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It is understandable why somebody would want to return to their home-country. The "Bamboo Ceiling" the article discusses is incredibly concerning. It's America'

It is understandable why somebody would want to return to their home-country. The "Bamboo Ceiling" the article discusses is incredibly concerning. It's America's loss for sure. I'm curious (1) how much of these people's education or experience was subsidized by the American economy and (2) how common the same situation is in China (i.e. US expats training up in China and taking that expertise back to the US). If (1) and (2) aren't aligned, it could be one of the factors contributing to the growing sense that we pour a bunch of money into higher-ed without seeing much return. I don't mean this from a US nationalist or political perspective - I'm merely speculating on the economics. Are the incentives for coming to the country aligned for both the person and the country? Many companies will pay for employees to go to grad-school but demand repayment if the employee isn't still with the company N years later. Would such a system for college/work visas make any sense to help keep talent?

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
The economics of higher education isn't aligned between personal and societal interest in general. College degrees are a positional good - a good portion of their value is for allocating a job to Peter instead of Paul. Even as people rationally choose more prestigious and more thorough education, we end up destroying value on a societal scale. Like, even if a daycare worker finds it easier to get a job with a college degree, are we better off as a society if more daycare workers have college degrees? I think not.
- ryanianian 9y ago
  You could say the same thing about almost literally anything that you have to pay or work for. If two candidates are otherwise equal and one had a brand new car, I might use the new car as a tie-breaker. I'd bet having a college degree is much more than a tie-breaker in most cases - it shows a level of work, discipline, and probable intelligence that is genuinely an advantage for most jobs. (This is problematic because it also shows a huge set of advantages that the degree-holder has had. If somebody has enough advantages to have a degree and is applying for a daycare position, it might mean something is very wrong for this person and maybe it should tip the tie-breaker situation the other way!)
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    Exactly that: it shows a level of work, discipline, and intelligence. It doesn't cause any increase in the ability to work, be disciplined, or be more intelligent. Society is better off if this is something like a prestigious high school degree, rather than a Bachelor's.
    - ryanianian 9y ago
      I can't hire for things that 'cause' such increases, I can only use presented-information to make a best-guess about how an employee will perform. Having a degree is a good indicator that you'll work hard and be disciplined. If I have to break a tie between two candidates, things that show levels of work/discipline/* will help me break the tie.
      - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
        Again, that's perfectly fine and reasonable in individual situations. It's also not an argument for society getting more education as a whole. The tie-breaking for you is the same whether it's between high school diploma vs bachelor's degree, or a bachelor's vs master's. Making the high school degree holder get a bachelor's and the bachelor's get a master's doesn't help society as a whole.
    - badpun 9y ago
      I agree that a rigorous high-school education could just a well serve as a filter as the higher ed studies do today. Unfortunately, high school is mostly low-quality, low-effort waste of time these days, so finishing it does not signal much to the employees (maybe with exception such as Eton and other elite private schools).
dawhizkid 9y ago
I don’t think foreign Chinese would qualify for federal subsidies. Maybe the Chinese gov’t subsidizes their education. In grad school I knew of several Singaporeans who had their tuition here in the US convered by the govt with repayment in form of returning to a govt job, which in Singapore is a highly prestigious job.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  At the graduate level, in computer science, they are funded via research grants but work as RAs. They aren’t exactly subsidized by the federal government, and they do work in return, but they are still majority tax payer funded.
  - dawhizkid 9y ago
    Sure maybe PhDs at public universities. That is a small sliver of total Chinese that come here for undergrad or masters programs...
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Also private universities (Stanford). Grads are a large portion of the Chinese that work in SV. Many of the Chinese who come to the states and pay for their education out of pocket couldn’t get into a good school back home and are going back after their education finishes. The others are rich, here for the experience, and will still go basic home because of their family expectations and connections.
- walshemj 9y ago
  They certainly used to I worked on an elite campus at my first job early 80's and there was one Chinese exchange student doing a masters or phd of course in those day he did wear the mao uniform and had a flying pigeon bike.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
As for (1), flip it around and it’s more realistic (how much of their work in industry or as RAs has subsidized America?). The benefits are in America’s favor still. As for (2), I spent 9 years there and find my experience invaluable. I could have done it elsewhere though, well, it was nice. There weren’t many of us, especially if we are just talking about Americans and not other westerners. But, as an example, one of the best SR/ML researchers I know got his chance in China even though he was European.
mpfundstein 9y ago
This is a very valid point and you must not be afraid to be seen as a ‘nationalist’ (whatever that means anyway). One of my biggest concerns with China - as a a European - is that Brussel allows Chinese companies to buy huge amounts of European IP(eg robots, automotives, AI) but the Chinese government, on the other hand, forbids (or makes it very difficult) that foreign companies buy Chinese IP. So its a one way road ! Luckily some government officials now realized that and are actively trying to combat Chinese acquisitions (eg German foreign minister), but its still a real danger. China essentially takes huge advantage of our openness and our liberal markets but does not return the favour...
- zhipj 9y ago
  Where did you find that Chinese government forbids foreign companies to buy Chinese IP? Market is fair, someone wants to sell, someone has the money to buy, this is how business is done.
  - gumby 9y ago
    This comment was dead and I vouched for it. I believe (but do not know) that China is more restrictive IRT foreigners and IP but new commenter zhipj is quite reasonable in asking for references, especially for the specific claim.
  - badpun 9y ago
