort separately, I think that would be a more interesting thing
to look at.
gigel82 wrote 14 hours 44 min ago:
US doesn't train anyone, that headline would only make sense somewhere
in... every other country in the world (more or less), where the
government actually subsidizes education (a lot of the times up to
100%).
In the US, people pay for their own training, so they can damn well go
wherever they please.
PaulHoule wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
Education is one of our greatest exports. What's wrong with people
getting training here and going back home to enrich their community?
If they don't do that we're going to be accused of promoting "brain
drain".
YossarianFrPrez wrote 15 hours 16 min ago:
Not only do people leave the US but stay in Academia, plenty of people
leave the research pipeline after receiving years and years of highly
specialized, expert training. As an American who used to work in Tech
and is currently getting a PhD, the geographic constraints on the (top
tier) academic job market are more severe than people outside of
Academia typically realize. It's a shame, because if it were the norm
that science could happen by university-trained experts but in
non-university institutions, we could a) fix the leaky pipeline, and b)
see greater scientific progress.
What I mean is that if you don't like the company you work for in, say,
SF, you can switch companies without having to switch houses. In
Academia... it's akin to going to conservatory for classical music: you
have to travel to where the orchestral openings are. This is a bit of a
legacy problem from Wilhelm von Humboldt's idea to combine teaching and
research, which led to the modern university system.
I'm far from the first person to say this, btw. Convergent Research's
"Focused Research Organization" concept as well as The Arc and Astera
Institutes are a few recent examples of people trying to provide escape
routes from having to deal the large degree of "institutional
tech/systems debt" in university contexts. For a great essay on why
this is necessary, see "A Vision of Meta-science" (highly recommended
if you are interested) [1].
The good news is that people are starting to come around to the idea
that the scientific ecosystem would benefit from more diversity in the
shape, size, and form of science-generating institutions.=The NSF just
announced a new program to fund such "independent research
organizations." I think this could give people who want to go into the
sciences as a second career and who have a bit of an entrepreneurial
tendency a new kind of Job opportunity [2]. We talk about Founders all
of the time in Tech, we should probably have some equivalent in the
best possible sense of the term, in the Sciences. [1]
HTML [1]: https://scienceplusplus.org/metascience/
HTML [2]: https://www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-announces-new-initiative-launch-s...
pfdietz wrote 16 hours 1 min ago:
The US is going to lose its edge regardless. American exceptionalism
after WW2 was always going to be temporary. With just 4% of the
world's population the US could not stay on top of anything forever.
ggm wrote 16 hours 7 min ago:
Let me ask you this: when trained scientists from {other economy}
arrive in the US, do you ask yourself why? Is it of necessity because
{other economy} is "worse" and US is "better" or can it be personal,
unrelated, case-by-case?
What is a natural, good flow for people between economies in this
instance? is it zero or 100% where along this arc does it lie, and why?
godelski wrote 16 hours 10 min ago:
> 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the
US within 15 years of graduating.
This is a feature not a bug.
For people missing the abstract, here it is and I'm giving emphesis to
an important part.
Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25%
of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US
within 15 years of graduating. Leave rates are lower in the life
sciences and higher in AI and quantum science but overall have been
stable for decades. ***Contrary to common perceptions, US technology
benefits from these graduates' work even if they leave: though the US
share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70%
to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the
destination country share, and as large as all other countries
combined. These results highlight the value that the US derives from
training foreign scientists - not only when they stay, but even when
they leave.***
Not only that but there's the whole cultural export too. Come live in
America for 4-10 years and you're going to be acclimated to some of the
cultures and customs. You don't think you're going to go home and take
some of that with you? Conversely, America isn't a "melting-pot"
because of a monoculture, but because it brings many different cultures
together. The whole education system is as much a part of "cultural
warfare" as is the movie industry, music industry, or even Korea's
K-Pop scene (which has been incredibly successful, just like Thailand's
program for restaurants in foreign countries).
While personally I'd staple Green Cards to every Ph.D. given to a
foreign national, I simultaneously want them to go back to their home
countries and make their countries better. To take the good from
America, leave the bad, and to build lasting relationships between the
countries. That's a win-win situation. Both countries benefit from
this! As well as the people. (I'd staple Green Cards so the person can
make that choice.)
I haven't read the whole paper (nor will I), but I get the impression
that much of this will not be addressed in it. Perfectly okay, they're
focused on the easier to measure parts. But let's also not forget that
there is a whole lot more to the bigger picture here. A whole lot more
than my comment even implies.
falcor84 wrote 16 hours 10 min ago:
How does this compare to the fraction of foreign students studying in
other countries and choosing to remain there?
kragen wrote 16 hours 0 min ago:
It's hard to compare across countries. No other country has anything
like the US's research-university system, although China is working
on it. But foreign students in China probably aren't hoping to be
able to live there for the rest of their livesâChina's immigration
policies are considerably more xenophobic. The UK might be the
closest comparison?
Generally speaking, American exceptionalism is nonsense. The US
isn't the only free country, the freest country, the only democratic
country, the most democratic country, the richest country, the most
diverse country, a city on the hill, divinely inspired, uniquely
blessed by God, the only capitalist country, any of that nonsense.
It was some of those when Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, but
it hasn't been for decades. But the US's research university system
is unique in the world, and nobody else even comes close.
mikert89 wrote 16 hours 13 min ago:
The is a psyop, there arent that many science jobs, and a PHD from
mississipi state is not "talent"
greenie_beans wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
> a PHD from mississipi state is not "talent"
why not
selimthegrim wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
Even Mississippi State has a bar to clear - by the way, I know of
PhDs from Jackson State who are faculty at CMU
d_burfoot wrote 16 hours 14 min ago:
Second sentence of abstract:
> Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and
quantum science but overall have been stable for decades
The US has been completely dominant in technology innovation for the
last several decades. So, the answer is no: the loss of 1/4 of the
STEM scientists is not important.
kragen wrote 16 hours 18 min ago:
The grad-student system in science at US R1 universities is sort of
like a dollar auction. You know how a dollar auction works? I have a
dollar bill, and I'll give it to whoever bids the highest for itâas
long as both they and the #2 bidder pay me their final bids. The #2
bidder gets nothing. Bidding can start at 5¢. Once the bid goes over
a dollar, the two remaining bidders are no longer competing to win free
money; they're jockeying to lose less. It typically goes up to 2 to 5
dollars before one of them decides to cut their losses.
Numerous doctoral students (and postdocs, and adjuncts) are competing
for a much smaller number of tenure-track positions with their research
work. If their publication record looks just a little better than the
#2 candidate, they can escape from the postdoc grind and land a nice
assistant professorship. Then it's only seven more years of busting
their ass before they find out whether they washed out, or are set for
life with a cushy associate professorship, maybe a full professorship.
People are willing to sacrifice a lot for that. But the vast majority
of those who make the sacrifice don't make it, like the #2 bidder in
the dollar auction. They put in years on somewhat-above-minimum-wage
grad-student and postdoc stipends, doing incredibly difficult and
sometimes dangerous work, often postponing childbearing, leaving behind
their families each time they have to move to a new university, and
either leaving behind their intimate partners or uprooting them as
well. All of that redounds to the glory of the PI who runs the lab
they work inâbut many of those doing all that work regret the
sacrifice.
Scientific progress isn't just a matter of doling out research grants
and possessing fancy lab equipment. It needs talent, but that isn't
nearly enoughâthe talented people need to work incredibly hard for
many years to make real progress. For decades the US has been
recruiting the top talent from the rest of the world with this
dollar-auction game, paying them peanuts to sacrifice the best years of
their lives.
