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I actually disagree with the notion that the US pays for the graduate educations of foreign nationals. This is a misconception that is easy to exploit in a pop

by geebee 18y ago

I actually disagree with the notion that the US pays for the graduate educations of foreign nationals. This is a misconception that is easy to exploit in a population that thinks of graduate school as something like undergraduate, law, business, or medical school. Graduate students in engineering are generally producers of wealth for universities. For example, I recently left a job where I was paid over 100K a year (in addition to benefits and stock) to write code that built mathematical optimization models based on data stored in large RDBMSs. Now, I don't actually think the pay was especially great considering the skill set (and I got a hefty raise when I left), but I know foreign grad students who were doing essentially the same thing for a research stipend that probably amounted to less than 20K/year, no benefits, stock, nothing (other than the possibility of a PhD after many years of servitude). If these folks had the right to leave the university without screwing up their visas, they'd probably be making six figures in private industry like me (I left once I got my MS). Sure, yeah, I suppose we should try to keep these folks here when they graduate, but the notion that the US has somehow put itself out to provide a grad education for foreign engineering students is baloney. We take them in precisely at the moment they become net contributors, and not a moment earlier. Universities save huge $$$ by indenturing grad students from overseas.

timr 18y ago
I don't know what to tell you. You're just wrong if you think that the US doesn't pay for the graduate education of foreign nationals. I can name at least a half-dozen foreign doctoral students and post-docs, whom I know personally, who are/were on NIH and NSF funding. It's not a "notion" -- it's a real phenomenon. Now, granted, maybe these people will contribute to the GDP someday, indirectly, through their current research. But that's an argument to encourage them to stay here, not to fund their education and force them to go back home when it's time to get a job.
- cconstantine 18y ago
  I think the point of your post's parent is that they are paid, but compared to how much they could be making in the private sector they are working slave-wages. Unless you think the work they are doing as grad students is worth less than what they're payed (slave-wages) the balance works out that we are getting more from them than they get from us.
  - timr 18y ago
    That's his point, but it's an irrelevant one to my argument. The gains we get from paying for research are hypothetical. Research is an investment. Nobody expects it to turn an immediate profit, or even generate a revenue of any significance -- which is great, because it usually doesn't, and most academic research isn't commercially viable anyway. When we pay for foreign students to earn advanced degrees, only to kick them out of the country once they've graduated, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. Why are people having such a difficult time understanding this?
    - cconstantine 18y ago
      ah, reading comprehension... I can has some? You are more correct than I am :)
      - timr 18y ago
        I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but there must have been something about the way I wrote my original comment that was particularly obtuse, since I seem to be attracting quite the backlash....
        cconstantine 18y ago
        No sarcasm. I'm not sure what it was for other people, but I decided I disagreed with you before I got to that critical last sentence in your root post.
        timr 18y ago
        Ah. Must've buried the lede. :-)
    - felipe 18y ago
      > When we pay for foreign students to earn advanced degrees, only to kick them out of the country once they've graduated, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. Right, I agree with you, and I understand your argument (though I don't agree with it per se) that the return is questionable. I was just asking about your claim of "a huge number of foreign grad students and post-docs are being paid off", especially grads in high-tech industry (which is the focus of the article)
- felipe 18y ago
  > I can name at least a half-dozen foreign doctoral students and post-docs, whom I know personally, who are/were on NIH and NSF funding Those grants are research-based, so NIH and NSF are paying them in exchange of research work. In your argument, you sound like they are giving money to foreigners who get the money, say good bye and run away with a degree.
  - timr 18y ago
    No, I said that the US is paying graduate students, and that if we're investing in them, we ought to encourage them to stay.
- geebee 18y ago
  Yeah, as the two previous posts from filipe and cconstantine point out, we're talking about net contribution. This is why I mentioned the MBA, Law, Medicine, and Undergrad degrees as something apart from Ph.D programs in science and/or engineering. Since most people experience college as an undergrad, or maybe as a professional student, they think of a degree program as a situation where you get an education in exchange for money. So scholarships and stipends are a privilege, maybe even a kind of gift. PhD programs are completely different. Universities use grad students to provide labor that at a fraction of the market rate - maybe 10%-20%. By the way, it doesn't bother me that a person would be willing to apprentice to a professor in order to get a PhD and experience. That's the student's decision. But it irritates me enormously when I see a visa or green card used to force the worker to accept employment at severely below market rates. The first is choice, the second is government sponsored indentured servitude, an egregious violation of everything I believe is good about free markets, democracy, and at-will employment (this is no exaggeration, I really do think when an employer controls the employee's right to reside in the US and hopes for getting a green card, it severely undermines personal freedom in a way that has no place in a capitalist democracy).
  - timr 18y ago
    I just spent a big chunk of my life getting a PhD, so you don't really need to lecture me on the economics of graduate education. I'm under no illusions that grad school is anything like professional school. Also, I know that you're making the argument that grad student research leads to gains in long-term GDP and new industries and blah, blah, blah. Yes. I get it. What you're missing -- the important part of my argument -- is that these gains are hypothetical and long-term. In the short term, we're paying real, present-value dollars for foreign students to get their degrees. If we then throw them out after they graduate, we are also throwing away the bulk of their productivity. We train them, then we cast them aside. Your comments about "indentured servitude" are a straw man, and I'm not going to address them here. Also, I don't necessarily support the way that universities use foreign students to conduct research at below-market rates (it's a big part of why I no longer work in the field in which I was trained). My argument is narrow: if we're going to pay for these folks to get trained here, it makes no sense to kick them out of the country when they're done.