    Fair market requires working rule of law, while, from what I've read, even major global corporations (ABB if I remember correctly) can be cheated in Chinese courts for billions. I would not want to invest in IP in a country where my competitor can just sue me, bribe the judge and bankrupt my company.
  - avinium 9y ago
    Domestic acquisitions by foreign companies in any sector worth doing business in require approval by MOFCOM. There's usually a lot of horse-trading that goes on before the formal application to figure out what's kosher to buy, and what's not.
fogzen 9y ago
We could keep talent if we just allowed people to work here. We don’t. We only allow 65,000 people to work in large corporations, in specific industries, at the behest of the company, under constant threat of deportation and after gambling thousands of dollars on the chance at approval. My friends went back to China because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. Why should intelligent hard working people put up with that? At a certain point dignity and a reliable future are more important than the chance at a higher salary. The more developed China becomes the less reason there is to put up with those hardships.
- ryanianian 9y ago
  This is an excellent point - if you've got a US education, the US should do everything possible to help you stay to use that education in the US. As China becomes more developed, presumably the draw of going to the US to study will diminish (probably rapidly). If the US can't attract and retain top-talent from other countries, the US will fail to reap the benefits of a global economy.
- gumby 9y ago
  > because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. FWIW this is not my experience (GC holder, us educated, mixed south Asian origins). Not saying your friends are wrong, just saying it isn’t inherently unwelcoming, even these days.
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    In your experience, what is the welcoming part of immigrating to the US? Unless you have family sponsoring you or $500k or $1m to invest, then there is no reliable path to permanent residence/green card. You are at the mercy of an opaque organization that answers to no one and also at the mercy of having an employer willing to take you on and jump through many hoops.
    - 9y ago
heiei98jejrj282 9y ago
Ever more evidence that nation states are on their way out and large urban areas will be the seat of power People can move about them, do and learn and move on to another to share and teach Nations make it onerous for authoritarian reasons, to gate keep and apply purity filters France is leading the way, IMO, but of course there’s more to be done
mraison 9y ago
I'm curious what makes you worry about (1). To me it seems like the exact opposite (foreign students pay the full tuition without any subsidy from the US, and are a critical source of revenue for many American universities) Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/international-enrollment-drop.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/international-enrollme...
- ryanianian 9y ago
  I had a number of Chinese-national friends at university (a big public university) who received significant scholarships from the school. (It could be it was a subsidy-exchange between the university and a chinese institution but I didn't get that impression. It could have been a private party as well. In any case it was definitely a scholarship by a US institution - not sure if public or private.) These friends were brilliant and couldn't have afforded to attend without it. However: last I heard, they have all since moved back to China and are doing quite well for themselves. This is objectively good news for these people, but that scholarship money was effectively just given to China. There are ripple benefits that aren't so tangible (added diversity, the chance that they could have stayed, the impact they had while here, etc). Overall it seems "fair" that scholarship money should be converted to a loan if the education isn't used long-term in the same economy as the scholarship.
  - icelancer 9y ago
    Why? If those scholarships were awarded on merit (they likely were), why should they be based on where the tuition waiver is "used?" Exceptional undergraduates provide value to the school while being in it as well as what they do after finishing their education. These scholarships were almost certainly awarded by the institution, not the federal government.
    - ryanianian 9y ago
      I explicitly called out the value they provide while being in the school. I doubt that they provided $100k in such value, but I could be wrong. I don't care about where waiver "should" be used as this is subjective, I'm merely talking about what's "fair" economically which is theoretically objective. If the US hands out "good job" money in the form of net-economy-negative subsidies, then it explains a lot of what's going on in higher education. I wouldn't limit this to just internationals as well. If you get a huge subsidy to go to a US school and then leave the country it's the same situation even if you're a US citizen.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
friedButter 9y ago
>(1) how much of these people's education or experience was subsidized by the American economy I suspect that US actually profits off of foreign students, atleast thats what I've heard informally (since we have to pay much higher fees than natives), but I've never checked the fees to be honest. In a profitable system, its a fair assumption that those who pay the most make atleast some contribution to profits right?
- ryanianian 9y ago
  Absolutely - if the cost you pay offsets your cost to the economy it's win-win. My question/concern is primarily around the students who receive some form of net subsidy from the US economy.
  - friedButter 9y ago
    TBH, another factor to be kept in mind is that most foreign students are doing a MS in US only for the work visa.. if the possibility of working in US went away (say OPT extension gets terminated and everything else remains the same, or Trump pushes through with making H1B's much tougher\impossible to extend beyond 6 years ), a lot fewer foreign students would come to US which would result in fewer profits..
lurr 9y ago
> I don't mean this from a US nationalist or political perspective - I'm merely speculating on the economics. "I'm just asking questions"
coliveira 9y ago
Regarding (1), I think it is the opposite. The US benefits from high quality free education paid by the Chinese government when these individuals come to do graduate studies and to work in US companies. In fact the same happens when bright people from all over the world comes to the US: it is known as brain-drain, a process by which the US benefits from highly educated people coming from countries that spent a lot of money to create a public school system.
- gota 9y ago
  This is exactly what is listed under the US section of the wikipedia article: "he country as a whole does not experience large-scale human capital flight as compared with other countries, with an emigration rate of only 0.7 per 1,000 educated people,[199] but it is often the destination of skilled workers migrating from elsewhere in the world.[200]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight#United_St...