A doctorate doesn't sound like a bad life to me, really. But you have
to feel that the system, like minor-league baseball, is kind of taking
advantage of doctoral students' hopes and dreams to get the rather
astounding rate of scientific progress we see today (at least by some
measures). It funds public goods for everyone out of those sacrifices.
The least the US could do would be to show a little more gratitude by
guaranteeing them permanent US residency after they graduate, but they
don't even get thatâmany people are kicked out of the US, where
they've spent most of their adult lives, when they wash out of the
academic pipeline. And the current deplorable administration has
promised to worsen this already deplorable situation.
thatfrenchguy wrote 16 hours 14 min ago:
> The least the US could do would be to show a little more gratitude
by guaranteeing them permanent US residency after they graduate, but
they don't even get thatâmany people are kicked out of the US,
where they've spent most of their adult life, when they wash out of
the academic pipeline.
And they often have no choice but to work in academia too, because
Academic H1B are lottery exempt but not Industry H1B and they aren't
transferable. Pretty messed up.
cavisne wrote 16 hours 20 min ago:
â40% move to Chinaâ
This is the plan not a coincidence. China pays huge âgrantsâ to
their citizens to come to the US, get educated, work in big
tech/science, then bring it all home.
piskov wrote 8 hours 29 min ago:
Seems like chicken and the egg problem: [1] [2] [3]
HTML [1]: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/discrimination-chine...
HTML [2]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg78xng04xo
HTML [3]: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/graduate/2025...
HTML [4]: https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-congress-conside...
chazeon wrote 10 hours 2 min ago:
Well thatâs a very misleading thing. If the US immigration policy
wasnât this hostile to populous countries, more Chinese will want
to stay.
nbardy wrote 9 hours 53 min ago:
When are people going to drop the immigration is good at all costs
assumption.
We need a well managed set of immigration polices or country WILL
take advantage of US. These are our military rivals and we sell our
most advanced math, physics and engineering seats to the highest
bidder. Itâs a self districting disaster and itâs not just on
us to treat people better.
Look at the rate of Indian asylum seekers in Canada to see the most
extreme case. It happens anywhere you extend naivety and boundless
good will.
yibg wrote 11 hours 6 min ago:
Perhaps, be anecdotally I've seen a significant shift in students
from China in Canada and the US over the last couple of decades. It
used to be that pretty much if someone can stay post graduation they
will. Now many are choosing to go back to China, even if the
opportunity to stay is there. This isn't just US policy, but also
just the development of China. There are just a lot more
opportunities there than there was 20 years ago.
rr808 wrote 13 hours 7 min ago:
There might be a plan but more likely Chinese salaries have grown a
lot in the last 20 years. 20 years ago US salaries were much higher -
it makes sense to get a US degree and work here. Now you might as
well go home again, it isn't better to be in the US any more.
neuah wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
The US could retain a lot of that talent if it put the same level of
funding into science that China is, and remained welcoming to foreign
nationals. The US has been brain-draining the rest of the world for
decades with enormous benefits to us. We then led in most fields and
the flywheel kept spinning. Now we are cutting research spending and
closing the door, while China continues to increase its science
funding year over year. The sclaes are tipping and talent will be
drawn to the leading edge, wherever that is.
maxglute wrote 16 hours 0 min ago:
Thousand talent tier incentive is drop in the bucket, most sea
turtles return because only so high you can climb in US with cold war
bamboo ceiling. Past certain point, both US PRC can cut big checks,
PRC lets a yellow face climb to top.
DustinEchoes wrote 15 hours 30 min ago:
Maybe in the defense industry. Elsewhere? Nah.
maxglute wrote 15 hours 19 min ago:
South Asian (Indian) / White / East Asian ceo gap something like
3 / 2 / 0.5 per million pop in US. Chinese long recognized this
ceiling, and more are returning to PRC because of it. More and
more, PRC getting Chinese returnees that are credentialled 40yro
stuck at manager / director level who see greener PRC grass
leaving after accumulating industry knowledge / experience taking
their entire network / ip / tacit knowledge with them. PRC use to
pay a lot of recruit these folks, but we're at that point a lot
of Chinese Americans from 80s-90s are in their 30s-40s, who know
how high they can climb in US. Meanwhile PRC printing highend
jobs that attract Chinese talent with comparable compensation,
and a better title / social status.
DustinEchoes wrote 13 hours 33 min ago:
CEO gap mostly goes away when controlling for pop. age /
cultural differences (less assertive), not nebulous racism like
first comment. PRC still pays a lot to recruit through 1000
talents, USDOJ continues to uncover cases where $X00,000+
offered for IP / research. Meanwhile Chinese (m|b)illionaires
make exit plans in case they get Jack Maâd or worse.
maxglute wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
Yes, yes and Asian tertiary applicants has worse personality
except not. Eitherway, I didn't bring up racism. I said
Chinese want leadership positions, they're not getting it vs
the usual other races in US, so some go where they can get
it, which happens to be increasingly PRC.
X00,000 USD is... not a lot anymore. That's normal
compensation for high tier jobs, aka PRC tier1 opportunities
is simply default globally competitive especially when you
factor in other allowances. Top tier 1000 talent tier
inducements where PRC build you a lab, give 7 digit in
guaranteed funding, aka exactly the kind of opportunities
bamboo ceiling is cutting off in US is pretty rare, almost
rounding error in overall flow of talent. NVM DoJ has
prosecuted ~0/150 thousand talent cases for actual espionage,
i.e. never uncovered anything but candidates double dipping
on PRC and NIH/NSF grants.
I don't know what billionaires capita flighting fraction of
their liquidity has to do with anything. Ultimately whats
more damaging for geopolitical S&T competition, capital
flight, or knowledge flight.
materials4028 wrote 16 hours 5 min ago:
If this is true (I doubt it happens at scale), then the US got to
benefit from some severely underpaid labor for a couple years at no
cost to the taxpayer. What's there not to like?
secondcoming wrote 15 hours 58 min ago:
It happens at scale. UK universities are also heavily subsidised by
Chinese students. I also, where I am, I don't really see these
students working in part-time jobs to pay the bills.
neuah wrote 13 hours 26 min ago:
I assume the underpaid labor they were talking about was the PhD.
secondcoming wrote 3 hours 9 min ago:
PhDs get paid though?
kragen wrote 16 hours 12 min ago:
Probably almost 40% of them came from China in the first place,
because China has almost 40% of the candidates who are accepted to US
grad programs in the first place. And, even without any grants,
returning to China probably seems a lot more appealing than returning
to Nigeria, Paraguay, or Bangladesh, whose acceptance rates are
already handicapped by the much lower quality of undergraduate
education available there.
rolandr wrote 16 hours 22 min ago:
"Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25% of
scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US
within 15 years of graduating."
I believe there will be a significant "discontinuity" in the data
beginning in 2025. Likely along the lines of (1) US-born science majors
going abroad for their PhD's (and likely staying there afterwards), and
(2) a major decline in foreign students coming to the US. Blocking
disbursement of ongoing grants, immediate and dramatic slashing funding
for the sciences, holding up universities under pain of blocking
federal funding, eliminating fellowships, firing government scientists,
stuffing agencies and commissions with politically appointed yes men,
having oaths of fealty in all but name, deporting and blocking return
of foreign students, and many more actions of similar character tend to
fo that.
