C'mon, dude. You wrote "You're just wrong if you think that the US doesn't pay for the graduate education of foreign nationals". Of course the thread got a li

C'mon, dude. You wrote "You're just wrong if you think that the US doesn't pay for the graduate education of foreign nationals". Of course the thread got a little testy. And I stand by my claim that these research-oriented grad students contribute more than they cost even in the short term. They teach classes, write code, and sign away rights to patents the moment they start their programs. These contributions pale in comparison to the long-term gains you mentioned, and the opportunity cost of losing a researcher who would have stayed in the US is very real, but it's pretty easy to produce enough to justify a research stipend even without considering those long term gains