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I fail to see the "problem" here. Most academia STEM jobs are incredibly competitive, postdocs less so than professorships but for fundamental science it is nea
by chunky1994 6y ago
I fail to see the "problem" here. Most academia STEM jobs are incredibly competitive, postdocs less so than professorships but for fundamental science it is nearly indisputable that academia is flush with labour. If universities deem it too hard to raise postdoc wages across the board (or for specific foreign students) due to a lack of grant funding then they will still have ample choice of American students who go onto do the same research.
Yes, it is unfortunate for students looking to move to the US that the path through the standard academic route is no longer easily viable but that does not mean important research does not get done. There are also plenty of other countries that are in fact seeking such talent that might actually look like better options for the now disenfranchised (for lack of a better word) foreign students.
- aspaceman 6y agoIt's a "problem" if you hear this and think, "Wow I want more of those people". It's not a "problem" if you hear this and think, "Yeah, it should be hard for them". Ultimately, people explicitly disagree with your initial position and framing.
- chunky1994 6y agoDid you mean to respond to GP? If not, that is a rather disingenuous reading of what I wrote. No one is saying it "should" be hard for foreign students to get a job in academia, my point was academia has ample domestic labour, so even if H1B salaries are raised, the research attempted is unaffected. Wanting more researchers is well and good, there just aren't enough jobs and funding for them in the current STEM academic market (which is completely separate from any H1B related issue), hence the rather large number of people who move to industry.
- davrosthedalek 6y agoIt's very simple. If it's harder for foreign people to become postdocs/profs in the US, the quality of US research will fall. Quickly.
- chunky1994 6y agoCitation heavily needed here. I find it hard to believe on face value that foreign researchers are necessarily better than US researchers; especially given the number of both foreign and domestic university graduates from U.S universities is much less than the available postdoc and professorship appointments in STEM.
- kazagistar 6y agoQuality is distributed somewhat evenly. The best and the brightest are all over the world. Not every foreigner is better then every local, but for any given quality cutoff, a majority of talent will come from outside the nation. If your goal is sufficiency, then the local population will suffice. If your goal is to capture as much of the truly top talent, you have to cast the net wider.
- chunky1994 6y agoI think we're making mutually reconcilable points here. > Quality is distributed somewhat evenly. Starting from that assumption (which I can agree with), here is a simplified (perhaps numerically inaccurate) argument. Assuming the top talent constitutes 1000 best researchers who have just graduated from their PhDs, and all relatively equally qualified, 500 US, 500 foreign. There are 400 postdoc appointments. Currently if 200 postdocs are US and 200 postdocs are foreign and these H1B rules then inevitably disallow the next generation to have 200 foreign postdocs we still have 200 US postdoc candidates who are just as good and are still top talent. Would this not still retain equal quality?
- davrosthedalek 6y agoYou put in the assumption that they are all relatively equally qualified. I don't think the 1000 best researches are equally qualified. The x best are better than the 1000-x below them. Additionally, if the exchange of postdocs is lower (many return to their country of origin), the research quality not only in the US, but world-wide will go down.