One of the greatest national scientific establishments was irreparably
damaged in a matter of months. No discussion, no process -- just
pulling the rug out. The US will coast for a few years on the
technologies that just popped out of the university pipeline of
development, but that pipeline is now essentially broken.
gpt5 wrote 15 hours 17 min ago:
You'd very likely be wrong. People said the same thing in Trump's
first cycle.
We tend to overestimate the short term effects due to polarization
and the constant media cycle.
kergonath wrote 8 hours 39 min ago:
What happens at the NIH and NSF has absolutely no parallel in his
first term. Donât kid yourself, this is not more of the same.
daveguy wrote 12 hours 41 min ago:
Dumpty's first cycle still had a few sane people pulling his puppet
strings.
advisedwang wrote 16 hours 26 min ago:
The more important question is: what is the rate of scientists coming
in vs going out?
If they are in balance, then it looks a lot less of a problem. It may
even be the case that because of the desirability of working in the US
for US institutions the US is gaining the best from all around the
world and shipping out a more mixed ability set.
neuah wrote 13 hours 38 min ago:
"Using new data which tracks US-trained STEM PhDs through 2024, we
show that despite foreign nationals comprising nearly 50% of
trainees, only 10% leave the US within five years of graduating, and
only 25% within 15 years."
That sounds like net benefit for the US. Foreign nationals come, the
US sells them (overpriced) education, they do relatively low-paid but
high-value PhD research, and then most of them stay and continue to
contribute to US research endeavors and the economy. This is such an
enviable position, and this administration wants to close the doors?
This is the secret sauce. This is what has made america great.
globalnode wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
my view for a long time has been that the usa is a net importer of
talent and ideas. that its cheaper to have someone spend 20 odd years
training in another country and then just lure them in with the promise
of big $... isnt that how its been working? or is this some new spin.
travisgriggs wrote 16 hours 30 min ago:
I wonder how much generational impacts there are here. My son is a PhD
student at an ivy. The most lucrative tuition source for the university
is foreign students (as in, they bring in far more tuition dollars for
each foreign student than they do native). He has also observed that
the payers of these tuitions are usually the parents, who tend to be
people who rose through the ideal of "the dream of american education"
that is now 20+ years old. As the students (children) go through the
programs, they are finding it increasingly more hostile to live and
study here. So they end up wanting to "go back home". The Xenophobic
rhetoric, as well as the policies, are having an effect. He does not
see this as a good thing at all.
Multiple of my children have considered moving abroad to study. It's
weird to sit between them and their frustration of the system, and
their grandparents (our parents) who seem to think that the crap
they're embibing off of fox news, all so that advertisers can
target/fleece the older generation, will actually lead to good for
their grandchildren.
rr808 wrote 13 hours 18 min ago:
There is no shortage of US families who would pay the $100k/yr for
top 10 university education.
Fomite wrote 13 hours 56 min ago:
This phenomenon (which is just an extreme version of out-of-state
tuition for state schools) is almost entirely undergraduate driven,
not STEM PhDs, who as mentioned in other posts, have tuition either
waived or paid for via grants.
There was a whole thing if you recall in the first Trump admin about
treating tuition waivers as income, which at an Ivy is potentially a
financially catastrophic thing for a grad student.
kragen wrote 16 hours 3 min ago:
> The most lucrative tuition source for the university is foreign
students (as in, they bring in far more tuition dollars for each
foreign student than they do native).
Those probably aren't STEM PhD students, whose tuition (especially at
Ivies!) is normally paid for out of research grants or teaching
funds.
spiritplumber wrote 13 hours 35 min ago:
In 2007 I was an Italian citizen studying at a university in Texas.
For a final project, we built a cool autopilot, and demoed it on
several vehicles, including a precision dropper airplane, and a
sailboat.
The airplane happened to be slightly better than what the USAF
admitted to having at the time.
There were 5 of us working on that project, including 1 US citizen.
The citizen got a NASA internship out of it. The rest of us were
put on a list and I for one had a very tough time getting a green
card later on even with a NIW.
I shudder to think what this maladministration is doing to foreign
STEM students now!
kragen wrote 12 hours 57 min ago:
Jesus. That's horrible. I'm glad you finally prevailed. Was this
a doctoral program?
imgabe wrote 16 hours 9 min ago:
Why is it necessary to have a flood of foreign money to operate the
university? Universities in the past operated without an influx of
wealthy foreign students paying outrageous tuition.
Today they are bloated with administration that is nothing but a cost
center, meanwhile they eliminate tenured professorships and have
classes taught by tenuous adjunct faculty who are paid poverty wages.
Universities could easily right the ship by cutting the
administration and focusing on teaching and research, but the people
who need to make the decision to do that are the ones who would be
cut.
cs_throwaway wrote 13 hours 17 min ago:
More money, more income. That's why flood of foreign money is good
for a university. But, it is a fallacy to think that this has no
cost.
In my experience, the large influx of foreign students are
typically at the masters level. MS classes are typically (not
always lol!) more advanced than undergraduate classes. So, you need
more qualified instructors, such as your tenured/tenure track
faculty to teach them. When you take T/TT faculty out of
undergraduate classes and replace them with teaching faculty, you
lose a lot. (Let me know if you need what's lost to be spelled
out.)
bobsmooth wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
>but the people who need to make the decision to do that are the
ones who would be cut.
It's devastating when you learn so many of society's problems are
due to this.
Fomite wrote 13 hours 54 min ago:
Continual cuts to both state funding and federal research support
is a large part of it for public universities. Essentially, every
time there is a major budget crisis, state support gets slashed,
and it never gets put back when things get better.
Tuition is one of the few levers left, and while people will object
to tuition hikes for in-state students, very few people will do the
same for foreign students.
aleph_minus_one wrote 13 hours 58 min ago:
>
Why is it necessary to have a flood of foreign money to operate the
university? Universities in the past operated without an influx of
wealthy foreign students paying outrageous tuition.
I guess it is not strictly necessary, but it brings in a lot more
money, which the university is of course very eager to take.
gok wrote 16 hours 32 min ago:
Yes.
jongjong wrote 16 hours 33 min ago:
Knowledge and intelligence are wasted outside of the US. You could
build great stuff but if you're not in the US, your chance of success
is extremely low because the media algorithms will work against you.
Not to mention regulations. In Europe, it felt like politicians were
being paid to suppress tech.
I'm jealous of tech people who live in media-sovereign countries like
the US, China or Russia who don't have to experience algorithm
discrimination.
IMO, tech/science people who leave the US before accumulating big money
are making a mistake. They underestimate how rigged the tech industry
is. You've got to leverage the rigging. You either benefit from the
rigging or you are victim of it. I cannot wrap my mind around people
who are born in the US and leave. People don't understand how lucky and
privileged they are before it's gone.
resters wrote 16 hours 38 min ago:
It's the second (so far bc he hasn't ruled out a third) presidential
term for a strongly anti-immigrant / anti-immigration president who has
a lot of support domestically.
Immigrants are being chased out of the US in record numbers. Many of
my friends with brown skin (second generation immigrants) are worried
their kids will be harrassed by ICE, etc.
The sad fact is that there are a LOT of Americans who deeply resent
when someone from another country comes to the US, works hard, and
earns a prosperous and happy life.
The US is now led by an emotional revenge-driven crusade against the
American Dream, against capitalism, against the "melting pot" that
fuels culture and innovation. It's a weird kind of revenge idiocracy
going on right now.