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

The economics of higher education isn't aligned between personal and societal interest in general. College degrees are a positional good - a good portion of their value is for allocating a job to Peter instead of Paul. Even as people rationally choose more prestigious and more thorough education, we end up destroying value on a societal scale. Like, even if a daycare worker finds it easier to get a job with a college degree, are we better off as a society if more daycare workers have college degrees? I think not.

ryanianian 9y ago
You could say the same thing about almost literally anything that you have to pay or work for. If two candidates are otherwise equal and one had a brand new car, I might use the new car as a tie-breaker. I'd bet having a college degree is much more than a tie-breaker in most cases - it shows a level of work, discipline, and probable intelligence that is genuinely an advantage for most jobs. (This is problematic because it also shows a huge set of advantages that the degree-holder has had. If somebody has enough advantages to have a degree and is applying for a daycare position, it might mean something is very wrong for this person and maybe it should tip the tie-breaker situation the other way!)
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  Exactly that: it shows a level of work, discipline, and intelligence. It doesn't cause any increase in the ability to work, be disciplined, or be more intelligent. Society is better off if this is something like a prestigious high school degree, rather than a Bachelor's.
  - ryanianian 9y ago
    I can't hire for things that 'cause' such increases, I can only use presented-information to make a best-guess about how an employee will perform. Having a degree is a good indicator that you'll work hard and be disciplined. If I have to break a tie between two candidates, things that show levels of work/discipline/* will help me break the tie.
    - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
      Again, that's perfectly fine and reasonable in individual situations. It's also not an argument for society getting more education as a whole. The tie-breaking for you is the same whether it's between high school diploma vs bachelor's degree, or a bachelor's vs master's. Making the high school degree holder get a bachelor's and the bachelor's get a master's doesn't help society as a whole.
  - badpun 9y ago
    I agree that a rigorous high-school education could just a well serve as a filter as the higher ed studies do today. Unfortunately, high school is mostly low-quality, low-effort waste of time these days, so finishing it does not signal much to the employees (maybe with exception such as Eton and other elite private schools).

