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Citation heavily needed here. I find it hard to believe on face value that foreign researchers are necessarily better than US researchers; especially given the

by chunky1994 6y ago

Citation 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 ago
Quality 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    You 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.
ravila4 6y ago
Science is by far one of the most globalized fields. The international collaborations that it thrives on are largely formed via exchange of students. We cannot afford to be ethnocentric in this day and age. As an example, America would never have been first on the moon if it were not for a certain German engineer Wernher von Braun.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I kind of agree, but von Braun didn't exactly come to us through "traditional" channels. The Russians were a little more forceful about it, but neither them nor the US gave the individuals a significant choice in the matter as we embarked on that scientist gold rush.
- chunky1994 6y ago
  There was no argument made for ethnocentricity, nor for stopping a global exchange of ideas. This response seems very non sequitur. > The international collaborations that it thrives on are largely formed via exchange of students. 1) Students are on F visas, so they are unaffected by H1B changes. 2) There is no magical reason that students educated in another country in this day and age have a markedly different tradition of thinking about fundamental science. The internet has largely erased the differences in access to the latest research in top institutions around the world so the only thing that remains needed for high quality research is a pool of bright people. Perhaps there are some educational tradition differences between Europe and the US but US postdocs are largely educated in the US itself so those differences aren't really affecting current US research anyway. 3) Given the current labor and supply demand in academia, this pool of bright people can be satisfied by either US researchers or foreign researchers, and since there is ample choice between the two, the research of great import still gets done by just as many smart people as before, so once again, I fail to see the "problem" for great research being done.
  - davrosthedalek 6y ago
    There are, absolutely, tremendous differences in the way an American student/postdoc or an German student/postdoc attacks problems and thinks about science, speaking for the two countries I worked in.
sjg007 6y ago
A lot of the best academics are foreign born. You could look at Nobel prize winners for example. But you have to also remember that the current group of academics came out of PhD programs in the 1970s. That was a time of expansion in academia. These folks are just about to retire. On the other side of this, I think the universities walk a fine line with respect to graduate student admissions between foreigners and US citizens. The fact that we bring in foreign graduate students from foreign undergraduate programs either means that our current system is not producing applicants of sufficient caliber who then apply or it is not economically viable. In that sense there is evidence that graduate student research stipends are depressed. Is this due to foreign competition? There is some anecdotal evidence to this in that the majority of CS undergrads get a job ratherhe than pursue a PhD etc... b/c of the salary differences. Foreigners have to get a masters at a minimum to achieve better odds in the H1B lottery. And after they graduate from a US masters program, they can work at a US company for a couple years anyway.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  We're bringing in foreign students to graduate programs because colleges want to grow revenue and demand to go to grad school at all but the top 10% of schools isn't high enough to easily fill every seat. Outside of top tier programs, colleges are fighting for every student they can get, and international students are a good supply.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Ok but then why are graduate student "salaries" (e.g. stipends) essentially universally depressed? It seems like research programs should pay more to attract more students.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      Because the supply of qualified applicants for ANY job is unimaginably larger than anyone imagines. Even if you're hiring assistants for the "best researchers in the world" -- which, let's be honest, are all doing the "10 years and retire" game at FAIR/Google/etc. anyways these days -- there are just unimaginably many qualified candidates. Even killing the H1B program entirely wouldn't directly effect the ability of universities to recruit research/teaching assistants. Consider if any US trucking line could hire literally anyone in the world. Wages would be below subsistence level. Which, well, lots of the Research Assistants working as Software Engineers for National Science Foundation portfolio companies are barely making enough to support themselves.
ryan93 6y ago
It’s just a numbers game. America has less than 5% of the worlds population. Why would you think we would have more than 5% of the worlds best researchers

kazagistar 6y ago

Quality 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 ago
I 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 ago
  You 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.

ravila4 6y ago

Science is by far one of the most globalized fields. The international collaborations that it thrives on are largely formed via exchange of students. We cannot afford to be ethnocentric in this day and age. As an example, America would never have been first on the moon if it were not for a certain German engineer Wernher von Braun.

ineedasername 6y ago
I kind of agree, but von Braun didn't exactly come to us through "traditional" channels. The Russians were a little more forceful about it, but neither them nor the US gave the individuals a significant choice in the matter as we embarked on that scientist gold rush.
chunky1994 6y ago
There was no argument made for ethnocentricity, nor for stopping a global exchange of ideas. This response seems very non sequitur. > The international collaborations that it thrives on are largely formed via exchange of students. 1) Students are on F visas, so they are unaffected by H1B changes. 2) There is no magical reason that students educated in another country in this day and age have a markedly different tradition of thinking about fundamental science. The internet has largely erased the differences in access to the latest research in top institutions around the world so the only thing that remains needed for high quality research is a pool of bright people. Perhaps there are some educational tradition differences between Europe and the US but US postdocs are largely educated in the US itself so those differences aren't really affecting current US research anyway. 3) Given the current labor and supply demand in academia, this pool of bright people can be satisfied by either US researchers or foreign researchers, and since there is ample choice between the two, the research of great import still gets done by just as many smart people as before, so once again, I fail to see the "problem" for great research being done.
- davrosthedalek 6y ago
  There are, absolutely, tremendous differences in the way an American student/postdoc or an German student/postdoc attacks problems and thinks about science, speaking for the two countries I worked in.

sjg007 6y ago

A lot of the best academics are foreign born. You could look at Nobel prize winners for example. But you have to also remember that the current group of academics came out of PhD programs in the 1970s. That was a time of expansion in academia. These folks are just about to retire. On the other side of this, I think the universities walk a fine line with respect to graduate student admissions between foreigners and US citizens. The fact that we bring in foreign graduate students from foreign undergraduate programs either means that our current system is not producing applicants of sufficient caliber who then apply or it is not economically viable. In that sense there is evidence that graduate student research stipends are depressed. Is this due to foreign competition? There is some anecdotal evidence to this in that the majority of CS undergrads get a job ratherhe than pursue a PhD etc... b/c of the salary differences. Foreigners have to get a masters at a minimum to achieve better odds in the H1B lottery. And after they graduate from a US masters program, they can work at a US company for a couple years anyway.

ineedasername 6y ago
We're bringing in foreign students to graduate programs because colleges want to grow revenue and demand to go to grad school at all but the top 10% of schools isn't high enough to easily fill every seat. Outside of top tier programs, colleges are fighting for every student they can get, and international students are a good supply.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Ok but then why are graduate student "salaries" (e.g. stipends) essentially universally depressed? It seems like research programs should pay more to attract more students.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    Because the supply of qualified applicants for ANY job is unimaginably larger than anyone imagines. Even if you're hiring assistants for the "best researchers in the world" -- which, let's be honest, are all doing the "10 years and retire" game at FAIR/Google/etc. anyways these days -- there are just unimaginably many qualified candidates. Even killing the H1B program entirely wouldn't directly effect the ability of universities to recruit research/teaching assistants. Consider if any US trucking line could hire literally anyone in the world. Wages would be below subsistence level. Which, well, lots of the Research Assistants working as Software Engineers for National Science Foundation portfolio companies are barely making enough to support themselves.

ryan93 6y ago

It’s just a numbers game. America has less than 5% of the worlds population. Why would you think we would have more than 5% of the worlds best researchers