In case it's not obvious, many of us here are deeply ashamed of what is
going on and we will make it right eventually. I'm personally looking
forward to the lawsuits that end up paying people mistreated by ICE
significant sums of money, give them flights back to the US, etc. The
US has a labor shortage and a talent shortage right now, we need the
best and brightest, the most hard working, etc., not the lazy ones who
think they are owed something and believe the orange clown.
lingrush4 wrote 16 hours 29 min ago:
Sorry to ruin your mudslinging, but if you read the second sentence
of the linked study, you'll see the American voters' choice of
president has nothing to do with this:
> Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and
quantum science but overall have been stable for decades
resters wrote 15 hours 40 min ago:
Not true. The article asserts that immigration policy is a big
driver of "stay rates" for immigrants.
Also, I did not assert that either party is "good" on immigration.
The US should relax restrictions and allow many more immigrants to
enter/study/work/live.
If we really want growth, fully open borders would double world
GDP.
jessetemp wrote 16 hours 5 min ago:
Sorry to ruin your ruining, but if you read past the abstract and
look at the data, you'll see it tends to correlate with whether a
democrat or republican is in office. Immigration policy is also
mentioned in the discussion.
> Given these findings, a corollary question is what attracts
foreign graduate students to the US and leads them to stay. Prior
research points to immigration policyâa subject of perennial
public interestâhaving a large effect on stay rates
ruralfam wrote 16 hours 40 min ago:
Daughter in the Material Science Phd progam at major state university
with "world class" MS program. Vast majority of her peers are from
abroad. Met some. All were the nicest, smartest folks you have ever
met. I guess a benefit is that the probability of them leaving may help
to increase the teamwork aspect in the program. But that is a guess.
Great group of folks who hopefully might help change the world. Went to
the recent Phd presentation where recent Phd graduates were honored.
Let me tell you... hard to describe how inspiring these folks are. (MS
is a pretty hard subject, with amazing applications. You may be
thanking one guy who recently got his Phd should you ever get cancer.)
Glad our universities welcome talent not demographics. HTH, RF.
Figs wrote 16 hours 40 min ago:
Giving away? It's currently screaming in the ears and flogging the ass
of everyone to get the fuck out and stay out.
irishcoffee wrote 16 hours 41 min ago:
Eventually leave. So compelling.
Mistletoe wrote 16 hours 41 min ago:
Iâm a US sixth generation or more citizen and a scientist and I want
to leave if the next election doesnât go wildly different than the
2024 one. The brain drain is real. Itâs sad to see it happen in
your own country.
Fomite wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
The number of colleagues who have gone from "Eh, maybe a sabbatical
year..." to "Yes, I am actively looking" is really frightening.
light_hue_1 wrote 16 hours 43 min ago:
The conversation has radically changed.
10-15 years ago my foreign grad students all wanted to stay. Only
question was how.
There was always a big crowd who found the process of staying in the US
painful, random, humiliating, and sometimes even downright abusive, so
they went home.
What has really changed is China. That's what this paper shows too.
Many of the Chinese students want go back home.
10-15 years ago when I would talk to grad students from China most
wanted freedom and democracy. Now most tell me about how the Western
system has failed and how a centralized government is more efficient.
Between making it harder to stay, China changing the narrative on
dictatorships, and the West doing a horrific job in the last decade on
pretty much every front, yeah, we're going to see a lot of folks move
back.
Note: This is at a top-tier US university.
seanmcdirmid wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
Even 10 years they wanted to stay. I was at Microsoft China at the
time, and management would complain about Google or Facebook in CA
still getting the best prospects from Qinghua/PKU. It wasn't about
freedom or democracy at all, they just wanted big paychecks without
the 996.
Today it is an easier case to stay, although 996 is still a thing.
Still, if you can make your FU money by age 35 (and it still has to
be by age 35 according to a relative), you have it set.
paganel wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
> China changing the narrative on dictatorships
There was no "change of narrative", the West just stopped delivering,
similar to what happened to the Soviet system starting with the 1970s
(and which ended the way it did by the early 1990s).
msteffen wrote 16 hours 43 min ago:
My understanding is that scientific research has a dual problem, where
the number of students needed to carry out existing professors'
research is much larger than the number of junior faculty positions
generally available. The result being that most trained PhDs must leave
(US) academia because there are no jobs for them. In fact, I've heard
scientists complain that universities owe it to students to provide
more help finding a job in industry after they graduate.
Given all that, where are professors supposed to find and hire students
who don't want to stay in academia themselves? I think a lot of these
students wind up being aspiring immigrants, and I'm not surprised that
a lot of them would also have a hard time finding a place for
themselves after graduating and that many of them would leave. Also,
the abstract seems to argue that that US still benefits greatly from
this arrangement: "though the US share of global patent citations to
graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains
five times larger than the destination country share."
khannn wrote 15 hours 23 min ago:
I was accepted into a PhD CS program despite applying for a masters.
The advisor had something on his door about the limited number of
slots open for people who graduate from grad school. Tried to
discourage me from the program.
Quit after two semesters.
godelski wrote 15 hours 29 min ago:
> where the number of students needed to carry out existing
professors' research is much larger than the number of junior faculty
positions generally available.
This is definitely true, there are more physics PhDs graduating from
the top 2 schools than there are total faculty positions listed each
year.
BUT you are missing that there is still demand for positions out in
industry as well as government labs. But there's also a decline in
that right now as we're going through a time of encouraging more
engineering and less research.
In reality there's a pipeline of research. If you haven't been
introduced to it, I like to point to NASA's TRL (Technology Readiness
Level) chart[0]. The pipeline is from very basic research to proven
systems. Traditionally academia and government labs do the majority
of work in the low TRL while industry research handles mid level
(stuff that isn't quite ready for production). The reason for this is
due to the higher rate of failure of low level research and so shifts
risks away from industry. Not to mention that industry has different
incentives and is going to be more narrowly focused. Academia and gov
labs can research more long term projects that will have large
revenue growths but may take decades to get those returns. I mean how
much do we get from the invention of calculus? Or the creation of
WWW? We'd also get far less growth and profits were these not more
distributed.
So while yes, getting a professorship is a challenge and highly
competitive, it is far from the only path for these graduates. We can
also do a lot to increase (or decrease) their options by increasing
(or decreasing) funding for science. There's a lot of science that
happens outside academic labs and they still depend on PhD graduates
to be able to do most of that work. If you want these people to have
jobs, fund more low level research[1]
> I've heard scientists complain that universities owe it to
students to provide more help finding a job in industry after they
graduate.
A big reason for this is that networking is still a big issue. I can
tell you as someone who does not have a good relationship with my
former advisor that this has made job hunting a much harder
experience compared to other peers. While my credentials are better
than some of those people they come in through a side door (often
skipping things like LeetCode challenges) and instead I have to go
through the standard applicant pool. I don't think they don't deserve
those jobs (most of them do), but just pointing out that networking
is still a critical part of hiring. I mean even one simple part is
that when applying you might not even know what a group is doing and
if that's what you want to do. Solicitations are often vague. Even if
there were no advantage to the hiring process networking still
provides a huge advantage to the filtering process.
I mean even putting the personal experience to the side, don't we
want to make the most use of the resources we have? Don't we want to
get graduates connected to labs/work places where they will be most
effective? This is still a surprisingly complex problem to resolve
and even limiting the hiring problem to PhDs (where there's far less
noise than general hiring) it is still a complicated problem.
[0] [1] But I'd also say that we might be encouraging too many people
to do PhDs. Doing a PhD "for a job" is a bit odd. A masters is better
intended for that. But a PhD is more directed towards doing research
work. That said, in the worst case a PhD says "this person can work
on ill-defined tasks and has the diligence to see them through."