dawhizkid 9y ago

I don’t think foreign Chinese would qualify for federal subsidies. Maybe the Chinese gov’t subsidizes their education. In grad school I knew of several Singaporeans who had their tuition here in the US convered by the govt with repayment in form of returning to a govt job, which in Singapore is a highly prestigious job.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
At the graduate level, in computer science, they are funded via research grants but work as RAs. They aren’t exactly subsidized by the federal government, and they do work in return, but they are still majority tax payer funded.
- dawhizkid 9y ago
  Sure maybe PhDs at public universities. That is a small sliver of total Chinese that come here for undergrad or masters programs...
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Also private universities (Stanford). Grads are a large portion of the Chinese that work in SV. Many of the Chinese who come to the states and pay for their education out of pocket couldn’t get into a good school back home and are going back after their education finishes. The others are rich, here for the experience, and will still go basic home because of their family expectations and connections.
walshemj 9y ago
They certainly used to I worked on an elite campus at my first job early 80's and there was one Chinese exchange student doing a masters or phd of course in those day he did wear the mao uniform and had a flying pigeon bike.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

As for (1), flip it around and it’s more realistic (how much of their work in industry or as RAs has subsidized America?). The benefits are in America’s favor still. As for (2), I spent 9 years there and find my experience invaluable. I could have done it elsewhere though, well, it was nice. There weren’t many of us, especially if we are just talking about Americans and not other westerners. But, as an example, one of the best SR/ML researchers I know got his chance in China even though he was European.

mpfundstein 9y ago

This is a very valid point and you must not be afraid to be seen as a ‘nationalist’ (whatever that means anyway). One of my biggest concerns with China - as a a European - is that Brussel allows Chinese companies to buy huge amounts of European IP(eg robots, automotives, AI) but the Chinese government, on the other hand, forbids (or makes it very difficult) that foreign companies buy Chinese IP. So its a one way road ! Luckily some government officials now realized that and are actively trying to combat Chinese acquisitions (eg German foreign minister), but its still a real danger. China essentially takes huge advantage of our openness and our liberal markets but does not return the favour...

zhipj 9y ago
Where did you find that Chinese government forbids foreign companies to buy Chinese IP? Market is fair, someone wants to sell, someone has the money to buy, this is how business is done.
- gumby 9y ago
  This comment was dead and I vouched for it. I believe (but do not know) that China is more restrictive IRT foreigners and IP but new commenter zhipj is quite reasonable in asking for references, especially for the specific claim.
- badpun 9y ago
  Fair market requires working rule of law, while, from what I've read, even major global corporations (ABB if I remember correctly) can be cheated in Chinese courts for billions. I would not want to invest in IP in a country where my competitor can just sue me, bribe the judge and bankrupt my company.
- avinium 9y ago
  Domestic acquisitions by foreign companies in any sector worth doing business in require approval by MOFCOM. There's usually a lot of horse-trading that goes on before the formal application to figure out what's kosher to buy, and what's not.

fogzen 9y ago

We could keep talent if we just allowed people to work here. We don’t. We only allow 65,000 people to work in large corporations, in specific industries, at the behest of the company, under constant threat of deportation and after gambling thousands of dollars on the chance at approval. My friends went back to China because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. Why should intelligent hard working people put up with that? At a certain point dignity and a reliable future are more important than the chance at a higher salary. The more developed China becomes the less reason there is to put up with those hardships.

