6 ms·

> making sure that both the educational institutions and students enrolled at those schools were statistically representative of schools and computer science st

by ummonk 8y ago

> making sure that both the educational institutions and students enrolled at those schools were statistically representative of schools and computer science students throughout the respective nations. Given the typical CS student body, this basically means Indian, Chinese, and Russian students studying at US universities performed better than those studying at Indian, Chinese, and Russian universities... Either because US universities teach better or because the best students come to the US for their education.

BeetleB 8y ago
>Given the typical CS student body, this basically means Indian, Chinese, and Russian students studying at US universities performed better than those studying at Indian, Chinese, and Russian universities Once you get down to the average university, the number of foreigners in undergrad classes drops dramatically - it's just too expensive for most foreigners to pay out of state tuition unless it is a prestigious university. In my undergrad, most of my engineering classes had only one or two foreign students.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  Maybe at the undergraduate level. My grad school experience was exactly the opposite. I was the _only_ U.S. citizen in most of my classes and one of maybe three in the entire CS program.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    Grad school is indeed very different, because: 1. People are willing to pay a premium for a MS degree. In many of their home countries, a BS is of low value. 2. Funding is much easier to secure for a grad degree - both from US institutions and institutions in their home country. Probably the majority of foreigners are not paying out of pocket. The same "average" university that had so few foreigners in undergrad were completely dominated by them in their MS program. And I think there was only 1 US person in the PhD program (granted, it was a small department and they had very few PhD students to begin with).
  - xxpor 8y ago
    an MS in CS has limited value in the US, unless you need it for visa purposes. As an example, in 2013 Amazon was only offering an additional $5k salary IIRC for new grads with an MS.
    - criddell 8y ago
      Do people go to grad school for the money though?
      - DeonPenny 8y ago
        No but most jobs offer the same benefit when it comes to research. You'd get paid more and do more cutting edge ML and data science working for FB or Google than MIT
yorwba 8y ago
The study (which I didn't see linked in the article, so here it is: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/12/1814646116 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/12/1814646116 ) also tried to investigate this question by restricting their analysis to students at US universities whose strongest language is English (89.1% of their sample) or those who claim two strongest languages and didn't find a significant difference to the overall US student population. That doesn't say a lot about Indian/Chinese/Russian students in the US in particular, but their data is public at https://osf.io/c78wb/ https://osf.io/c78wb/ , so maybe it's possible to get that information, depending on how strongly they anonymized it.
- dominotw 8y ago
  English is my strongest language. Indians do almost all their study in english. So thats not a good indicator.
jbob2000 8y ago
What about culture? Computer programming languages and paradigms have all been developed under western culture; they're written in english with logic that is derived from western philosophy. Without being fully absorbed in this culture, you will lack the key thing that makes you go "ah ha! I get it!"
- ionised 8y ago
  That would be a good explanation if people from other cultures couldn't program worth a damn, but they clearly can.
  - jbob2000 8y ago
    Yes, they can still program, but not as good as the US (clearly). I didn't say that culture was the defining factor of being able to program or not, just that it could be the factor for what puts the US on top of other countries.
    - ionised 8y ago
      I don't think it's a question of skill. The US has more big tech companies because of its approach to business and regulation (if that's what you mean by culture), not the raw skill of its US-born workers. I mean, look at the leadership of a lot of these companies. They're foreign-born, typically from Asia.
- avmich 8y ago
  Russia is more Western than Eastern country culturally. Historically ~20% of Russia which is oldest, most populated (~80% as per Pareto rule) and influental is the western part of the country, bordering European countries.
  - jbob2000 8y ago
    Yes, and Russian computer scientists are still good, but obviously the US is more Western than Russia, so perhaps that is why they got beat in the competition?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hinkley 8y ago
It's both. A social norm sustains itself because if most of the people I want to be like are doing it (correlation), then I will do it (causation) too, unless I've put a lot of extra thought in and made a conscious decision to do something else. The social animal's default mode is to follow the herd. "The herd" could have even started out as the Texas Sharpshooter's Fallacy (random correlation), but now people are motivated to join in. To assemble. To copy.
- owens99 8y ago
  I don’t think this says anything about teaching quality in US, to be honest. It says more about wealth. We are a much wealthier country and the smartest and wealthiest of the other countries study here. Teaching quality at many elite universities is notoriously horrible. The quality of outcomes of their students is more related to their selection of the top individuals.