Regardless of the industry, that is a pretty useful skill.
HTML [1]: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/space-communications-...
aleph_minus_one wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
> That said, in the worst case a PhD says "this person can work on
ill-defined tasks and has the diligence to see them through."
Regardless of the industry, that is a pretty useful skill.
Very few companies and industries want employees who
- are very conscientious ("has the diligence to see [the tasks]
through"), and
- are much more effective working on their own, i.e. are no "team
players" because they don't really need a team ("this person can
work on ill-defined tasks").
cafebeen wrote 16 hours 8 min ago:
To a large extent, I think this could be solved by labs having more
long-term permanent research staff (technicians, data analysts,
scientists) and reducing the number of PhD students. Many students
would gladly stay on in that position instead of leaving, so it
increases job opportunities. It would also improve the quality of
the science because the permanent staff would have more historical
knowledge, in contrast to the current situation where students
constantly rotate in and out with somewhat messy hand-offs. The
students could also then focus more on scholarly work, planning and
overseeing research execution with the team. The problem is that the
incentives are aligned to allocate students to doing all lab tasks,
not long term staff. I think we could change this through changes to
the requirements and structure of science funding mechanisms however,
since ultimately that's the source of the incentives.
epolanski wrote 16 hours 10 min ago:
Academia is a pyramid, like most organizations, eventually most PhDs
cannot get a full time position.
The fact that many PhDs leave is..normal..if you get few high impact
publications you can find full time positions outside US, even as an
associate professor and not just a researcher.
And the reason why many go to universities around the world for PhDs
is not because they want to stay in that place necessarily but
because you're more likely to fund your PhD research and get a high
impact publication.
Onavo wrote 16 hours 18 min ago:
There's that and the fact that a lot of people who attain graduate
degrees are immigrants who do so for the sake of immigration.
The whole system essentially self selects for cheap labor and
exploitation.
If the feds put a high salary requirement on it like the E or O
series visas, perhaps the system might change.
The scientific minds of India, China, and Russia don't come to the US
and slave away in the lab purely out of passion for advancing
science, they do so because it's a path towards the green card. The
PIs and laboratory heads all know damn well how the system works,
they are no better than those bosses of H1B sweatshops, except
perhaps they do their exploitation from ivy filled ivory towers
rather than in Patagonia vests.
aleph_minus_one wrote 14 hours 8 min ago:
> The PIs and laboratory heads all know damn well how the system
works, they are no better than those bosses of H1B sweatshops,
except perhaps they do their exploitation from ivy filled ivory
towers rather than in Patagonia vests.
In my observation there do exist quite some people among the PIs
and laboratory heads who are quite highly idealistic for research,
but have no other option than playing this rigged game of academia.
MostlyStable wrote 16 hours 24 min ago:
If the culture normalized such that a much larger proportion of
research was conducted by permanent, non-faculty, research employees,
this would both reduce the need for so many students and increase the
jobs available for students, and create a new employment niche with a
different balance of teaching/administration/research. It would
basically be turning "post doc" into an actual career rather than a
stop over.
This would be better for everyone involved, at the admitted cost of
being quite a bit more expensive. My guess is that the market would
naturally converge on this equilibrium if the information of job
placement rates on a per-program (or even per lab/advisor) were more
readily available.
mnky9800n wrote 8 hours 26 min ago:
Also, consider what the postdoc is.
A person arrives on a 18 month funded postdoc (believe me, plenty
exist). They have just completed a PhD which means they probably
have a couple papers published and maybe another one or two in the
pipeline. So as they spin up their time with you, they are also
finishing these papers from their previous job. By six months in
they are done with that and fully onboarded to the project. So they
spend six months working. But now, they only have six months left
of contract. You don't have money to keep them or perhaps your
country will require you to offer a permanent contract if it is
being renewed so you cannot offer them to extend their position
with you. So they spend the final six months of their postdoc
looking for a job. So, for 18 months of salary, you get six to
eight months of work. It's unreasonable. Things need to change.
Or lets say you have a mission critical project that must be done
by a postdoc. You offer them a 3 year contract that is grant
funded. It is three years because most grant agencies work on three
year cycles. The project requires a year commitment to building an
apparatus (maybe its a lab experiment, maybe it's training some
foundation model, whatever). After that year, the apparatus can be
used for science. Your postdoc comes to you in year 2 month 3 and
says, well I have been offered a faculty position at university X
so I am leaving in the fall. So you get 18 months of work out of
them and now cannot hire anyone else because you only have 18
months of funding left, but your country requires you to offer a
minimum of 24 months contract. Things need to change.
It's important to note that academics often keep projects from
their former positions going at their new ones. But as soon as
someone leaves to industry, this falls apart. Because industrial
positions expect the person to work on the project they specify,
they rarely hire someone to work as an academic, pursuing their own
research directions.
I think the solution here is as others have suggested, spend more
money on hiring people for longer term and with higher salaries.
But we shall see if anyone listens to that advice.
Fomite wrote 14 hours 0 min ago:
This isn't really a culture problem, IMO, as much as a funding one.
My group currently employs two people of the description you have,
and it does reduce the need for students (and honestly, increase
productivity).
It's also by far the most stressful part of my job. Funding them
involves writing multiple grants per year (because the expectation
of any particular grant is low, even with a decent hit rate) and I
am constantly worried that I won't be able to keep them employed.
If one of them leaves this year, I'm not likely to replace them,
simply because in the current funding environment, I can't look
someone in the eye and promise them a long term position. There are
so many more ways to fund a student, and they're inherently time
limited, so even if things collapse, there's ways to white knuckle
through it in a way there aren't for staff scientists.
SauciestGNU wrote 13 hours 7 min ago:
The funding problem is a cultural problem though. Religious right
wing politicians in the US have attacked science and education
funding at every opportunity. Science and education produce ideas
that are at odds with right wing religious orthodoxy, so those
things must not be allowed in society.
IcyWindows wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
I don't think it's that simple.
I'm not religious, but I think a lot of academic funding is
wasteful.
SauciestGNU wrote 11 hours 15 min ago:
It's not just that science contradicts orthodox religious
views. It's also that humanities education and exposure to a
diversity of people and thought can "deprogram" students away
from traditional ways of thinking, which is a threat to
traditional power hierarchies.
godelski wrote 15 hours 17 min ago:
Notably even the role of the professor has drastically changed in
the last few decades. The "publish or perish" paradigm has really
taken over and changed the type of research being done. Higgs
famously said he wouldn't make it as a non-tenured faculty in
today's academic culture.
Not to mention that the type of research being done has drastically
changed too. There's many more projects that require wide
collaboration. You're not going to do something like CERN, DESI,
LIGO, or many other scientific mega projects from a single lab, or
even single field of study.
The academic deal has changed. It used to be that by becoming a
professor you were granted facilities and time to carry out your
research. In return you had to help educate and foster the next
generation. It is mutually beneficial. There were definitely
abusers of the system, but it is generally not too difficult to
tell who in your own department is trying to take advantage of the
system, but incredibly difficult to identify these people when
looking from the perspective of a university administration.
There's been more centralization in the university administration
and I'm afraid Goodhart's Law is in full force now.
