4 ms·
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 academ
by 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 agoWe'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 agoOk 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 agoBecause 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.
- sjg007 6y agoThis doesn’t jive with the post I was responding to.
- ineedasername 6y agoBecause these wages are near universally low, so no one needs to compete on that. Also for the same reason they're recruiting international students in the first place: Money. (Note: this doesn't mean the schools aren't fulfilling their educational missions, it just means that revenue is both necessary in itself and as such a core metric that is pursued.)
- davrosthedalek 6y agoAt least in my field, foreign students don't have H1B. typically F1. H1B is for postdocs and above. I think the whole discussion about foreign students is beside the point here.