by geebee 18y ago

timr 18y ago

I don't know what to tell you. You're just wrong if you think that the US doesn't pay for the graduate education of foreign nationals. I can name at least a half-dozen foreign doctoral students and post-docs, whom I know personally, who are/were on NIH and NSF funding. It's not a "notion" -- it's a real phenomenon. Now, granted, maybe these people will contribute to the GDP someday, indirectly, through their current research. But that's an argument to encourage them to stay here, not to fund their education and force them to go back home when it's time to get a job.

cconstantine 18y ago
I think the point of your post's parent is that they are paid, but compared to how much they could be making in the private sector they are working slave-wages. Unless you think the work they are doing as grad students is worth less than what they're payed (slave-wages) the balance works out that we are getting more from them than they get from us.
- timr 18y ago
  That's his point, but it's an irrelevant one to my argument. The gains we get from paying for research are hypothetical. Research is an investment. Nobody expects it to turn an immediate profit, or even generate a revenue of any significance -- which is great, because it usually doesn't, and most academic research isn't commercially viable anyway. When we pay for foreign students to earn advanced degrees, only to kick them out of the country once they've graduated, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. Why are people having such a difficult time understanding this?
  - cconstantine 18y ago
    ah, reading comprehension... I can has some? You are more correct than I am :)
    - timr 18y ago
      I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but there must have been something about the way I wrote my original comment that was particularly obtuse, since I seem to be attracting quite the backlash....
      - cconstantine 18y ago
        No sarcasm. I'm not sure what it was for other people, but I decided I disagreed with you before I got to that critical last sentence in your root post.
        timr 18y ago
        Ah. Must've buried the lede. :-)
  - felipe 18y ago
    > When we pay for foreign students to earn advanced degrees, only to kick them out of the country once they've graduated, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. Right, I agree with you, and I understand your argument (though I don't agree with it per se) that the return is questionable. I was just asking about your claim of "a huge number of foreign grad students and post-docs are being paid off", especially grads in high-tech industry (which is the focus of the article)
felipe 18y ago
> I can name at least a half-dozen foreign doctoral students and post-docs, whom I know personally, who are/were on NIH and NSF funding Those grants are research-based, so NIH and NSF are paying them in exchange of research work. In your argument, you sound like they are giving money to foreigners who get the money, say good bye and run away with a degree.
- timr 18y ago
  No, I said that the US is paying graduate students, and that if we're investing in them, we ought to encourage them to stay.
geebee 18y ago
Yeah, as the two previous posts from filipe and cconstantine point out, we're talking about net contribution. This is why I mentioned the MBA, Law, Medicine, and Undergrad degrees as something apart from Ph.D programs in science and/or engineering. Since most people experience college as an undergrad, or maybe as a professional student, they think of a degree program as a situation where you get an education in exchange for money. So scholarships and stipends are a privilege, maybe even a kind of gift. PhD programs are completely different. Universities use grad students to provide labor that at a fraction of the market rate - maybe 10%-20%. By the way, it doesn't bother me that a person would be willing to apprentice to a professor in order to get a PhD and experience. That's the student's decision. But it irritates me enormously when I see a visa or green card used to force the worker to accept employment at severely below market rates. The first is choice, the second is government sponsored indentured servitude, an egregious violation of everything I believe is good about free markets, democracy, and at-will employment (this is no exaggeration, I really do think when an employer controls the employee's right to reside in the US and hopes for getting a green card, it severely undermines personal freedom in a way that has no place in a capitalist democracy).
- timr 18y ago
  I just spent a big chunk of my life getting a PhD, so you don't really need to lecture me on the economics of graduate education. I'm under no illusions that grad school is anything like professional school. Also, I know that you're making the argument that grad student research leads to gains in long-term GDP and new industries and blah, blah, blah. Yes. I get it. What you're missing -- the important part of my argument -- is that these gains are hypothetical and long-term. In the short term, we're paying real, present-value dollars for foreign students to get their degrees. If we then throw them out after they graduate, we are also throwing away the bulk of their productivity. We train them, then we cast them aside. Your comments about "indentured servitude" are a straw man, and I'm not going to address them here. Also, I don't necessarily support the way that universities use foreign students to conduct research at below-market rates (it's a big part of why I no longer work in the field in which I was trained). My argument is narrow: if we're going to pay for these folks to get trained here, it makes no sense to kick them out of the country when they're done.