ryanianian 9y ago
This is an excellent point - if you've got a US education, the US should do everything possible to help you stay to use that education in the US. As China becomes more developed, presumably the draw of going to the US to study will diminish (probably rapidly). If the US can't attract and retain top-talent from other countries, the US will fail to reap the benefits of a global economy.
gumby 9y ago
> because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. FWIW this is not my experience (GC holder, us educated, mixed south Asian origins). Not saying your friends are wrong, just saying it isn’t inherently unwelcoming, even these days.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  In your experience, what is the welcoming part of immigrating to the US? Unless you have family sponsoring you or $500k or $1m to invest, then there is no reliable path to permanent residence/green card. You are at the mercy of an opaque organization that answers to no one and also at the mercy of having an employer willing to take you on and jump through many hoops.
  - 9y ago

heiei98jejrj282 9y ago

Ever more evidence that nation states are on their way out and large urban areas will be the seat of power People can move about them, do and learn and move on to another to share and teach Nations make it onerous for authoritarian reasons, to gate keep and apply purity filters France is leading the way, IMO, but of course there’s more to be done

mraison 9y ago

I'm curious what makes you worry about (1). To me it seems like the exact opposite (foreign students pay the full tuition without any subsidy from the US, and are a critical source of revenue for many American universities) Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/international-enrollment-drop.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/international-enrollme...

ryanianian 9y ago
I had a number of Chinese-national friends at university (a big public university) who received significant scholarships from the school. (It could be it was a subsidy-exchange between the university and a chinese institution but I didn't get that impression. It could have been a private party as well. In any case it was definitely a scholarship by a US institution - not sure if public or private.) These friends were brilliant and couldn't have afforded to attend without it. However: last I heard, they have all since moved back to China and are doing quite well for themselves. This is objectively good news for these people, but that scholarship money was effectively just given to China. There are ripple benefits that aren't so tangible (added diversity, the chance that they could have stayed, the impact they had while here, etc). Overall it seems "fair" that scholarship money should be converted to a loan if the education isn't used long-term in the same economy as the scholarship.
- icelancer 9y ago
  Why? If those scholarships were awarded on merit (they likely were), why should they be based on where the tuition waiver is "used?" Exceptional undergraduates provide value to the school while being in it as well as what they do after finishing their education. These scholarships were almost certainly awarded by the institution, not the federal government.
  - ryanianian 9y ago
    I explicitly called out the value they provide while being in the school. I doubt that they provided $100k in such value, but I could be wrong. I don't care about where waiver "should" be used as this is subjective, I'm merely talking about what's "fair" economically which is theoretically objective. If the US hands out "good job" money in the form of net-economy-negative subsidies, then it explains a lot of what's going on in higher education. I wouldn't limit this to just internationals as well. If you get a huge subsidy to go to a US school and then leave the country it's the same situation even if you're a US citizen.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

friedButter 9y ago

>(1) how much of these people's education or experience was subsidized by the American economy I suspect that US actually profits off of foreign students, atleast thats what I've heard informally (since we have to pay much higher fees than natives), but I've never checked the fees to be honest. In a profitable system, its a fair assumption that those who pay the most make atleast some contribution to profits right?

ryanianian 9y ago
Absolutely - if the cost you pay offsets your cost to the economy it's win-win. My question/concern is primarily around the students who receive some form of net subsidy from the US economy.
- friedButter 9y ago
  TBH, another factor to be kept in mind is that most foreign students are doing a MS in US only for the work visa.. if the possibility of working in US went away (say OPT extension gets terminated and everything else remains the same, or Trump pushes through with making H1B's much tougher\impossible to extend beyond 6 years ), a lot fewer foreign students would come to US which would result in fewer profits..

lurr 9y ago

> I don't mean this from a US nationalist or political perspective - I'm merely speculating on the economics. "I'm just asking questions"

coliveira 9y ago

Regarding (1), I think it is the opposite. The US benefits from high quality free education paid by the Chinese government when these individuals come to do graduate studies and to work in US companies. In fact the same happens when bright people from all over the world comes to the US: it is known as brain-drain, a process by which the US benefits from highly educated people coming from countries that spent a lot of money to create a public school system.

gota 9y ago
This is exactly what is listed under the US section of the wikipedia article: "he country as a whole does not experience large-scale human capital flight as compared with other countries, with an emigration rate of only 0.7 per 1,000 educated people,[199] but it is often the destination of skilled workers migrating from elsewhere in the world.[200]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight#United_St...