by ummonk 8y ago

BeetleB 8y ago

>Given the typical CS student body, this basically means Indian, Chinese, and Russian students studying at US universities performed better than those studying at Indian, Chinese, and Russian universities Once you get down to the average university, the number of foreigners in undergrad classes drops dramatically - it's just too expensive for most foreigners to pay out of state tuition unless it is a prestigious university. In my undergrad, most of my engineering classes had only one or two foreign students.

commandlinefan 8y ago
Maybe at the undergraduate level. My grad school experience was exactly the opposite. I was the _only_ U.S. citizen in most of my classes and one of maybe three in the entire CS program.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  Grad school is indeed very different, because: 1. People are willing to pay a premium for a MS degree. In many of their home countries, a BS is of low value. 2. Funding is much easier to secure for a grad degree - both from US institutions and institutions in their home country. Probably the majority of foreigners are not paying out of pocket. The same "average" university that had so few foreigners in undergrad were completely dominated by them in their MS program. And I think there was only 1 US person in the PhD program (granted, it was a small department and they had very few PhD students to begin with).
- xxpor 8y ago
  an MS in CS has limited value in the US, unless you need it for visa purposes. As an example, in 2013 Amazon was only offering an additional $5k salary IIRC for new grads with an MS.
  - criddell 8y ago
    Do people go to grad school for the money though?
    - DeonPenny 8y ago
      No but most jobs offer the same benefit when it comes to research. You'd get paid more and do more cutting edge ML and data science working for FB or Google than MIT

yorwba 8y ago

The study (which I didn't see linked in the article, so here it is: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/12/1814646116 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/12/1814646116 ) also tried to investigate this question by restricting their analysis to students at US universities whose strongest language is English (89.1% of their sample) or those who claim two strongest languages and didn't find a significant difference to the overall US student population. That doesn't say a lot about Indian/Chinese/Russian students in the US in particular, but their data is public at https://osf.io/c78wb/ https://osf.io/c78wb/ , so maybe it's possible to get that information, depending on how strongly they anonymized it.

dominotw 8y ago
English is my strongest language. Indians do almost all their study in english. So thats not a good indicator.

jbob2000 8y ago

What about culture? Computer programming languages and paradigms have all been developed under western culture; they're written in english with logic that is derived from western philosophy. Without being fully absorbed in this culture, you will lack the key thing that makes you go "ah ha! I get it!"

ionised 8y ago
That would be a good explanation if people from other cultures couldn't program worth a damn, but they clearly can.
- jbob2000 8y ago
  Yes, they can still program, but not as good as the US (clearly). I didn't say that culture was the defining factor of being able to program or not, just that it could be the factor for what puts the US on top of other countries.
  - ionised 8y ago
    I don't think it's a question of skill. The US has more big tech companies because of its approach to business and regulation (if that's what you mean by culture), not the raw skill of its US-born workers. I mean, look at the leadership of a lot of these companies. They're foreign-born, typically from Asia.
avmich 8y ago
Russia is more Western than Eastern country culturally. Historically ~20% of Russia which is oldest, most populated (~80% as per Pareto rule) and influental is the western part of the country, bordering European countries.
- jbob2000 8y ago
  Yes, and Russian computer scientists are still good, but obviously the US is more Western than Russia, so perhaps that is why they got beat in the competition?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

hinkley 8y ago

It's both. A social norm sustains itself because if most of the people I want to be like are doing it (correlation), then I will do it (causation) too, unless I've put a lot of extra thought in and made a conscious decision to do something else. The social animal's default mode is to follow the herd. "The herd" could have even started out as the Texas Sharpshooter's Fallacy (random correlation), but now people are motivated to join in. To assemble. To copy.

owens99 8y ago
I don’t think this says anything about teaching quality in US, to be honest. It says more about wealth. We are a much wealthier country and the smartest and wealthiest of the other countries study here. Teaching quality at many elite universities is notoriously horrible. The quality of outcomes of their students is more related to their selection of the top individuals.