What I'd like to see is more a return to the Laissez-faire
approach. It shouldn't be completely relaxed, but to summarize
Mervin Kelly (who ran Bell Labs): "You don't manage a bunch of
geniuses, they already know what needs to be worked on. That's what
makes them experts in the first place." At the end of the day we
can't run academia like a business and it really shouldn't be. The
profits generated from academia are less direct and more
distributed through society. Evaluating universities by focusing on
their expenditures and direct profits alone is incredibly naive.
We're better able to make less naive evaluations today, but we
still typically don't (it is still fairly complex)
turtletontine wrote 16 hours 2 min ago:
What youâre describing sounds a lot like the Department of Energy
national labs. They have (or had) many permanent-track research
roles without teaching obligations, where scientists can have long
stable research careers.
The problem, as always, is funding. In the US, the federal govt is
essentially the only âcustomerâ of basic research. Thereâs
some private funding, often from kooky millionaires who want
someone to invent a time machine, but itâs the exception that
proves the rule. Universities sometimes have pure research roles,
but theyâre generally dependent on the employee paying themselves
with a constant stream of grants. Itâs a stressful and precarious
position.
j7ake wrote 16 hours 19 min ago:
Your suggestion would have fewer fresh eyes to look at the problem.
If the scientific enterprise were just about churning out widgets,
then yes itâs better to have permanent staff.
But having a strong training pipeline for the globe is a huge plus
for US prestige, and the top people are still offered jobs as
faculty or industry within the country, so it still a net gain for
USA. But itâs brutally competitive for the individual scientists
godelski wrote 15 hours 13 min ago:
> Your suggestion would have fewer fresh eyes to look at the
problem
Why? That paradigm doesn't change the influx of new students.
But the current system has a problem of training people for a job
and then sending them to do something else. Even a professorship
is a very different job than a graduate researcher or postdoc.
Most professors do little research themselves these days, instead
managing research. Don't you think that's a little odd, not to
mention wasteful? We definitely should have managers, and
managers with research backgrounds themselves, but why not let
people continue honing their research skills?
> itâs brutally competitive for the individual scientists
It is. But this is also a social choice dictated by how much we
as a country want to fund research.
cafebeen wrote 16 hours 5 min ago:
In a practical sense, I would argue the scientific is primarily
about churning out grants and papers.
beepbooptheory wrote 16 hours 6 min ago:
Thats interesting, I don't know if I have ever seen this kind of
labor market logic applied to science before. Is this an agreed
upon idea? In my mind, science and the kind of focused research
it entails is kind of definitionally distinct from something like
"innovation." Like, frankly, yes, I want a stream of widgets; if
that means consistent units of research done to contribute to an
important area/problem, which are reviewed and judged by peers.
Like what's even the alternative? We want a Steve Jobs of
science? That's really what we are going for?
j7ake wrote 15 hours 59 min ago:
Are you suggesting science and innovation are distinct?
Scientific progress is largely driven by the âSteve Jobsâ
of sciences.
Only a tiny fraction of papers remain relevant. So that means
the quality of the average paper doesnât matter as much as
the quality of the best paper.
MostlyStable wrote 16 hours 8 min ago:
While I'm more skeptical than you are of the value of a string of
new students coming through as opposed to just keeping the very
best students, I'm also not suggesting we mandate this change or
force it. I'm suggesting that we give people more information to
make better informed decisions. If students decide that they are
comfortable with a sub 20% job placement rate, then great,
nothing needs to change. If they aren't satisfied with that, and
we decide that actually they were performing a valuable service,
then it behoovs society to pay them enough that they becoming
willing to make that gamble again.
The current information assymetry is exploitative. One of two
things would happen under my proposed system: either nothing
would change because students think they are getting a good deal
as is or students don't think the deal is worth it which means
that the current system only works because students are having
the reality of the job market hidden from them.
kelipso wrote 13 hours 51 min ago:
AI in industry was basically made my PhD grads. Without that
pipeline, there would be no AI, and I am not exaggerating much
at all.
aleph_minus_one wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
> If students decide that they are comfortable with a sub 20%
job placement rate, then great, nothing needs to change.
The problem is in my opinion not this low job placement rate
per se (it is very easy to find out that this is the case for
basically every prospective researcher). The problem rather is
the "politics" involved in filling these positions, and
additionally the fact that positions are commonly filled by
what is currently "fashionable". If you, for some (often good)
reason, did good research in an area that simply did not become
"fashionable": good luck finding an academic position.
j7ake wrote 16 hours 1 min ago:
I think a mix of the current system with more permanent
researchers makes sense.
There is a lot of work in research that fits the permanent
worker better than the fresh 22 year old. But having that fresh
talent is really beneficial to science.
materials4028 wrote 16 hours 25 min ago:
> much larger than the number of junior faculty positions generally
available
Expanding on this a bit, insight credited to bonoboTP: in a steady
state the number of junior faculty positions will only open up at the
same rate as current faculty retires. But each faculty member is
expected to train dozens of students that are all in principle
qualified for such jobs. Therefore, the vast majority, let's say 95%,
of PhD graduates have to take industry jobs, there is no way around
it. But this does not seem to be the goal of the 95%, hence the
incredibly tight job market. Returning to their home country for a
faculty job acts as another release valve, but sooner or later those
will be filled as well, except in countries in the rapidly expanding
phase in terms of university education.
The tenure system is incredibly broken as a result. Ideally, I think
there needs to be more non-faculty careers available for PhD
graduates either outside or inside academia. After all, there is
clearly some value in the work a PhD student does, otherwise they
would not be paid. Perhaps we can have public or semi-public research
institutions that hire these scientists for actual development. Most
likely this will require an upstream incentive change so that grants
are awarded to these newly minted organizations.
Universities charge a large overhead in part to cover the "tuition"
for the PhD students, which is really a meaningless number since it's
taken out of the same check they give you the remainder of. If we
just strip out this part and give most of it to the scientist,
economically it should be a viable salary.
Fomite wrote 13 hours 58 min ago:
"Ideally, I think there needs to be more non-faculty careers
available for PhD graduates either outside or inside academia."
For awhile, I loved that my field had lots of opportunities outside
academia for PhD students, and that they were held in pretty equal
regard, prestige wise, with academic positions.
Then the current administration gutted the entire field.
analog31 wrote 15 hours 58 min ago:
When I was a physics grad student ~35 years go, this was called
"the birth control problem. I had every intention of going into
industry. I described it to my dad who got his PhD in the 1950s and
he said it was the same back then. But there's a perennial "this
time it will be different."
PaulHoule wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
It wasn't the same in the 1950s. When it became really clear to
me how dire the long term job situation was when I getting my PhD
in the 1990s I started combing through issues of Physics Today
and noticed that the field and academia as a whole was
explosively expanding from 1920-1968 or so and there was a sudden
crisis in the late 1960s, with an echo in the late 1970s and
also when I was in in the late 1990s. (Physics Today said I had
2% odds of getting a permanent job even coming from a top school)
I had one day when I'd posted a Java applet to the web that got
100,000 impressions and getting so much attention for that and so
little attention for papers that took me a year to write made me
resolve to tell my thesis advisor that I was going to quit.
Before I could tell him, he told me he had just a year of
funding for me and I thought.. I could tough it out for a year.
People were shocked when I did a postdoc when most of my cohort
were going straight to finance.
My mental health went downhill in Germany and I stomped away, in
retrospect I was the only native English speaker at the institute
and I could have found a place for myself for some time had I
taken on the task of proofreading papers and I can easily imagine
I could have made it in academia but heck, life on a horse farm
doing many sorts of software development has been a blast.
analog31 wrote 12 hours 14 min ago:
One big disruption in the job market was that mandatory
age-based retirement was outlawed. This created a span of
several years when there were virtually no retirements.
