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The schools might have to let natives in; the horror. We might have to return to the dark ages of the 1950s when the STEM graduates were majority Americans and

The schools might have to let natives in; the horror. We might have to return to the dark ages of the 1950s when the STEM graduates were majority Americans and we actually were making technological progress in something other than lithography. "Science" is addicted to cheap foreign labor, which has ruined the market for natives.

mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
Who are these natives you speak of? Last I checked we are a nation of immigrants. If not you then your parents, grandparents and their parents.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Natives = people who were born and grew up here. Stop being intentionally obtuse. Nobody is native on a long enough timeline.
tntn 7y ago
Certainly increased acceptance rates for domestic students would impact which schools they go to. But do you have any data indicating that a) there are a significant number of domestic students who apply to STEM programs and get rejected from all of them and relatedly b) the demand for grad school positions is sufficiently elastic to match an 80% increase in supply? I'm not sure what your point was with the casual dismissal of 70 years of research in every field besides lithography. Am I supposed to think that international students only work on lithography? Most lithography research, as far as I'm aware, doesn't even happen in academia.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Compared to the previous 70 years, the last 70 years of scientific and technological research has been complete and utter shit, except for lithography. Pretty simple, really. The presence of all that cheap labor in the last 70 years has objectively not made things better. Mind you, in raw numbers we have at least 10x the number of active workers in the sciences in the last 70 years as in the previous 70 years; and less is getting done. Imagine that! Your first point is a red herring: the presence of cheap labor in the sciences and the lack of decent jobs makes it unattractive to any sane person who was born in a first world country.
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
If you restrict the pool of applicants, the quality of the student body will go down. That's basically a law of nature. Schools aren't accepting foreign students because they're cheaper. They actually have greater apprehension about foreign students, because their language skills might be lacking, and because the American professors judging the applications might not personally know the foreign professors writing the recommendation letters. Science is largely done by graduate students and postdocs. Professors are busy writing grants, teaching classes, advising students and sitting on committees. Their role in science is largely managerial, and in providing overall vision. All the grunt work and detail gets done by people below them. My point is that having smart and capable students is critical. If you go into a top STEM department in the US, you'll probably see that a large majority of students are foreigners. If you were to exclude them, you could replace them with Americans, but those Americans would, on average, have lower grades, lower test scores and less previous research experience. Their work would not be as good, and the productivity of the department would fall. The excluded students would instead go to top universities in other countries. Those universities would begin doing better research as a result. My prediction is that within a decade, you would see Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley et al. fall off the top of the rankings, replaced by the top universities in Europe, one or two universities in Canada, and perhaps a few Asian universities.

mrhappyunhappy 7y ago

Who are these natives you speak of? Last I checked we are a nation of immigrants. If not you then your parents, grandparents and their parents.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Natives = people who were born and grew up here. Stop being intentionally obtuse. Nobody is native on a long enough timeline.

tntn 7y ago

Certainly increased acceptance rates for domestic students would impact which schools they go to. But do you have any data indicating that a) there are a significant number of domestic students who apply to STEM programs and get rejected from all of them and relatedly b) the demand for grad school positions is sufficiently elastic to match an 80% increase in supply? I'm not sure what your point was with the casual dismissal of 70 years of research in every field besides lithography. Am I supposed to think that international students only work on lithography? Most lithography research, as far as I'm aware, doesn't even happen in academia.

scottlocklin 7y ago
Compared to the previous 70 years, the last 70 years of scientific and technological research has been complete and utter shit, except for lithography. Pretty simple, really. The presence of all that cheap labor in the last 70 years has objectively not made things better. Mind you, in raw numbers we have at least 10x the number of active workers in the sciences in the last 70 years as in the previous 70 years; and less is getting done. Imagine that! Your first point is a red herring: the presence of cheap labor in the sciences and the lack of decent jobs makes it unattractive to any sane person who was born in a first world country.

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

If you restrict the pool of applicants, the quality of the student body will go down. That's basically a law of nature. Schools aren't accepting foreign students because they're cheaper. They actually have greater apprehension about foreign students, because their language skills might be lacking, and because the American professors judging the applications might not personally know the foreign professors writing the recommendation letters. Science is largely done by graduate students and postdocs. Professors are busy writing grants, teaching classes, advising students and sitting on committees. Their role in science is largely managerial, and in providing overall vision. All the grunt work and detail gets done by people below them. My point is that having smart and capable students is critical. If you go into a top STEM department in the US, you'll probably see that a large majority of students are foreigners. If you were to exclude them, you could replace them with Americans, but those Americans would, on average, have lower grades, lower test scores and less previous research experience. Their work would not be as good, and the productivity of the department would fall. The excluded students would instead go to top universities in other countries. Those universities would begin doing better research as a result. My prediction is that within a decade, you would see Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley et al. fall off the top of the rankings, replaced by the top universities in Europe, one or two universities in Canada, and perhaps a few Asian universities.