I should have mentioned that my dad's degree was in chemistry,
and it might have been a different vibe. But the production of
PhDs at a rate faster than they could be absorbed by academic
hiring was a thing. My dad (and mom, she got her master's in
chemistry) went into industry too, so maybe I was lucky to have
good role models.
vatsachak wrote 16 hours 57 min ago:
And other countries probably have it worse
cyberax wrote 17 hours 0 min ago:
Well. Duh. The US PERM process is a nightmare. And it's not just the
requirements and regional quotas. It's also the complete opacity of the
process, with the USCIS taking _years_ to process straightforward
applications in some cases.
No wonder people just give up and leave.
doctorwho42 wrote 16 hours 49 min ago:
Dude, seriously. I'm a citizen and work in a lab, and I have a world
expert in my lab... One of maybe 5 in the world, Canadian... And the
difficulty for him to stay is insane.
If you asked any American how hard he should have it, they'd probably
expect he just needed to fill out a form, pay $150, and wait 1-2
years.
4ndrewl wrote 17 hours 10 min ago:
Nope, it's just growing an export business.
casey2 wrote 17 hours 10 min ago:
I'm sure most of these are foreign students. Giving away an edge, no.
Scamming them? Perhaps.
slwvx wrote 17 hours 11 min ago:
A more positive-sum view is that the US is bringing the rest of the
world up in science every time it exports a PhD.
sharpy wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
I wonder if US still manages to keep the most promising?
seanmcdirmid wrote 16 hours 36 min ago:
Yes, but today less so than yesterday? We also are benefiting less
from the top students with state funded undergraduate education in
China and India.
alephnerd wrote 16 hours 21 min ago:
On top of that, it is a significant reverse brain drain. Like
20-25 years ago you'd be hard pressed to find tenure track CS
faculty at most America programs let alone a major program lime
Cal or UIUC consider returning to a program like Shanghai Jiao
Tong or IIT Bombay compared to today.
It has upskilled academia in those countries, but we also lost
talent who could have remained here.
seanmcdirmid wrote 16 hours 18 min ago:
It is it really our talent though? The US has been so addicted
to China and India for STEM talent for so long that...what did
they expect was going to happen? And the effect is much more
prominent for China than India: China has a lot of money to
dump into modernizing while India is still a relatively poor
country. Imagine what will happen when India gets richer as
well?
alephnerd wrote 16 hours 14 min ago:
Based on personal experience (friends who either entered
academia/industry or me being the son of white collar
immigrants to the US) I'd say large portion want to return to
China and India due to family ties, but a number would have
stayed in the US if immigration wasn't such a PITA -
especially because companies and programs don't really like
filing for an O-1s unless they found a unicorn.
You hit the nail on the head on developing countries not
being as poor anymore, and opportunties proliferating which
reduces the pull factor, but there are a decent amount of
academics and professionals who would gladly work in the US
if given the opportunity and it wasn't such a headache.
SimianSci wrote 17 hours 0 min ago:
While indeed a positive outlook, I think alot of Americans are
beginning to wonder what the benefit will be to them.
The isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is mostly a
reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are
benefiting from global goodwill and development. While I dont agree
with the sentiment, its not entirely incorrect to describe such
relationships are parasitic more then symbiotic when they become
increasingly one-sided.
Why should Americans be exporting PHDs to other countries when they
dont seem to be reaping the benefits?
nathan_compton wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
The idea that Americans don't get any benefit from the global order
is absolutely ridiculous. There isn't a stick we ARE getting the
short end of.
mmooss wrote 16 hours 11 min ago:
> isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is mostly a
reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are
benefiting from global goodwill and development
I think the rhetoric is the cause, not the response to that sense
(besides the obvious feedback loop). Internationalism created a
world of unprecendented - literally in human history - freedom,
peace and prosperity. You can see what things look like with even
the beginnings of nationalism.
SimianSci wrote 15 hours 57 min ago:
I would implore you to empathize with the American working class,
who have seen their living standards continuously deteriorate
over multiple generations.
I know the hackernews audience skews more affluent and wealthy,
with demographics pulling from more developed coastal cities, but
the vast majority of citizens do not exist in such living
conditions. Focusing entirely on the development an prosperity of
only a handful of our cities is what has created the perfect
fertile soil for Xenophobia to grow.
I dont see the rhetoric as the cause, just the motions of
opportunists taking advantage of a situation that we are all at
fault for.
Despite all the freedom, peace, and prosperity, its so unevenly
distributed that many citizens live in squalor rivaling some
destitute underdeveloped nations.
kannanvijayan wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
The American working class doesn't like to acknowledge its own
existence or assert its self-worth. There's no real self
identity for that class in America.
In fact, a huge number of the people that are in that class
would resent you for classifying them in this way. And the
same is true for those in the upper middle class, or elites.
Secondly, trying to scope the xenophobia problem to just the
working class is itself a bit of a misdirection. Plenty of
that comes from the swaths of upper middle class white collar
folks. And plenty of it comes from second gen immigrants who
are eager to be counted among the natives.
The xenophobia _is_ the substitute American culture provides as
a filler for the vacuum left by the lack of any sort of class
identity. Everybody falls over themselves demonstrating how
they can be "more American" in one way or the other. Who is a
"real" American, what their qualities are, whether this
particular thing or that particular thing is more or less
American, etc. etc.
It's an alternate focus to direct all that shame the culture
demands from the poor.
selimthegrim wrote 15 hours 39 min ago:
I think youâre making a lot of unjustified assumptions about
the HN audience
mmooss wrote 15 hours 32 min ago:
And about me.
selimthegrim wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
I wasnât addressing you but the comment replying to you.
mmooss wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
So was I!
strken wrote 16 hours 23 min ago:
Given that most PhD students pay for their earlier education and
then do underpaid grunt work as part of their program, the US
should already be reaping the benefits. It's only failing to reap
them in the sense that more could be gained if they stayed, and
that a citizen would be more likely to stay.
mothballed wrote 16 hours 15 min ago:
Having a fraction of US PhD leave might be a good thing for
cross-pollination. The fact that they've left doesn't mean
their contacts and relationships vaporize. This could help
America stay abreast and integrated with foreign research.
vannevar wrote 16 hours 34 min ago:
"...a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are benefiting
from global goodwill and development"
That "growing sense" is not growing organically, it's being
energetically fertilized. The problem isn't that most Americans
aren't benefiting from global goodwill and development, it's that
they aren't benefiting from domestic development. And the minority
who are benefiting disproportionately from domestic economic growth
are expending significant resources to convince everybody else that
the problem lies with the rest of the world.
AndrewKemendo wrote 16 hours 37 min ago:
> global goodwill and development
Is that what weâre calling the $8-9 TRILLION spent killing
millions of people across the world from the failed âGlobal War
or Terror?â
Tell me where all this goodwill and development is happening
tshaddox wrote 16 hours 38 min ago:
> The isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is
mostly a reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few
Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development.
I'm not sure I buy your claim that this is the reason for the
rhetoric. And if you're right that this is the reason for the
rhetoric, it's extremely flawed reasoning.
komali2 wrote 16 hours 32 min ago:
Diminishing material conditions makes a fertil breeding ground
for right wing nationalism (isolationism and xenophobia). It's a
pattern being replicated all over the world. UK citizens don't
have high heat bills and sewage leaking into their rivers because
of privatization and Brexit, it's because there's too many
refugees!
Of course it's incorrect, but without the diminishing material
conditions, it's a lot harder to get people to drum up the energy
to be racist.
exceptione wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
The US got talent for free for years; young people whose upbringing
and education has been paid by/in a foreign country. The most
expensive formative years had been paid for by the sponsoring
country.
> The isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is
mostly a reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few
Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development
The rhetoric is learned from a well balanced media diet, served for
free by the 0.0001%
"Increasingly few Americans are" getting to evade the consequence
of wealth concentration and monopolies. Large parts of the US
economy have been starved by monopolist practices in the past
decennia. I recently linked a very approachable documentary¹ from
ARTE, in thee parts, if you want to understand what is really
happening.
1.
HTML [1]: https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/103517-001-A/capitalism-in-a...
cjbenedikt wrote 16 hours 17 min ago:
Tried to follow your link. It says:
"This program is not available in your country".
Wonder why...censorship?
exceptione wrote 16 hours 12 min ago:
Maybe try a vpn? It is an European production, I am not sure,
but there could be some rights limitation. It is available till
end of January. Protonvpn is free and has EUR servers.
Bit of a shame for the hassle though, the documentary is very
good and the topics it touches are rarely highlighted. So give
it an other try.
netsharc wrote 16 hours 53 min ago:
> they dont seem to be reaping the benefits
"they" as in the USA or its people?
Germany has taxpayer-subsidized education even for foreign
students. They may stay, the may leave. One of its views is that
the time the student spent in the country helps foster cultural
ties and understanding, and generates goodwill towards the
country...
I suppose "goodwill" is hard to translate to cold hard cash, so
America doesn't really like it ;-)
integralid wrote 16 hours 55 min ago:
The US is not "exporting" anything. PhDs are people, they pay for
their education and they leave.
Nevertheless responding to your question:
>Contrary to common perceptions, US technology benefits from these
graduates' work even if they leave: though the US share of global
patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after
migrating, it remains five times larger than the destination
country share
nutjob2 wrote 16 hours 25 min ago:
So let me see: a person from another country receives a service
that is exclusive, very limited and in high demand (PhD), pays
for it, and that person eventually takes it back to country of
origin.
US education must be in a woeful state because that is the
definition of export.
Given the exclusivity and value of the service you'd think you'd
want to hang on to it, but I guess xenophobia is one thing that
is more important than money.
almosthere wrote 15 hours 50 min ago:
I've been hearing nothing but bad things about the actual
education in US institutions. I think they've tarnished their
name at this point to no return.
bdangubic wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
exactly. that is why everyone is lining up to try to get in
US colleges and acceptance rates of top schools is in the
single digits :)
selimthegrim wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
STEM PhD students do not pay for their education
neuah wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
True, but I would say a large fraction of foreign nationals who
do PhDs in the US were undergrad educated at least partially in
the US.
kelipso wrote 13 hours 43 min ago:
They work like a 120k a year job for 30k a year.
donkyrf wrote 16 hours 22 min ago:
STEM PhD students typically pay with labor rather than cash.
Labor to teach undergrads, and to perform other university
research. (though they typically pay their undergrad with
large piles of cash).
That is, very much, a substantial form of payment.
vannevar wrote 16 hours 30 min ago:
This is manifestly not true. What leads you to believe this?
Certainly there are some who don't, just as with undergraduate
education. But there's no blanket program in the US to pay for
all STEM PhDs.
kragen wrote 16 hours 9 min ago:
All of the dozens of US STEM PhDs I know from recent decades
had to pay their tuition by working as TAs, RAs, or usually
both. They didn't walk in the door with a trust fund, work
through the coursework, and then write up a dissertation.
I'm not sure that's even a possibility in most STEM fields:
you need access to millions of dollars of ultra-specialized
equipment which you can realistically only get by working in
an existing lab, which means being an RA.
vannevar wrote 13 hours 9 min ago:
Right, they work a job to pay for their tuition. But they
still pay, even if it's bartered.
kragen wrote 12 hours 8 min ago:
You have a point!
ribosometronome wrote 16 hours 53 min ago:
Isn't that how exporting works? People buy something in one place
and take it another?
M3L0NM4N wrote 17 hours 4 min ago:
Depends pretty heavily on the destination of the export, i.e. not
China.
mattnewton wrote 16 hours 57 min ago:
not sure I understand, I read a lot of research papers from China.
kragen wrote 16 hours 8 min ago:
Yeah, I read a lot of research papers from China too.
sailfast wrote 16 hours 49 min ago:
My read: China is seen as a serious geopolitical rival that the
United States must beat in a shooting or Cold or AI or war. As a
result PHDs to China as an export would be a negative impact, not
a positive one potentially.
seanmcdirmid wrote 16 hours 35 min ago:
America gave China its space (and ballistic missile) program
when they deported Qian Xuesen in 1955.
nobodyandproud wrote 16 hours 40 min ago:
When looking at China, this fable has been on my mind for the
longest even as Iâd hoped that market forces would liberalize
it: [1] Obviously, any hopes evaporated with Chinaâs
heavy-handed approach to Hong Kong.
HTML [1]: https://fablesofaesop.com/the-eagle-and-the-arrow.html
komali2 wrote 16 hours 27 min ago:
Or their constant threats against Taiwan, or their oppression
of LGBT people in their borders, or their genocide against
the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, or their heel-turn into
racialized nationalism (Han Chauvinism).
standardUser wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
What does it mean to "leave" the US? I know several people with
advanced degrees in the sciences who had children in Europe and raised
their kids there for years, but eventually came back. One family
returned to Europe a second time. When you have a company or university
sponsoring you it's not too difficult to move freely, so "leaving"
feels like a moving target for this particular socioeconomic group.
epicureanideal wrote 17 hours 20 min ago:
1/4 within 15 years doesnât sound like a huge problem.. if it were
80% within 5 years, ok youâd have my attention.
zipy124 wrote 15 hours 11 min ago:
It really depends on which 25% it is. Is it evenly distributed or is
it the best and brightest, or the worst who are leaving. In addition,
its institutional knowledge you are losing. I care much more about
losing the guy with 15 years of experience than a fresh post-doc.
tkgally wrote 16 hours 3 min ago:
It doesn't sound like a lot to me, either. I have known many people
who moved to another country for graduate study. Some of them ended
up settling in that country, but others pursued further study or
employment in yet other countries. And perhaps the largest group
among my acquaintances are those who eventually moved back to their
home countries. They feel more comfortable there, they have family
there, or, in many cases, returning home is what they intended to do
all along.
bikenaga wrote 19 hours 34 min ago:
Abstract: "Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show
that 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave
the US within 15 years of graduating. Leave rates are lower in the life
sciences and higher in AI and quantum science but overall have been
stable for decades. Contrary to common perceptions, US technology
benefits from these graduates' work even if they leave: though the US
share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70%
to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the
destination country share, and as large as all other countries
combined. These results highlight the value that the US derives from
training foreign scientists - not only when they stay, but even when
they leave."
GolfPopper wrote 16 hours 34 min ago:
>data from 1980 through 2024
This percentage is going to go up sharply in near future.
SimianSci wrote 16 hours 57 min ago:
> "US Technology benfits from these graduates' work even if they
leave."
Can someone please substatiate this claim?
Many people I know are begining to question this and Id like to know
more.
integralid wrote 16 hours 50 min ago:
You are quoting abstract of a scientific paper dedicated to this
issue. The one linked by the OP.
(arguably is not an easy read, but if you're looking for hard data
is probably worth giving a shot)
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